[Friday] Behind the Scenes: Combichrist, "Throat Full of Glass" Music Video

"We want naked girls and we wanna shoot each other in the end."

It's the summer of 2010 and I'm sitting in the dark of El Compadre on Sunset Blvd. with Combichrist's frontman, Andy LePlegua and the band's manager, Jason Fiber discussing details for their upcoming music video for "Throat Full of Glass".

Or really, i should say, that was pretty much the ONLY detail they insisted on.  The rest, I was told, would be up to me to figure out.  So I went and wrote a little exploitation movie-inspired piece about murder, betrayal and a crazy gunfight in a motel room.

The story had gangster, strippers and a mysterious briefcase as an homage to my favorite film directer, Quentin Tarantino.  There would be plenty of nudity and, as requested, the band would shoot each other to death in the end.

This video marked the first time I brought producer Mary Taylor onto a project and she did a great job making our meager budget go a long way.  She also shot most of the BTS images in the below link.  We were able to rent out a warehouse at a location known as The Escarpment, which would go on to serve as a shooting location for several video and photo projects after.

We ended up casting model Jesse Pagz to play our stripper and she gave a very captivating performance.  I would find out later that Jesse had no idea how to pole dance and spent a full two weeks prior to production learning as much as she could.  Now that's some dedication!

We shot the video over two days and pulled off a few special FX and visual FX which I had never incorporated into my video work before.  Production Designer Geoff Flint and his art team built a faux motel room inside the gigantic warehouse where we would shoot the climatic gun battle.

The gunfight was insane to shoot.  For safety purposes, the guns didn't actually fire; we added all that in as VFX.  In order to make it hyperreal, Geoff and his team stood just off camera, feeding dust and feathers into an industrial fan to simulate the gun smoke and shots hitting the band.  

It was an absolute blast to shoot, until we realized just how messy it all was.  Because the motel room had no actual ceiling, the feathers and dust spread across the entire warehouse, taking 4 of us two full days to sweep and clean.  Definitely not one of our better moments.

During the shooting of the video, the band informed me that Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland would be paying a visit to set and asked if we could incorporate him somehow into the video.  After some thought through the day, I figured out how we could work him in.  Check out the video below and watch through until the end to check out Wes' cameo.

The release of the video met with instant controversy.  While the video had its many fans, there was a strong group of people protesting the video's "misogynistic" themes and seemingly missing the point of the video's exploitation homage.  I believe a video made in response was made as well, though I don't have a link handy.

I'll let you decide.

View the video:

https://vimeo.com/19005631

View the "Stripper Only" cut of the video:

https://vimeo.com/20666212