Saturn return.

The idea for the video is based on my life experience. I was working as an attorney at a big factory law firm, and I started evaluating my life on both macro and micro levels. I was exploring a time in my life where I felt I was maybe not as honest with myself as I could be. This pervaded my sense of who I was, what I was doing, what I thought I wanted, etc. When I looked in the mirror, I I had to make some serious life changes. I left corporate America, and went to live in India, which is where I wrote the demo for our first album ‘Pleroma.’ 

Generally, truth has many lies because truth has many eyes. And when we lift the comfort of our traditional focus, perhaps we can find more universal concepts of truth. We find ourselves in a new cycle, questioning who we are, and why we are where we are. The lyrics reflect this space. In the quest of uncovering who we are, we can identify and examine some of the external forces that have shaped us. By questioning the external, we can then uncover the internal. It’s like riding the outer circles of a labyrinth mandala before entering the subtle internal spaces of our secret ourselves.

I really can’t remember. I know I was exposed to films since I was a child. My parents always watched movies with us, and they often liked to watch oldies. I used to go with Dad to pick out rental VHS movies for us to watch when that was a thing.

I’ve been on a Lars Von Trier obsession lately, along with Pier Paolo Pasolini. I also love David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and Oliver Stone. Favorites are tough for me – maybe ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ The writing – the acting – and the first greats were all in that movie. I also love ‘The Godfather’ because it reminds me of where I came from in terms of my Italian heritage and my ancestor’s emigration to America.

When I was a child, I would improvise with my friends and create worlds for us to explore with our imagination. Sometimes, I could direct this mini skits and put the shows on for our parents that evening. It was something we just did to pass the time. That was our version of playing.

The editing was extremely demanding. Dave and I edited the film ourselves, as we do with all of our other videos. Just when we thought we had it, we went back and tweaked it more. This video just wanted a lot of our energy during that editing process.  I wanted the action to dance with the music, and while I wanted the watcher to feel the sense of blandness and boredom, I didn’t want them to be so bored as to turn the video off. We also were challenging the concept of a traditional music video. We wanted a story instead of just a stylized performance.

Colorizing was a bit of a challenge as well. I wanted the video to feel bland or robotic in a sense, the way the character experienced her life. Getting the color of that blandness was tricky. Dave and I experimented with different colors until we decided on what is there.

The live shots in NYC with the crowd were difficult to manage. We had shot in a few different locations before we settled on the one in the video. I had to walk backwards while people were walking forwards, which presented its own issues.

Dave learned VFX on the fly. He spent days creating that nature wonderland takeover of NYC.

Generally, because our budget is nonexistent, that is always a challenge. But, we make it work. We only had a crew of three: Dave, me and our friend, Tas Limur, who helped us out with the shots. Also, because of budget limitations, we don’t have a makeup or costume crew or a location scout or a real budget for sets or locations, so we have to plan everything in advance with that in mind. We think to ourselves, what can we do within the confines of these limitations, and that’s how we move forward.

The reviews have been positive. The video was selected to be on MTV, so we were ecstatic about that! We’ve already won some film festival awards, and our fans love the video. We are proud of it. We also started working on the next one!

I think every filmmaker brings something original to her or his film because her or his filter is her or his own, and that affects every aspect of the film. Of course, there is a spectrum of how much experimentation one chooses to infuse in her or his project. I tend to like more experimentation, but this is only my personal choice. I like to push boundaries but I am still so new to filmmaking, and we are constrained by budget, so I have much more to explore.

I think film festivals provide a way for smaller, unknown works to be seen, which is awesome and necessary. I often seek film festival selections to watch.

We will continue to create our music videos from scratch, and I’d like to eventually create some short films. I have some anxiety about the dialog, but I know I just have to set aside some time to just experiment and do it!