New Music Video: Catbite - Die in Denver
Philly ska band turns into ice arena spectacle
If you want to skip my write-up, you can watch the video here!
Whenever I’m approached for a music video, the first thing I try to think of is what resources I have at my disposal that we can work with for a concept. Well actually when it’s a band like Catbite, the first thing I say is “Yes,” then I start with a concept. Tim sent me over some songs and we pitched ideas back and forth for a while. One thing we knew was that we wanted to somehow incorporate my work place (a mid-sized hockey arena) into it, simply because we could.
When Tim excitedly called me up one day with the finalized idea, I was on board right away. As soon as he used Scooby-Doo as a reference, I knew where we were going with this. As was the case with my last collaboration with Catbite, we knew this would be a big production. I’d probably say my two collabs with Catbite are my two biggest productions from a crew standpoint, considering all the people involved. On this one we had a drone operator, makeup, ice crew, lights, and production assistant. Since this was taking place at my place of work, I sourced almost the entire crew from people who work hockey games for us. Usually I skew towards more intimate productions, but Catbite is a band that likes to put on a show, and I like a good challenge!
The concept for this video is Catbite is rehearsing for their production of “Catbite: On Ice,” when the lights go out and they find out they’re being stalked by a killer. We bit off a lot with this one, and to be honest probably should have split it into 2 nights of shooting. We weren’t able to start in the building until 10:00 PM on a weekday, and wrapped around 4:30 AM. I had to be back into work at this exact same building for 9:00 AM (Okay it was probably more like 9:30 that day.)
With so many moving parts, people waiting around, and tasks needing to be done, I tried to be as efficient with our time as possible. While someone was getting make-up on, I would be getting shots of others. We would simultaneously get primary camera shots and drone shots to cut down on the number of takes. The ice crew had to hang around until we were done with the blood on the ice in order to get it cleaned up. But everyone was patient and executed their job perfectly!
Having such a tight window to work with did limit us though. We weren’t able to get as many live band shots as I wanted. Each murder was gonna be in the style of a different movie (Scream, Paranormal Activity, Scooby-Doo, Halloween, and Psycho.) I’m never timid to trim stuff out of a video because I know those are always ideas I can put in the bank for later. As important as it is to execute a good video, it’s important to be mindful of the people helping execute it and making sure we’re all having a good time. One of the biggest responsibilities of a director is to curate the environment on set that is conducive to a creative and fun environment. If we stop having fun, how are we supposed to convey that on camera?
As I’m sure you’ll be able to see in the video, we accomplished just that! It was super helpful that I’m incredibly familiar with this building. I know how all the lights work and look, I know how many different locations inside we have to work with, I know the fastest way from point A to point B, so once we were rolling, there was no stopping until the tired hit us at 4:30 AM.
Some fun facts about this video I couldn’t organically work into a write-up:
We had to drop the dummy from the ceiling three different times, and it was one of the last things we filmed. Each take took a long time because we had to keep running it all the way up to the catwalk.
We had also discussed using the performing arts theater that my job owns, but decided to go with the arena since we could be on ice.
Originally the vibe we were aiming for was inspired by the “The Nightman Cometh” episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but switched that to ice and introduced a killer."
We wanted to set up a sequel for another video on their next album with the ending of this one.
Can’t forget to mention that this song is from the EP "Doom Garden" (which is amazing from what I’ve heard so far), out 5/9/24 on Bad Time Records. Pre-order vinyl and merch now at badtimerecords.com or catbite.net!
Impressed