[Friday] Behind the Scenes: Motionless in White, "Reincarnate"

In early 2013, I was approached by one of my clients, Fearless Records, to shoot promotional photos for their band Motionless in White.  Lead singer Chris Motionless was a huge fan of my work and this was an opportunity to finally work on something together.  Chris and the band absolutely loved their images, citing them as some of the best the band had ever taken.

Fast forward a year.  MIW was getting ready to release their new album Reincarnate and wanted to bring me on to handle the cover and interior photos.  Chris had been dying to shoot something inside the famous Valentino Suite at the Alexandria Hotel.  The story, as it goes, was that in the hotel's heyday, Valentino lived in the suite during his prime Hollywood years.

The hotel has long since fallen into disrepair and now houses low-income residents, but the owners have always kept the Valentino Suite as is, renting it out over the years to various productions.  After a lengthy inquiry, producer Mary Taylor was able to secure us the room for a quick shoot on one rather warm summer afternoon.

The room itself hasn't been treated kindly in the ensuing years.  To be frank, it's pretty gross.  There's a LOT of photoshop in the above image to make it appear cleaner.  The couch was falling apart, and our lovely model Harper Leigh hilariously fell through the cushions more than once.

Added to the fun was a beautiful hairless kitten that Chris had arranged to appear in the photo with Harper.  Only the kitten wasn't having it.  She didn't want to play nice at all, preferring to curl up into a tight little ball and sleep.  Imagine a room of adults all cooing and baby talking a kitten, bribing her with treats to try and get her to play with Harper.

In the end, the cat refused to properly pose with Harper.  I was able to get a handful of shots of the cat alone and had to photoshop her into the cover.

Several months later, I got a call from the label--they wanted to hire me and my production company, Underhaus Productions, to come shoot the music video for the title track.  We would be returning to the Valentino Suite once again to, in part, recreate the cover in video form.  But first there was a small hiccup.  Several weeks into pre-production on the video, I got the call.  

I was being fired off the project.

Wait, what?

Life in Hollywood is all about the politics.  And in this case, the label had access to one of the directors of the Jason Statham films Crank and Crank 2 and wanted him to handle the directing chores for the music video.

I wasn't thrilled with the news, but that's part of the job and I would just have to refocus my work elsewhere.

Only a week later and I got yet another call.  Would I come direct the music video after all?

They already had another production company in place, that wasn't changing, but Chris and the director had had a falling out.  Something about their vision for the video not aligning properly.  So he was out and I was back in, working under a completely different production company.

But Hollywood is a small place, and as the fates would have it, the producer on this video was an old acquaintance of mine, Roger Mayer.  Roger and I had talked in the past about working together and now here was the opportunity!

I was bummed that Underhaus and Mary were no longer going to be involved, but working alongside Roger was a happy second choice.

The video was shot over two days.   On day one, we set up shop in the Alexandria Hotel again, spending the morning recreating the cover with Harper and a new cat this time.    After lunch, we headed down to the ballroom to shoot the band's performance scene.

MIW had fired their old drummer the year previous and hadn't announced a replacement.  For the video, they brought in their tour drummer with the note that we not light him or show much of him in the video itself.

Taking that cue, my cinematographer Ernesto Lomeli and I designed a lighting style that created these noir-esque silhouettes of the band during their performance by back and side-lighting everyone instead of lighting them from the front.  Like any artist, I usually hate anything I've done moments after doing it, but I gotta say, I'm still pretty happy with how the lighting for this scene turned out.

I remember, standing in the middle of the giant ballroom, the track blasting at ear-shattering levels and thinking to myself "you always wanted to direct a Marilyn Manson video, well this is pretty damn close!"  It was a very happy moment.

The next day, we headed off to a ranch where we would be filming the graveyard scenes.

While I was at home sleeping during the day in preparation for an overnight shooting schedule, producer Veronica Radaelli and production designer Bobby Marinelli spent the afternoon digging a 5 foot deep grave for us to use on the shoot.  

The concept behind the "story" portion of the video involved a very 1950s black and white horror style, with Harper playing the evil witch to the band's grave digger selves.  I've always wanted to shoot some high key black and white imagery and this was the perfect opportunity to give it a shot.

In the opening of the video, you see the band driving an old sedan down a mountain road to the gravesite where Harper awaits them.  I gotta tell you, that road was very, very narrow and absolutely terrifying to drive up and down.  I was very happy to get those shots as quick as possible and get back down to the bottom of the mountain!

Once we wrapped that very chilly night shoot, I took the footage into the edit bay and spent the next 4 weeks banging it into shape, adding a few minor FX and creating some old school title cards for the opening.

Working on "Reincarnate", from its cover shoot all the way through the release of the video was an incredible experience.  As of this writing, the video has amassed over 3.5 MILLION views on YouTube alone, easily making it one of the biggest projects I've ever had the pleasure of being involved in.

The "Reincarnate" Music Video:

https://vimeo.com/112422349

Behind the Scenes on the set of "Reincarnate:

https://vimeo.com/112422348