How This Denver Creative Pursued Her Music Video Dreams

Halle Nicholas is a local videographer and artist who you might know as the founder of Reah Media Agency. For her latest, and longest project to date, Nicholas put together a music video tied to a song by one of her favorite artists Sultan + Shepard. The video, titled “The World Needs Your Art” ties into heavy and personal matters of mental health, the choice to live and the choice to make art.

This project, which started in her mind many years ago is deeply tied to Sultan + Shepard’s sound and like any music video, there is lots of work behind the scenes that needs to happen before production. Thanks to the team over at This Never Happened, the group’s label, and Nicholas’ dedication to getting this done the right way, the proper licensing for the song was shared, and “The World Needs Your Art” can exist with the song Nicholas envisioned.

“I was going for a walk in Cheesman Park, listening to the album for the first time, and I just remember hearing the song for the first time. I had goosebumps and saw this visual picture in my head. I already had the idea for this video percolating, and then as soon as I heard this song, it was like, something clicked, and that was the soundtrack to it,” explained Nicholas. As someone who naturally associates images with sound, and has for most of her life, directing music videos is a dream job for Nicholas.

These days Nicholas is fully immersed in her creative journey, although that wasn’t always the case. Nicholas started her path into adulthood pursuing a career in engineering here in Colorado. Despite the way her life looked on paper as a college student working towards a steady job, something wasn’t right and Nicholas’ mental health was suffering severely.

With some major life changes, Nicholas dove into self-healing and found a major shift in perspective after a moment of gratitude practice.

“It was like me as my future self, talking to her – my past self and telling her, ‘It’s all gonna be worth it, I promise. You’re gonna, realize all your dreams, and your life is going to be better than you can even imagine right now.’ You just got to keep going. I promise it’s going to get better,” recalled Nicholas.

The dark times of the past and the healing journey she found serve as inspiration in her creative projects with this video at the epicenter. Steering her life towards creativity and connection is something Nicholas feels the deep urge to share.

“This idea has been percolating in my head of making a music video about our ability to invest in ourselves, in relationships between our past and present selves, and the benefits of choosing to express yourself creatively. Because I think, they always say, that the opposite of depression is expression,” said Nicholas.

After years of work and help from many other creatives, Nicholas’ project is complete, and now on a journey to share it with the rest of the world.

“I think creatives experience, all the fears and doubts when they share their work, it’s so vulnerable and it’s so close to our hearts, it’s so exposing to share your, true art in the world. And so I wanted to make this video as a testament,” shared Nicholas.

Throughout the process, Nicholas held two events, “the Purple Party” during which a scene for the music video was filmed, and a release party. Nicholas donated all proceeds from these events to the Colorado Crisis Services nonprofit, which among other things provides a suicide prevention hotline that is free, anonymous and available 24/7.

“I found it was people I was already connected to. The most beautiful team of local creatives assembled to make this happen, and everyone donated their time. This was a passion project for all of us and fully self-funded,” highlighted Nicholas. “All of us were moved by this project, by creating special soulful concepts. Every single one of us has a testimony of how creating this project impacted our personal journey through the process of creation. I could not have done it without every single person involved.”

For any who missed out on giving to the cause, Nicholas will leave the donation ticket up for a week for all to continue to support the Colorado Crisis Services nonprofit. As we all continue to embrace the creative energy here in Denver, keep an eye out for all the future creative projects Nicholas has to share.

Photography courtesy of Halle Nicholas.