For this Vinyl Video installment, we’re behind the camera for Bellflur’s “Country” with the video’s director, Rich Bernett. —Ed.
“The music video for Bellflur’s song “Country” illustrates the last step of the creative process. A small group of writers finish an anthology of monologues for an unknown client. In a room where the author’s writing creates the environment around them, “The Editor” arrives to make his edits. As the room around him fills up with objects that appear in the anthology, one item in particular changes the severity of his edits for the worse.”
SOME FUN PRODUCTION STUFF:
6 reams of paper were used to create the “writing room,” They were all individually wrinkled and taped up by hand.
The crew arrived at the studio on the morning of day 2 of production to find all the walls of paper had become unstuck, and had curled off the walls like giant waves, all stuck together on the floor. It was a 3 hour fix.
The final scene of the video with Tom getting up in the empty room was shot AFTER all of the props were brought onto the set. The shot was accidentally skipped on the first day of filming, so we had to clear the set, shoot the quick scene, then bring EVERYTHING back on.
Almost 7 gallons of black tempra paint was used. It was poured, thrown, and squirted out of a garden pump-spray canister.
All the props were donated, bought at thrift shops, or found on the side of the road. They just barely all fit into a rented moving van.
The end shots of Tom breaking the set were not planned. He had been covered in paint for 4 hours, and it seemed to be the right thing to do. We kept filming after the final shot, and wound up taping the scenes that make up the end of the video.
In order to not get electrocuted during taping, none of the TVs were ever plugged in. All the video playing on them was added in post production.
Pictured: Rich Bernett, Alisha Reay, and Jay Carroll on the set of the music video for Bellflur’s “Country.”
