[Friday] Behind the Scenes: Awaken the Empire, "Rise+Fall/Cross My Heart"

I first met Damien Lawson, front man for alt-rock band Awaken the Empire, back in 2011 when he approached me to direct a no-budget music video for The Awakening, the title track off the band's inaugural EP.

A year later, in January 2012, Damien had some label backing and budget to do two more videos off their forthcoming first album.  Starting with the band's "Insomniacs" concept they had created for their fans, I built a storyline based around the "Insomniacs" as war-torn rebels in a dystopian near-future.  

We had 2 days to shoot both videos.  Rise+Fall was to be a performance-only video, while Cross My Heart would be performance and story.  In order to maximize our time and budget, we decided to shoot both performances on the first day and the story scenes the following day.

For Rise+Fall I wanted to go with a war theme that I had bouncing in my head for a few years.  With the help of production designer Geoff Flint, we built a war-ravaged hilltop for the band to perform on.

But first we had to knock out some quick performance shots for the Cross My Heart video.  

Except there was one snag:

Damien was missing.

While the rest of the band had arrived for the day, Damien was nowhere to be found.  After further inquiry, we learned that he was at home deathly ill from a stomach virus.  

Shit.

We spent the first 4 hours shooting everything we could of just the band until Damien was able to finally drag himself to set.  Looking like death warmed over, Damien sucked it up and got in front of the camera to give it his all.  In between takes, he would collapse and nearly pass out but on camera...wow.  He really pulled out all the stops and gave us an incredible performance.  

But I'm nothing, if not a little bit sadistic.

Once we locked in the performances for Cross My Heart it was time to do the Rise+Fall video.  Once again Damien had to muster all his strength to deliver a high-energy performance, but this time we were blowing leaves and dirt and smoke directly into his face for another 3 straight hours.  I felt bad for the guy, but loved the pure chaos of the scene.

Fourteen hours later, I finally called wrap and let Damien go home to collapse. 

Day Two was all story.  To aid in that, I brought in a few friends to play the characters including Gretchen Lanham, Mika Jones and actor Derek Mears, who starred in the 2009 Friday the 13th remake.  Mika also brought her then real-life boyfriend to play her lover in the video.

We shot some beautiful stuff, but the day was not without its problems:  Derek accidentally put his foot through the house's antique front door during a stunt gone wrong (oops), Mika and her boyfriend were fighting (awkward) and Gretchen had last minute doubts about the "sex" scene I wanted to film (I eventually got my way).  And yet, in the end, this ended up being one of my absolute favorite videos.

Rise+Fall was released shortly after, and rose to #2 on MTV.com's charts.  We were all super excited and couldn't wait to deliver the bigger companion vid that was Cross My Heart.

Only life got in the way.

In the months following the shoot, the band switched record labels.  The bass player left the band.  The new label shelved the band's album and video while they continued to develop, forcing the band to abandon the video and assume--for a brief time--a new moniker, Delta Wave.  

Months turned into years and it seemed like this video I loved so much was never going to actually come out.

Finally, in early 2015, Delta Wave become Awaken the Empire once more, label issues were worked out and the Cross My Heart video was finally released alongside the band's debut album Aurora.

RISE+FALL Musc Video:

https://vimeo.com/50021733

CROSS MY HEART Music Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcm_SvxTs8g