Hi Tech; Low Life

The idea that brought this music video to life

While there’s some debate as to whether this was Ross’ or Jacob’s idea, the end result remains one of the most visually powerful video productions that Hamil Bros Studios has ever accomplished. 

One thing is for sure, we wanted to do something that we had never done before and, candidly, we weren’t sure that we could pull off. Fortunately, with both of us being in LABOR XII, we knew that we had plenty of room for failure should things go awry. We weren’t going to fire ourselves…

At its core, the song, Psychofantic, is about an individual who is a master manipulator, gaslighting his victims and trying to destroy them when he’s either done with them or doesn’t get his way. It’s about someone with a broken mind who can’t let things go and can’t conceivably take responsibility.

He brings his world down around him and expects the world to stop.

For the story, we landed on having a kingpin character who utilizes the police force as his own personal mercenaries. Stealing from the citizens to line his own pockets. Additionally, sitting in his own ivory tower, he manipulates the media into painting him as the savior of the city…

That is, until his propaganda feed gets hacked by the leaders of the resistance, LABOR XII. Upon hearing of the resistance hacking his feed, he sends out a task force to put a stop to it, searching for any clues they can to discover the whereabouts of the hackers. 

To their dismay, LABOR XII has stayed 2 steps ahead of them the entire time, relaying signals to mask origin points.

In the end, he learns that the resistance was right in front of him the entire time when it is revealed that the members of LABOR XII have infiltrated his task force and end up arresting him at gunpoint.

Power to the people!

One of the key components to this video production were the props and costumes. Jacob took to the interwebs, scouring Amazon for any tactical gear that could be used for our futuristic law enforcement officers.

From the helmets, to masks, cowls, vests, boots, and gloves, Jacob curated all of the elements to make our assassins look like a force to be reckoned with. All black, and all business.

The second hurdle was shooting everything that would feed into the story. This meant a lot of visual effects.

The first set up was shooting our villain against a blue screen. Most people assume that green screen is always used, but that varies quite a bit depending on what is in the foreground. 

We decided to do some screen tests to determine what would best suit our needs and the blue screen is where we landed. The blue worked better with the details of our villain’s hair and the chair he would be sitting in. For this, we enlisted our Matthews Studio Equipment two-sided, 8’x8’ blue/green screen.

Our friend, and coincidentally a super fan of LABOR XII, Jared Dallas, was asked to be our actor to play the part of the antagonist, Viktor Valichek. He accepted without hesitation.

Jared is a big dude and we knew that his hulking presence was exactly what we needed.

Enlisting the help of our mother to help with hair and makeup, we got Jared into costume: a suit with a partial facemask to hide whatever scars he was covering up from his ill-gotten rise to the top. The mask, while serving a practical purpose for Valichek, was anything but plain. If he was to wear it, its decorative embellishments would need to match a man of his station.

For his office, only a few real props were used: a side table and a lounge chair.

The chair, provided by Chase Marberry, provided the perfect optical illusion. It looked like a normal chair to the naked eye, but it was actually smaller in scale than it appeared, thus, when Jared was sitting in it, he looked that much bigger, giving the impression that this thief of society was so large that he made regular furniture look small. 

For our mercenaries, again, some screen testing was done and for this, it was determined that the green side of our two sided screen would be optimal for contrast and detail around the hard edges of our foot soldiers. Aside from shooting the reveal at the end, all of the holographic commander shots were also shot. This required very specific attention to detail as the mercenary needed to be looking in the proper direction to give the illusion that his hologram was interacting with Valichek. Not something that is particularly noticeable until he’s looking the wrong direction. 

From this shoot, our favorite shot was what we’ve endearingly called the “Pulp Fiction” shot. An extreme close-up on the gun of the enforcer who shows up to arrest their oppressor in the final scene. 

All of this was shot on our Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K gen 1 with the Tokina Cinema 25-75mm.

The final scene that was shot was our opening scene where our impressionable young mind was being brainwashed by Valichek’s Propaganda TV. For this, we brought on our budding actress Alleigh Denning. 

Building the lighting in Jacob’s kitchen in his apartment, we went for a look that would make one think that there wasn’t much electricity in the city, but Viktor wanted enough to power televisions in the homes of the people. 

Alleigh, crushed it.

For the live performance part of the video, Jacob rented out the The Historic Fair Theater in Plainview, Texas. 

For this we brought in our long-time friend and colleague, Robert DelTour of Aeleon Films all the way from Bakersfield, CA. We needed someone to help run cameras while we were performing. 

Robert additionally brought Shelby to be his extra help. 

Using our live performance lighting rig and light show that was built by Kris Schmitt of Filament Productions, that set the blue/green color palette for the performance piece. 

Our main key light was an Aputure 600D Pro blasting through an 8×8 diffusion way overhead to make for some very dramatic lighting.

The backlighting was done mostly with Aputure and Amaran Lights culminating a LABOR XII gobo illuminating the back wall with an Aputure 120D set to a flicker effect.

For our primary camera, we used the Blackmagic Cinema 6K Full Frame paired with various Tokina Cinema Vista lenses.

We also deployed our Dana Dolly with the eMotimo St4.3 belt-driven motion control system with our Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K camera and our Tokina Cinema 11-20mm EF wide-angle zoom lens.

As is often the case, we shot several takes. 

Unlike most of our shoots, the biggest challenge with this was that we needed audio monitoring for everyone and some way to keep things synced with cameras. 

Typically, we rely on our Tentacle Sync E units for this, but the timecode here needed to be repeated with every take. 

The only solution we had for this was to run a version of the song into a small speaker that the cameras could pick up on. This was effective for the first part of the song, until the drums kicked in, then all bets were off because the sound of the cymbals lost all of their definition.

Additionally, we had to run an in-ear monitor mix to all of the band members. This wasn’t too difficult because LABOR XII already has a fully built in-ear monitor rack unit for their live shows.

The challenge came in that, unbeknownst to us at the time, the USB port on our audio interface was going bad. That led to several issues, but it didn’t stop us from completing the performance video production. 

One comment we did receive after releasing the video was that this person’s favorite part what the synchronized jump we all did in the performance part.

This cyberpunk music video would have been nothing without the visual effects. We knew this going in, and we knew that, come rain or shine, we would have to figure out a way to bring this video production to life.

The first scene Ross tackled was the shot from the Raintree hallway. Despite the efforts to make the hallway dingy, it was still too clean. That, paired with Ross’ guilt that he was sick for that portion of the shoot, Ross took to rotoscoping and rebuilding the entire hallway.
This task was anything but easy. Starting with what looked like underground piping on the ceiling, the walls were replaced with water-stained concrete, the floor with brick, and some rusty doors to make the alley look like somewhere you would never want to be. Removing the back wall, he also added what looked like a cyber district to bring it all together. 

Lastly, some old, corroded barrels and a light pole were added.

To bring it all to life, he added water running down the walls and dripping on the ground along with some fog and a stray dog to the background.

Despite a myriad of obstacles—including persistent scheduling conflicts, unforeseen illnesses, and a host of other unpredictable variables—we firmly believe that this music video stands as the finest ever to emerge from Lubbock, Texas. Our pride in having been an integral part of its creation is immeasurable, and frankly, we’re confident no one else could have achieved such a feat.

Throughout this extensive process, we gained invaluable insights and significantly pushed the boundaries of our creative and technical capabilities. The culmination of our efforts was the creation of a distinct world nestled within our own, a world that left the LABOR XII audience with a profound sense of satisfaction and a lasting impression.