Here’s the first music video we made for Gas Mask. I produced by myself here in Vancouver and hired a local team to help execute the vision. The idea was to take inspiration from the film Save The Last Dance. A character dealing with mad pressure from outside sources who finds the courage to face her fears. In our case it was an overly controlling mother who wanted to dictate and micro manage her life.
This was a challenging video to make for several reasons. We had a couple underwater scenes which I had never worked with going into this video. I scoured Air BNB and different rental sites to try and find someone who would rent us their pool for the day. It took a lot of emails but finally found a nice homeowner who allowed us full access. We also had to black out the pool in order for the lighting to work. That took buying 100’s of feet of garbage bags and a scuba dive team to assemble. It was also freezing cold when we filmed this so being underwater was a challenge for both myself, and the lead actress Maude
Next, dancing was the central theme of this video so we knew our lead actress had to be special! I found Maude through a connection in the squash community, she’s a friend of mine’s cousin and just so happens to be a great actress and dancer. She had to choreograph the piece and teach it to the other background dancers who I found through a talent website in Vancouver.
It was a multi-location shoot with only 2 days to film as we were on a budget of around $10 000. In the film world, a lot of crew are used to working on projects for large companies like Hallmark. On those shoots they get no creative input, it’s really just a job. For artistic music videos where they get to toss ideas around and flex their creative muscles, they will often work for less than their full rate which is what makes filming videos like this possible. If hypothetically this were a “hallmark short film” my guess is it would be $100k+.
You must be wondering why this never came out? Around this time is when we signed with Atlantic Records, a major label. When we were discussing the RA brand as a whole, it was mutually decided that animation was a much more unique angle in the music world as 99% of artists are very forward facing, making live action videos. For that reason, we decided to commit to being animated and this video fell by the wayside. It totally sucks for everyone who contributed to this project because it takes a ton of time, money, effort, and creative vision by all involved, myself included. I’m glad our die-hard fans in the fan club now get the opportunity to enjoy this video as much as I do.
Ok ok ok ok, another thing I’ll let you in on. We often get asked why the lyric in the bridge in Gas Mask is different on the vinyl than on Spotify. To be honest with you, it was a mistake! The initial lyric of the song was “hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life’s a broken winged bird, that cannot fly”. When I wrote the song I wanted to use an old poem for the bridge. I searched “public domain poems” and found this one by Langston Hughes. I thought hey it says its in the public domain, we should be all good. Now that we were on a major label, all releases need to be “cleared” by a department at the label. They do this to protect themselves from potential future lawsuits. I’m sure you’ve heard of famous ones like the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit which saw Pharrell and Robin Thicke have to pay the Marvin Gaye estate $5M in damages as well as 50% of all future royalties. This is because the bass line and “vibe” of the song was too close to Marvin Gayes “Got to Give It Up”. That’s an example of the label clearing the song, finding no issue or risk of lawsuit, and that ultimately backfiring on them.
When we went to release Gas Mask with the Langston Hughes poem, it was flagged by the label that this lyric need to be cleared by his estate in order to be released. We knew that was going to be nearly impossible as we were a brand new band, or very expensive if they did allow it. We decided to re-record that section and I wrote original lyrics which became “I can’t get back the days gone by, the past is past, but the futures mine”. That version is the one released on all major streamlining platforms but when we placed the vinyl order we accidentally used the old version and no one caught it.
Gas Mask - The ALTERNATE Video