The Devil's Chain Gang, the music video the keeps going

So about 2 years ago a friend asked me if I knew anyone who produced music videos. I had done a couple but nothing  really great, but I said I would talk to the band and see if it was something I could do.  So I went to see The Nickel Slots at a local club and they were great they had a very catchy americana sound, and as they played I looked around and almost everyone in the audience was singing along with the band's original songs. I thought I need to work with this band.  A few days later I met with Steve Amaral The lead guitarist and he gave me a CD to check out, It was great! It stayed in my car's CD player for several months.

Once the band decided on a video we got to work.  My first idea was big and epic and in the long run it probably would not have worked... We kept it simple. I was a little bummed that it wasn't a "big" production, but it turned out it was for the best.

Once we had an video idea where everyone was happy. I put together a small team of people  to pull off this shoot... My friend and co-director Sean Kime was in from day one, and then we brought in  Ryan Black as our director of photography and  steadicam operator, along with a few others to help with make up and lighting we were ready to shoot.

Our location was awesome, it was almost it's own character. We could not have built a set that good. The old hotel in Woodland Ca was a good find by the band. The only downside was we were shooting on the second story and had to run extension cords from the first floor to power our lights.

Sean and I tag teamed the video shoot where we leapfrogged from scene to scene so there was always someone working ahead.

I think so many things fell into place for the video. Good band, good song, good location, good concept and good crew.

When I got home after the shoot I was so tired, but as I started to load the footage to my computer I knew we had something great.  I got a second wind and stayed up until 2am throwing together a rough cut of the video, just to show the guys how their hard work paid off.  And between the rough cut and the final version there wasn't a huge difference.

Now I only thought the video would live on the band's website and I would submit to a couple film festivals. and then it would be done, and that was pretty much it. In 2013 the video played at the Sacramento Film and Music Festival, the video won 3 awards! Best Video Jury Choice, Best Video Audience Choice, and best Independent Video. The video also was accepted to The American Online Film Awards in New York City where it won best Music video from the US... Needles to say we are so proud of everyone's work.

Wait there's more, the band got a promoter for the video and it is now being see all over the world. It is being showed on Zuus, CMC in Australia,  and now it's on CMT.com and MTV.com

There is so much more I can write about this video.... I'll have to save it for another post.
I have to say that is pretty cool that so many people have seen and liked our video. Thank you to everyone who worked on the The Devil's Chain Gang  for putting your best foot forward.