The Plane To Toronto Collaboration Music Video

Our former singer Michael Kovrig has been arbitrarily detained in China for almost 1000 days. We released the song The Plane To Toronto in July to raise awareness of his situation. The overwhelmingly positive feedback we received inspired us to take this project a step further. We invited people from around the world to collaborate with us on a music video for this song. We wanted to demonstrate that people around the globe are willing to stand up for Michael and send a clear message to all governments involved. This nightmare has to end. We want Michael to be released, now.

We have received over 60 videos from 15 countries of 4 continents. From Times Square to the Red Square, from the beaches of Australia to the mountains of Colorado, from the Eiffel Tower to CN Tower, people of various age, nationalities and backgrounds stood in solidarity with Michael. And we won’t stop until Michael’s free.

We invite everyone to create selfie photos or videos holding our Free Michael Kovrig poster or a handmade one and upload it to Instagram / Facebook / Twitter with the hashtag #freemichaelkovrig
You can also send them to us, and we’ll share the best ones.

And please, share this video too, help us spread the message. The more people we reach, the sooner we have a resolution.

Media Coverage in Canada and the USA

Our collaboration music video project to free Michael is getting a lot of coverage in Canadian media. We’re really thankful for all the support this initiative has received so far, and we hope that we’ll get a lot of cool video contributions. (Please make sure to follow the instructions!)
Stories have been published by the Globe & Mail, and the Toronto Sun, and we could talk about the project on CTV News Channel and Alex Pierson’s show on Global News Radio 640 Toronto. We also had a chance to introduce the song to US audiences through an interview on KEXP’s Sound & Vision. You can find all these embedded below.

Continue reading

Let’s Make a Music Video For Michael!

Our former singer Michael Kovrig has been innocently imprisoned for more than 950 days. We’ve released The Plane To Toronto to raise awareness of his situation. The song only has a lyric video so far, and we’d like to take it one step further by creating a crowdsourced collaboration video. We’ll create a video where you’ll be acting as if you were passing around Free Michael signs, as you can see in the trailer below. You can either download our artwork from here or use this simple design, or create your own hand-made one.

You should record a vertical full HD (1080 x 1920) video with your phone. The video will be cropped to square size, so make sure that both the top of your head and the bottom of the sign will fit in the square. If you can record a square 1080×1080 video (Clips on iPhone should be good for this), that’s even better. Please shoot it outdoors. If you have a background characteristic of your city, the result will be even more amazing!

If you record with the selfie camera, the video can be mirrored (depending on your settings). This is not a problem, we can flip it horizontally.

Here are some instructions and a sample video:

  1. Start with looking into the camera standing still for a few seconds. Don’t stand too close to the camera, so that everything fits in the square cropped video!
  2. Reach out to your right for the sign and pull it in front of your body
  3. Hold the sign for a few seconds
  4. Hand it over to your left
  5. Stand still facing the camera in the starting position for a few more seconds

The video should be about 10-15 seconds long altogether.

Please send it to rocco@bankrupt.hu via wetransfer before 20 Aug.

If you have any questions, just drop a mail to the same address.

Michael’s Song: The Plane To Toronto

Michael Kovrig, one of the Canadians arbitrarily detained in China known as the Two Michaels, was living in Budapest, Hungary in the ’90s and he was the singer of Bankrupt. After his departure, we remained friends who met annually when Michael visited Budapest. He even joined the band on stage to sing an old favorite in April 2017, the last time we met.

He’s been incarcerated for over 950 days now, and we wrote this song to raise awareness of his situation. We believe that the more people stand up for him, the bigger the pressure will be on politicians to get him out. Eventually, it all adds up. We can make a difference.
On the request of Michael’s family, we’ll donate all profits from the song to Hostage International.

Pre-save link for Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer: https://push.fm/ps/hxubjlje