In collaboration with French Press Films, A Million Billion Dying Suns' "Hey Man" video documents a day gone wrong for the most oblivious young man to ever bike the streets. The events that transpire take his journey deep within the root of oblivious, as it feels as though his bad luck will chase him across planes of existence and into oblivion if he dares try to run that far. He greets us on "Hey Man" with confidence, too much in fact, and it is the cockiness of the smirk beneath his mustache that awards him his first overdue beat down by a couple bikers. It's all downhill to the wailing wash of A Million Billion Dying Suns' blown-out shoegaze shredding. As the impact of their playing escalates, so does our hapless heroe's misadventures.
We asked French Press Films to tell us more about the development of the storyboard for "Hey Man".
AJ Juncker of French Press Films:
Even though we treated this video like a short film, our goal was to create visuals that would enhance musical elements that the viewer might not have noticed before. We created the concept and story by listening to the song over and over again and trying to decipher how it might translate visually (for example: we knew the video needed to be in slow motion because of its shoegazey wash of guitars).
The story came out of the lyrics. Nate sent them to us when we first started talking about the project, and he trusted us to just go crazy. We didn't want anything super literal or on the nose, so we came up with this overly confident, oblivious guy tumbling through a world where everything turns against him.
We took cues from the song to create the story’s arc: changes, swells, and climactic moments in the song would dictate how our hero’s journey progressed (listen to how the music changes when we go underwater). Once we started editing, the music further dictated what shots and moments we added to sync up with musical moments. Even a simple gesture or a look from one of the actors, when timed with the music, could bring out the experience of the song in a new and unique way.
A Million Billion Dying Suns' Strawberry EP is out now and streaming on Bandcamp.
