Today has been a whirlwind of excitement, all centered around the release of one music video... the first of a new breed to carry my name on them. A video 9 months in the making, Fivefold's "Broken" has jumped to the forefront of my Top 5 list and now easily sits as the best video I have ever released. If you have watched the clip above, maybe you want to take a few seconds and hear about how it was made?
Fivefold is a 5-piece band of tough as nails dudes, who overcame several tragic losses this past year to remain a cohesive unit, hardened from their experiences and stronger than ever before. Earlier this year we had already been in talks about making a music video for their song "Broken," an up and coming track that was to be released on their new full length EP, when the band was faced with the sudden loss of their guitarist, Jesse Berlin.
Having been through a similar tragedy myself with Nothing Still, I know what it is like to be faced with the unexpected decision to carry on in the memory of your lost brother or to end up calling it a day. Fivefold made the courageous choice to continue on, creating lasting memorials for Jesse in their songs, album artwork, instruments and even merchandise.
In May, after the release of their EP, the band contacted me once more to reignite talks about their possible music video. I couldn't have been happier, since I knew the potential of the song and the exact vision that I had wanted to accomplish since first hearing it 6 months earlier. I wanted to take the time to meet the band and get to know them individually, so in preparation for the shoot, we met several times in person and discussed the exact concept that we wanted to capture on camera.
Lead Guitarist, Matt Benne, was the one who proposed the dark mystery of a girl driving through the night, with something unknown in her trunk. Being a HUGE David Lynch fan, I saw an homage to "Lost Highway" brewing in my mind and expanded on the concept, creating a full on story for what was in the trunk and what caused the girl to put it there.
We set ourselves up with a goal of shooting by mid June, but after calling upon my good friend, Kyle Krupinski to handle the cinematography, we were faced with a limited availability that saw us filming in just TWO WEEKS time or being forced to push back until late July. The road would be tough, but we all accepted the challenge and went to work on putting together a large production in no time.
I have to say here, that Fivefold was BY FAR the hardest working band that I have ever worked with. They took to the streets and made the phone calls needed to lock down all the locations that I envisioned for the video. In my position, it is hard bouncing from project to project making all the necessary arrangements for video shoots, that why I try to put the ball in the artist's court as much as possible. Because while THEY are only focused on THEIR video, I on the other hand am focused on MULTIPLE videos all at once.
But needless to say, Fivefold made the damn thing happen like no body else. We needed an actress to play the part of the mysterious girl, and after I had gone through all of my contacts looking for someone with experience, the band suggested a friend of theirs that might fit the bill. While I had been looking for a "Girl Next Door" who could transform herself into a Lisbeth Salander-type hard ass, the band presented me with the exact opposite. They introduced me to the wonderful Lexxi Atkinson, who had the perfect hard edge look that I was going for and with the help of our master makeup/har artist, Sarah Carroll, we were able to reverse her appearance and give her the naive, sweet look of an innocent young woman. To play the douchebag boyfriend, I turned to my favourite stand-in and fellow filmmaker, Casey Hartig! Casey has found his way into several of my project... He sits at the bar in Tear Out The Heart's "Come At Me, Bro," He is a factory worker in "The Stakes" and now he would be playing an abusive piece of shit, who finds himself face down in the dirt at the end of the video.
Thanks brother.
For locations, the band found us a beautiful house to film in, lent to us by the wonderful and amazing Louise Story, who not only opened her home to us but made us mountains of delicious food during the shoot. I cannot thank Louise enough for the incredibe amount of hospitality that she showed us that day, and I don't think we could have made such an amazing video without her. They also found us a plot of land about 30 miles West of St. Louis where we were able to film the final scene in the video. While the land was privately owned, it wasn't exactly uninhabited and during the late night shoot we found ourselves just yards away from an old stone house in the middle of a field, extremely reminiscent of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." At one point, as Kyle and myself were eyeing down our next shot, the band decided to investigate a strange, dilapidated barn just to the side of our location. Drummer, Derrick Huskey and Bassist, Ryan Pauk, armed themselves with some... shall we say, heavy machinery and went soldiering into the empty barn looking for trouble. It was at that moment that Kyle and I both knew, that if we were to be attacked by leatherface at any moment, at least the band would have our backs.
The shoot ran a looong 14 hours, over the course of a hot June Sunday, but at 2 a.m. the following morning in the middle of an empty field, I called cut for the final time and thus wrapped production on the "Fivefold" music video.
God I can keep going, but I'm sure I lost some of you by now,
Enjoy the video and KEEP WATCHING!
-P
Patrick
