Danko Jones - Full of Regret

[Finnegan]

Hey everyone, a couple months ago I had a great opportunity to work on a music video for Canadian hard rock group Danko Jones, with cinematographer Brandon Trost. It's a neat little video (of course, I'm biased) that features Elijah Wood, Selma Blair, Lemmy Kilmister (of Motorhead) and Mike Watt. I'm pretty proud of it, so I wanted to share it all with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN82gSo85O4

Let me know what you think!

 

[ChaseBecraft]

Song is sub par at best (my opinion of course).

Cool video though. Which one was supposed to "Danko Jones" or w/e? What part did you play in this and what was it shot on etc?

 

[Colonel Panic]

I liked the song. Quite a bit, actually.

The video was well shot but I thought with just a little bit more creativity the storyline could have been conveyed without interspersing any on-screen dialogue. Some more animated facial expressions and slo-mo close ups where you can "read" what the characters are saying could have told the story without taking your attention away from the song. That always bothered me in music videos, especially when you can hear the song's volume "duck".

The Big Lebowski rip-off at the end could have been re-written to be more original too.

So close to being very cool. That's just like, my opinion, man.

 

[Finnegan]

Which one was supposed to "Danko Jones" or w/e? What part did you play in this and what was it shot on etc?

Danko Jones is the lead singer, the shaved head guy who is running around the whole time and who fights Elijah Wood in the end. I was the 2nd AC, but we had a really small crew so I ended up doing a lot of grip work in addition to all the camera department stuff. We shot on RED One with a newly integrated M-X chip, which to say the least, is very impressive in a bunch of different areas.

The video was well shot but I thought with just a little bit more creativity the storyline could have been conveyed without interspersing any on-screen dialogue. Some more animated facial expressions and slo-mo close ups where you can "read" what the characters are saying could have told the story without taking your attention away from the song. That always bothered me in music videos, especially when you can hear the song's volume "duck".

The Big Lebowski rip-off at the end could have been re-written to be more original too.

Yeah, everyone on set knew that the story elements of the music video weren't going to go the distance. In many ways, that's by design. Danko Jones asked the directors, Jason and Joshua Diamond, for something frenetic, confusing, and visually striking...and that's pretty much what the music video is.

What's funny though is that the directors are interested in developing the idea into a feature screenplay, which presented even MORE problems during shooting because everything the characters did and said had to be non-specific. For instance, the interrogation scene where the detective (who is actually Jason Trost, Brandon's little brother) had to be shot a bunch of times because we couldn't find the right line for him to say without implying something about the story. Eventually we settled on the vaguest statement anyone could ever say: "Tell me what I need to know!" So yeah, I can see how the story elements are weak but to me its funny, knowing that there is no coherent story!

And yeah, the Big Lebowski thing is ripped straight out of the movie. We had Mike Watt, who has this awesome voice, and the directors decided they wanted that exact monologue - it wasn't a matter of creativity or anything else, they just really liked the monologue and Mike Watt delivered it really well.

 

[Jon Starr]

Woo Danko Jones! Didn't know he was still making stuff. He was pretty big here at one point. This is one of his hits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqW_KeE6ZOs

Glad to hear his stuff is still consistently good and gritty.

But I agree, the story elements just don't work, mainly with the dialogue overpowering the music. I hate music videos that do that. Reminds me of the Green day video where a guy goes off to war and they start yelling at each other. It just completely distracts from the song. But pretty cool nonetheless.