A Sunny Day in Glasgow

While we were on tour last Fall we stopped in New Orleans for a few days and the Court 13 guys shot a video for us!  Check it out:

Annie and Ryan wrote up stories about shooting this video.  It was a crazy and basically we are all freezing in every part of this video….

Annie:

Before most of us had ever met them, Bob (Director) and Josh (Producer) sent everyone an e-mail asking for our clothing and shoe sizes, which I suppose is pretty standard for any production. But they also asked us if we were comfortable with nudity and dancing. That’s when I knew we were in good hands. Good, strong, gentle hands. Beyond explaining the inspiration for the video, we didn’t learn much more until we arrived in New Orleans. The day before the shoot was beautiful and sunny and probably around 60 degrees, so when the lovely Miss Z Behl (Makeup/costume designer) presented Jen and I with our costumes - a dance leotard for me and a bra and bike shorts for her - we thought nothing of it. 24 hours later, otherwise known as the “first day of shooting,” the temperature had dropped into the low 40s and clouds were gathering on the horizon. Undaunted, Jen and I donned our collective pile of spandex and struck a pose. We would continue to hold these poses for the majority of eight hours while a team of dedicated artists painstakingly camouflaged us into different backgrounds.

Getting painted is kind of like what I imagine having a mudbath is like, except I was having a mudbath while staying completely still but also shivering uncontrollably. It was impossible to warm yourself because any kind of covering would just rub the wet paint off your skin, which the rain kept washing off anyway and had to be constantly attended to. Attempted meditations on warmth were unsuccessful (has anyone read the ‘The Giver?’ That shit doesn’t work in real life.) After a while I became grateful just to have a layer of paint on my skin, because it provided at least some barrier between myself and the cold. I believe this is what they call Stockholm syndrome.

We took a break and Z attempted to return life to my frozen limbs by aiming a high-powered hair dryer at various appendages. Most houses in New Orleans were built without insulation because it just didn’t seem worth it, so the only difference between being inside and being outside was that it wasn’t raining inside (mostly). Apparently it only gets cold here when you are shooting 2 days of outdoor footage for a music video that requires you to be next-to-naked, or actually naked, the entire time. We scuttled back to the site under an umbrella to protect my painted self (a hilarious 4-block walk), and I re-assumed the position for final detailing - this time armed with a bottle of hot whiskey-tea and people whose only job it was huddle around me, penguins-with-eggs like, and provide valuable body heat while not actually coming into contact with my blue-hued skin. I made an excellent dad humor joke about how I wasn’t painted blue at all, just cold. This is evidence that my brain was frozen as well.

Cold. Cold. So fucking cold. This video was all about being cold. Day One was literally just me standing in the same position all day, being so incredibly cold my body has erased all memory of it. I’m glad it did, otherwise I would probably never be in another music video. I actually thought I was going to die on several occasions, the most plausible of which was when someone started painted me with latex-based paint, to which I have a fatal allergy. Fortunately I could feel the welts start rising up in my skin and we washed it off and started over before epinephrine had to be administered.  My favorite part of Day One was when Jen and I got to go home and take hot, hour-long showers, which were actually not indulgent at all because it took that amount of time to wash off all our paint. We all prayed for sun the next day. No dice.

Day One took all day, but Day Two took all day and all night. It started off perfectly with a car accident, which Ben communicated to me by text message for some reason, instead of calling like a normal person. I of course freaked out and rushed to pick up the survivors (everyone) and buy coffee and beignets as salve for their wounds (hunger). Then, surprise surprise, it was time to get painted again. I must applaud Court 13 for their learning curve; they took the lessons learned from the previous day and applied them tenfold. Instead of being painted on a cold rainy porch, I was painted in a room filled with space heaters. I later absconded with the space heaters to build a sweat lodge (five chairs draped with blankets and three space heaters underneath). This became the most popular place to hang out between scenes, until we had to dismantle it to film Adam juggling fried chicken and people fencing with mops.

Filming at the abandoned housing projects filled with deadly mold was fun; I had my life coach JWill there, who had played in a many a freezing lacrosse game. He kept my blood pumping with a rigorous battery of jumping jacks, push-ups, and leg kicks. We also wasted a lot of gas by staying warm in running cars. At this point it was raining so hard we had to have paint touch-ups after every scene. It was at this point I finally realized how fuckin’ weird and awesome everyone looked.

By the time the sun went down Jen and I had been wearing nothing but painted underwear for the majority of two days and it was starting to get to us. The cloth, brittle with acrylic, was remarkably easy to tear, and Jen said she wanted nothing more than to rip it off herself and light it on fire. Since this fit in so well with the other night scenes we were shooting (dance party, pig wrestling, etc.) we decided to film it. And that, kids, is the reason you will probably never see this video on your beloved music television.

Showers for all! And then it was all beauty and light and warmth and love. Josh had green paint in his ear for like another week.

Ryan:

We began our first day with a simple test. Bob, Josh, Z and I got together and began painting my face, trying to match it to a colorful blue house in the by-water neighborhood of New Orleans. Painting hair was another story, as apparently certain types of paint turn hair into plastic, so we carefully did our research into what kinds of paint were safe for skin and which kinds were safe for hair. Pictures were taken for color tests and permission was secured to film at a few other locations. Josh and Bob were scouting locations, as Z and I shopped for clothes at the local good will and paint at the art supply store. As we ended the working day, we felt we had a good idea of all the the challenges that faced us, and were confident that even with all of our time and budget restraints, we had planned things well enough to go off without a hitch. We had even secured up and coming music video director Ray Tintori to provide craft services (i.e. make us lunch.). We felt well prepared (though in retrospect that seems a little insane, as we didn’t even have a contingency plan for rain, the most common of plan-foilers)

The next morning was a beautiful day by most standards, except for Jen who endured over five hours of standing in the her underwear outside a abandoned fire house. It seems that what is pleasant weather to those in jackets and pants is actually quite a different beast for those who are covered in paint. Nonetheless she persevered, going so far as to refuse all offers of warmth for fear that it would ruin her meticulous body paint. We finally convinced her to stand inside a local coffee shop for a few minutes, and I believe that shelter from exposure saved her life.

I missed what was happened with Annie at her blue house set, but I am informed it went down similarly in regards to her dedication. I think I was buying more paint. The next day was instantly hammered by rain. The area that we were to shoot in next was a development that had been in it’s final stages of complement when Katrina hit. It was decided the only way to stay warm in such a scenario would be with the warm embrace of our friend johnny walker, and of sound mind and judgement we made a detour. Unfortunately, an “green” business executive, late to his meeting on how to reduce carbon footprints for fun and profit, ran a red light on a major intersection and plowed right into our honda civic hybrid. Thanks the Ben’s excellent and attentive driving, only the wheel alignment and bumper of our vehicle were damaged. We called the cops and though we saw many making stops at a McDonald’s across the street, none came to our aid. We decided to split up with Ben, Josh and Adam going to the set, while I drove the damaged vehicle to a repair shop, in hopes of getting it roadworthy before our show the next day.

We met back up at the directors [Bob weiss] house and began a cornucopia of depraved actions intended to be filmed. Adam juggled chicken and ate some of it’s skin and in doing so took vegetarianism to the next level. Annie and Jen, without any formal survival training or architectural know-how, erected a serviceable heat tent in the foyer (which was crucial because it was so cold we felt insane). Josh managed to smoke, drink, and text without smudging any of his make-up and Adam stayed perfect still for what I think was literally over two hours. Things quickly escalated that evening as Josh and I primal screamed while standing through the sun-roof of a BMW in the middle of a rain storm, Adam wrestled a pig that was very cute yet also capable of biting extremely hard, I attempted to rip my shorts over my head, The girls began demanding that we burn our paint soaked clothing, and finally we were given fireworks in a state of extreme drunken nakedness and told to run.