So, LAST WEEK I talked about my favorite memories from my the making of the MUSIC VIDEO FOR LET’S GO OUT TONIGHT. This week I’m going go over some fun memories from the making of the music video for Lookin’ at Luckey; which, for those who haven’t seen in it, here it is motherfuckers (but first, a quick, funny story. So, apparently I use the words “fuck” and “fucking” a lot in texts. For the first few months when I get a new phone, it constantly tries to auto-correct it to “duck” and “ducking” and I have to constantly change it back. After a while, it learns and stops. But, what I didn’t know is that now my phone tries to auto-correct “duck” into, yep, you guessed it “fuck.” Which normally is not an issue, but I was sending out a music business related email yesterday and was actually trying to use the word “duck” and almost pressed send before re-reading one last time. Luckily, I did not tell someone that I could “fuck in a little early before the show if you’re still around.”):
This video was also made by my very talented, and quite handsome, friend, Kevin Pietila. And, just like the Let’s Go Out Tonight video, he wrote, directed and edited this. He also did most, if not all, the camera work on this as someone had to back out last second. This was definitely a smaller video in terms of scope and crew versus the LGOT shoot. It still featured my wonderful and talented fake band, which in this video is just my buddy, Jon Fickes, on the guitar, and Kevin’s wife, Sara, who is a very talented songwriter, singer and piano player herself, on the piano. They, along with the addition of David Solomon on drums, were also the fake band in the Let’s Go Out Tonight music video. Oddly, no bass player in either video. Did eventually get to play an actual show with Jon and David once in Lebanon, OR. Good times…
A little bit of backstory. Kevin’s wife, Sara, and my wife, Brianne, initially became friends, first online and then in real life. I think I met Kevin only once when I decided I wanted to work with him. He’s just that charming. That, and he showed us a short film he had made, which was amazing. I knew we had to work together. I also knew I wanted someone with a strong creative vision. That was important since I have Asperger’s (essentially high-functioning autism, for those who don’t know), and one of the ways that affects me is that I have a very difficult time visualizing things that don’t exist. My brain works very literally at times. It’s why I struggle with fantasy or sci-fi movies, apart from Star Wars for some reason, but that’s pretty much the only one. I can’t do superhero movies, I struggle with period pieces, and shit like Lord of the Rings, forget about it. Because of this, I needed someone to create the concepts and write the stories for the videos. I gave Kevin a copy of the record and asked him to pick which song or songs he would like to do. He had complete creative control, within reason/budget. He immediately came back with the Let’s Go Out Tonight zombie story. I loved it. I was so excited and ready to go, but there was one problem: it was December. Can’t really do outdoor, overnight shoots when it’s 35 degrees and pissing rain all night (ahh, those Pacific Northwest winters. They’ll suck your soul away…).
We decided to do a second video and put the Let’s Go Out Tonight video on hold until summer rolled around. I asked Kevin what other song he would be interested in. He said Lookin’ at Luckey sort of reminded him of a relationship he once had. Perfect! We spent a few nights drinking and talking more in depth about the real-life relationships that went into that song. If you’re curious, it’s essentially two very real relationships cherry-picked to make one great song, if I may say so myself (and I may, as this is my fucking blog). He added in some of his own experiences and voila. A video was born. Now, for the memories, in no particular order. I could put them in some sort of order but that would imply that I plan these out and think about them and do actual editing on them. Nope, just a fucking random list.
(Editor’s note: we’ll see how this list goes as I’m really pissed right now. I just found out someone hit my car while it was parked in my apartment’s parking lot. The right front bumper was popped out a little and there’s fucking red paint that was scraped on. I’m also pissed since I have no idea when it happened as I so rarely leave the house these days. So, someone hit it hard enough to pop the bumper out of place, which luckily I was able to pop back into place, and leave paint behind. Fuck. Oh, and Portland, OR is charging me for an Arts Tax even though I moved away last year. I don’t mind supporting the arts but I don’t even fucking live there anymore. One last parting “fuck you” from my least favorite city in America. Well, fuck you too, Portland. Fuck you too…)
The drinking fake wine but smoking real cigarettes on the roof scene - One thing they rarely tell you about making any type of art is how long it can take. Making an album, a TV show, a painting, whatever, it always takes longer than you think. So, to combat this for a scene involving drinking we poured out the wine in the bottle and refilled with water. But, we should have rinsed out the bottle a few times before refilling with good ol’ H2O. What we were left with was a bottle of wine flavored water, which is not the tastiest concoction. But, it was funny as Sonora (the female lead), out of habit, would take pulls of between takes. It’s just what you do when you have a bottle of wine in your hand. Plus, it’s what you do when you are a little lightheaded from chain smoking American Spirits like it’s fucking 1963 again. I’m sure they make prop cigarettes but those in the video are most certainly not. When I stood up to go back inside, I thought I might fall off the roof. Luckily (pun intended?), neither of us fell off the roof, which would have put a big damper on the shoot.
The pretending to be asleep scene - This is where my true acting skills really shined. I can, and I don’t want to brag too much, pretend to be asleep fairly convincingly. I’m not going to say I’m the Leonardo DiCaprio of slumberland, but it’s probably the best acting I’ve done in any video to date. OK, maybe I was actually pretty good at being a zombie in the Let’s Go Out Tonight video. But, I still think I’m a better pretend sleeper. Probably because for a few takes I actually did start to nod off. When you’re laying in a comfortable Air BnB bed and your direction from the man behind the camera is just to lie still and don’t move, it’s hard not to. Maybe I’m just method, I don’t know. Oscars, here I come.
The fake performance scenes - OK, so this might be my favorite memory from the Luckey shoot. We did some really fun stuff and I credit Kevin for making these shoots so enjoyable. He really knew how to take care of his cast and crew. So, let me set the scene. We started this night doing the mingling intro scene and then the me singing to the frozen Luckey scene (up next). There was a couple other things to shoot (and I think I forgot to bring something so I had to run home quick) which backed up the shoot a bit, which always run a bit behind anyways. So, it was already around 11pm when we started the band performance shots. The Air BnB had a noise cutoff around then so we had to be super quiet. Usually for performance shots, you crank up the music so you can actually play/sing and it looks real. But, being too late for that, we had to keep volume super low. Here we are, almost no sound to play to and we had to (very quietly) rock the fuck out in the kitchen of this Air BnB. Not exactly the most Rock ‘n’ Roll thing but it looks great in the video. Jon and Sara both actually learned the chords/parts for the song so they could play it accurately. They’re such pros. But, my favorite part of this whole thing was how into the performance Sara got. She had already worked a full day teaching voice/piano before coming so she was already and understandably a little tired when she got there. By 11pm, she was teetering on the verge of exhaustion. But, she gave great performances take after take and was rocking out so hard she started to hurt her fingers because she kept trying to actually get sound out of the unplugged keyboard. But, as soon as Kevin once again said “action,” she was right back into it without missing a beat. Lots of hard work goes into these things and I’m grateful to people like Sara and Nate and everyone who sacrificed and pulled double duty to make these videos happen.
The me singing to frozen “Luckey” scene - This was just fun to be a part of. Performing is my favorite part of music, even if it is fake and just for a music video. But, watching Sonora sit perfectly still for take after take was mesmerizing. I can’t say enough how wonderful a job she did in this video and this scene is the epitome of that. Being there, it almost looked like we faked it somehow. She was so good in the video she actually made me look good too. Not an easy task.
The dancing around and singing in the town square scene - The scene where Jon, Sonora and I danced and sang in the little town square thing was shot at Portland’s Pioneer Square. Which, for those who don’t live in Portland, is a touristy spot during the day, but is just a hangout for the homeless at night. Yes, the scene looks great and it was fun to sing and dance around, but it was what happened right before that I remember vividly. Obviously surprised to see a group of young, good-looking people being filmed, everyone wanted to stop over to see what we were doing. After telling them it was for a music video, one lady decided she needed to tell us, and then sing it to prove her point, how many times Bill Withers says “I know” in the third verse “Ain’t No Sunshine.” “26 times,” she said. And then we got the full-throated rendition while she counted on her fingers. I’ll be damned, she was right and wasn’t too bad at carrying a tune.
The car scenes - That Thunderbird, which is owned and was graciously made available for the music video by Kevin’s dad, is, by far, the nicest car I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting in and pretending to drive. It’s even the exact color I would choose if I won the lottery and someone sold me a massive 3D printer that can print Thunderbirds and somehow manufacture their combustion engines and exhaust systems and recreate era-specific details with precision. Besides that, it was fun to see how scenes like this come together. Having not done any real acting in my life (and based on the videos, you can probably see why), I was unaware of the magic of Hollywood in regards to driving scenes. So, this was my lesson. Nate, who was helping us out with a little bit of everything on the shoot, got behind and starting gently rocking the car up and down. My wife, Brianne and Kevin’s wife, Sara, were on the lights. They stood on boxes and held them up as high as they could and, upon Kevin’s instruction, would swoop them around to simulate going past street lights. All while I alternated between pretending to sing and pretending to look forlorn, which is essentially just my standard Bruce-Springsteen-from-the-Darkness-on-the-Edge-of-Town-album-cover look. Sitting in a beautiful car (that wasn’t mine) with a beautiful girl (who was only pretending to be with me) with a beautiful song playing in the background (hey! I actually get this one!), what more could a guy ask for…
The empty wine bottle - Again, here is the photo of my mementos from the music videos. The Thriller jacket and the fake gun were from the Let’s Go Out Tonight video. The wine bottle is from this shoot for Lookin’ at Luckey. When doing the pre-shoot shopping at Target, I was just grabbing things that I thought would look good on camera. The bottle had a pretty shape and a nice label so I grabbed it. The rose inside was fine, nothing special, but I mainly just wanted it for the look. It’s featured in a intro/outro scene. But, apparently I’m a lot smarter in my subconscious mind than in real life. I missed a detail that really would’ve sold it. Sonora picked up on it during the shoot. The name on the bottle: Sofia. Damn! Totally missed an opportunity to look smart, which doesn’t come around very often for me. People thought I was thinking these things out for a minute until I was like “wait, what?” Moment over. Back to being a dumb musician…
So, those are my favorite memories from the Lookin’ at Luckey music video shoot. If you have any questions about this or anything related to the video, feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, tune in next week to get my thoughts on the Friday Night is for the Drinkers video.
Look how fucking cool I look… Just kidding, the car is way cooler.