Shot in an abandoned hotel, lost in the woods for over 30 years, I present to you the new music video for Distel‘s track “hxxx”.
Location Scouting
Distel and I spent some time talking about his new track, the ideas behind it, the lyrics (in Japanese by the way!), when we hit upon an idea. The first thing that was most important for the shoot would be the location, so on a sunny Sunday afternoon we jumped in my car and drove off to see if we couldn’t find something resembling a ruin, a long abandoned building, or something like that. After a few misses, we finally hit upon something that was exactly what we were looking for.
While scouting the location we were walking through what once was the dining hall of the hotel. I had taken only a few steps before one of my legs disappeared nearly completely through the rotten wooden floorboards. Luckily I could balance myself a bit, otherwise I would have trashed my camera then and there.
We later discovered more hazards, the topfloor had collapsed upon the roof of most of the rooms we’d be shooting in and was only being supported by some dodgy looking wooden beams. We found a cellar completely submerged in black nasty water, at least 1,5 meters deep. It was fair to say that this place was creepy and dangerous… Exactly what we were looking for! 🙂
Shooting
The day of the shoot we set out early. My car packed with all the gear, which we had to lug to the hotel through a few hundred meters of forest. This place had no access roads anymore. The old drive up to the hotel, which must have been beautiful, now overgrown by trees and brush.
We took too many changes that day, shooting in areas that were surely going to collapse, if not that day, then one day very soon. We had no idea whether the floor would support us, or plunge us into another submerged cellar. We shot most of the day and I was very happy with the material when I got the chance to view it later that night.
Tech
The video below was shot on a Canon 5D mkII with an array of different lenses. I edited all of it in Adobe’s Creative Suite 6 (Premiere & After Effects) with a few plugins for color correction and effects. If you are interested in collaborating on a project, please contact me.