When Tim first told me his idea for this video I have to admit I was a bit scared.
“You’re going to be playing a piano that’s on fire, jumping off a cliff backwards, there will be a goldfish that changes colors, maybe some underwater shots, and all of this will be done in reverse (including some of the singing).”
Tim told a good friend of ours with DP (Director of Photography) experience, Daniel Camenisch, about his idea and he quickly volunteered to be part of it. Maybe a little too quickly…
First thing we realized was we were going to need a piano, a burnable piano. Hmm… Craig’s List? I had heard rumors that people gave away their pianos on Craig’s List and it turns out those rumors are true. After making a trip to a dermatologist’s house (and destroying his yard with our trailer) we had a nice upright piano. I’m just glad he didn’t ask us what we were going to use the piano for.
Some People suggested we borrow a piano from a nearby church and then show them pictures like this…
Things were going good, when about 5 days before we were going to shoot the video I contracted a strange stomach virus that rendered me weak and helpless - perfect.
The long awaited day came, the day to burn the piano (in a controlled fashion). Our first method was just to place fire logs inside the piano and hope for the best. Later our method involved gasoline but we won’t get into that.
I remember hearing that piano strings have over 300 lbs of pressure on them. Tim told me not to worry about it though. He’s always very safety conscious, especially in regards to me.
One thing to note about shooting the video was that we did most of the takes in reverse at half-time. This meant the takes were around 7-8 mins. That’s 7-8 mins of inhaling smoke via nose, mouth, and eyes while singing in reverse (it sounds a bit like Icelandic).
But I had it easy, Stella the goldfish was pretty much boiled alive for those 7-8 mins. Sometimes even longer when we forgot we had left him on the burning piano. This was undoubtedly a tough process for Stella and I, especially Stella.
The next day we shot the jumping off the cliff scene. This took three different takes (I don’t think they were recording for two of them). It was actually refreshing though. After being that close to fire and smoke for so long I was glad to jump off a cliff into the water, even if I had to jump backwards.
The last part we shot was the underwater footage. The only hard part about this was keeping water out of my nose without blowing bubbles. You can be assured I didn’t succeed at keeping the water out of my nose. Next time I’ll get Stella to coach me on that.
Overall, it was an interesting process and I’m glad we were able to achieve the burning piano effect. I think the burning piano ties into what the song’s really about. Coming to grips with the mistakes we’ve made, even as a nation. Not just denying our mistakes and trying to ignore them.
