So, about 3 years ago at this stage myself and my bandmates got together and put our thinking caps on, we wanted to do a music video, we didn't want to just do a performance piece. Performance pieces are good, effective and quick to produce, we had done a few previously. But, we wanted to think outside the box a bit and try and piece together a story we could follow throughout the video.
More Talky, Less Doo-y
We talked about the idea for a few weeks. Not constantly, but whenever we were together we would share more ideas and just have a laugh in general about the concept. At this time the story was that Dave, (The Lead Singer) would wake up at the crack of noon, something we thought was funny and he would make his way around to Ash's house, (The Guitarist) where we band practice.
While Dave is going on his journey he decides to go to the pub for something to drink and to buy a few cans first, and while there, he gets distracted and goes off doing whatever.
While the B-Plot sees the Three of us Ash, Danny (The drummer) and Myself (The Bass Player), waiting for him to arrive at the house. After some time we get worried about him and Ash goes out to find him, leaving myself and Danny in the room to play the song. But, as Ash leaves to go to Dave's, he just misses him, retracing his steps, he's always one step behind Dave until giving up and coming back to the house.
The concept was there and fairly simple, but it needed a bit of work, like how would we be able to show that we're looking for Dave without speaking so we decided to add in a bit of talking to start the video with us literally saying that and then we cut to Dave as the music starts.
We wanted as well for Dave to get hit by a car, making him get confused and wander off track as it made more sense than him just going off, of his own accord. This was actually fun to do. We shot him laying on the bonnet of the car and then the car reversed at the same time as he stands up from it and walks backwards. Not so easy to do when on the booze, haha, but we got it, after about 3 attempts. We kind of blocked the road too while doing it, but, we didn't get in trouble so that was good. As well as that we decided to ham it up a bit and make a big Dave Dummy out of clothes and newspaper, we loved the new member of the band and welcomed him gladly. Tossing it in the air gave us the desired effect of being so fake it was funny.
That's essentially the whole plot, Dave made it around to the house just as the song ends and shouts through the letterbox to sing the last lyric and was able to slam the letterbox in time with the final beat, which worked out really well.
We didn't shoot in sequence. We got the first shots of Dave last and the running to the letterbox first and all the indoor stuff during the evening and all the outdoor scenes in the morning/ mid-afternoon. We had spoken about it so much that we all knew exactly what we were doing and were able to work very fast, once we got started.
I did some of the camera work and my sister did the rest of it. With the final shot complete I got editing and had a rough cut for us to watch by the end of that night.
16 cans and 1 pint later
We had completed the video and released it, quickly it gained a lot of attention and received a lot of praise. It's sitting at around 3 thousand views at the moment, on our YouTube channel and from the release of it, we were offered a lot more gigs than we had previously gotten. Oh, and when I say 16 cans and 1 pint later, that was just Dave, they don't call him Dangerous Dave for nothing.
We have another one on the way, now that we can get working again. We also have a bunch of great concepts for others, on the horizon. This year we're going to get working on producing some really good videos to go along with our second album, which will be released soon.
The song is called I'm Addicted and is a satirical tale about one man's addictive tendencies, but he decides to poke fun at all the things in the world that everyone has an addiction to. Anyone ready to point a finger, this song is about pointing the finger right back at them. The genre of this song is Punk/ Ska and has a lot of energy, which is complemented well by the video. What are you addicted to?
(I'm Addicted - Dangerous Dave and The Side Effects)
Hope you liked my story, thanks for reading it and I hope you enjoy the song and video.