All by himself, plus a few thousand viewers

When Richard Dunn was stuck at the McCarran International Airport overnight, it didn’t occur to him to just read a book, take a nap or watch a movie on his laptop.

What did occur to him was to spend all night making a video of himself lip-syncing to Celine Dion’s version of the Eric Carmen classic “All By Myself” in his very own music video.

Dunn, who grew up in Moncton, works as a lighting designer for corporate entertainment. He now lives in Canton, Georgia.

The video, while inspired by a lonely airport, has received more than 4,000 plays on Vimeo - and counting -  and has been shared in over 49 countries.

Dunn was offered vouchers to be bumped off two consecutive Delta Air Lines flights leaving him the entire night free until the next available flight at 6 a.m.

“I thought, well I don’t have enough time to go to a hotel so what do I do? I’ve got my phone and an empty movie set, lets see what trouble I can get into.”

So he accepted the money and started brainstorming.

First he started looking up songs about travel, but wasn’t feeling inspired.

Then he Googled songs about being alone.

“And then our dear Canadian sister started streaming in my headphones, “All By Myself” and I thought ‘that’s it, that’s pure movie gold.’”

Dunn killed time while the airport cleared out until 2 a.m. and then set to work.

He said Celine Dion is his guilty pleasure —it didn’t take long for him to have the words down.

He asked an airport mechanic for tape which he used to secure his iPhone to a ruler. He’d sandwich the pole between luggage bags to secure it as a sort of tripod.

“I’m just peeing myself laughing listening to this stuff thinking ‘you’re just tired its not that funny,’” he said.

Richard Dunn
The big crescendo scene in the video was shot from a piece of luggage set on the escalator. (Richard Dunn)

For his big finale, Dunn strapped the camera to a bag and set it on an escalator so the camera zooms out on him as he crescendos.

He said he had to do the take and then sprint to the top of the escalator to catch his bag before it was pinned in the escalator.

In the video Dunn appears outside a women’s washroom singing on the floor and on a ticket counter holding an announcement slip.

He said the cleaning crews were surprisingly undeterred by his video.

“I can only imagine what they see in the LAS airport overnight.”

Watch the video thru this link:

http://vimeo.com/97634383

Richard Dunn