On Friday 2 May, 2014 I was feeling quite sad about something and remembered what my friend Chris Wilton-Jones always encourages “if you feel low go do something for someone else”.  I had just seen come up on Facebook a short clip of Pharrell Williams being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey about his song ‘Happy’ being used by cities all over the world to record their own version of people clapping, dancing and being happy.  How inspirational it was for thousands of people!  Checking online, I saw that no city had recorded their own version, using the yellow opening sequence  (Taranaki and Dunedin had versions),  and thought ‘we could do this for Tauranga, it’s a happy place!’

I posted onto Facebook before heading off to go play at the Pizza Library and within half an hour had a weekend plan mapped out of locations and times around Tauranga for people to come to and be part of our own video.

It went a little crazy with so many people keen to be part and local newspapers wanting to find out about it. We filmed in Greerton, Bethlehem, Mount, Papamoa, Otumoetai, downtown Tauranga,  Yatton Park, Memorial Park and Mitchell Park.  We covered the Hercules Morse statue, Creative Tauranga, the Elms, Tauranga Art Gallery, Bayfair, four painted pianos (had to put them in of course!) ,  Pilot Bay (trying to catch a shot of the port in the background), Mount Mainstreet, Greerton Mainstreet, Downtown Tauranga. Bethlehem Town Centre.  We needed to ask permission for the private places – the Elms and Bayfair, plus the police had to be authorised before being able to appear.  Anyone under 14 had to have parental approval.  There is a pregnant lady, a woman who is on 3x per week dialysis treatment and needs a kidney transplant, a boy with downs syndrome, people from Chile, Germany, and Korea.  Filming happened mostly on the Saturday and Sunday, with some more on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  Editing happened Thursday and Friday and the clip went live on Youtube at 12.30pm on Saturday 10th May. It was filmed on a Samsung Galaxy III mobile phone (it has a cracked screen), with downloaded free video editing software off the net (Videopad).