Credits:
–
Director: Josh Sliffe
Co-Director: Allen Baker
Producer: Allen Baker, Austin Simmons, Josh Sliffe
Director of Photography: Allen Baker
Gaffer: Jason Summers
Grip: Adam Thomas
Set Design: Ashley Hutchinson
–
Edit/Color: Josh Sliffe

New music video for Mandolin Orange’s latest album, coming out in February.

This project was quite a bit of work! We had the general idea. The treatment did a good job of communicating that idea, feeling, and look. But once it was green-lit, since the rest of our team was busy on other jobs, Allen and Josh had less than a week to firm up the idea, find and hire crew and talent, find and scout locations, schedule the day, and get gear prepped. Not to make excuses :) Then once production was wrapped, we had just a few days to edit and color for final delivery.

The idea behind the video was centered around a song Andrew Marlin wrote to his dad about his mother’s passing. Our interpretation of it for the video was that the father is sort of stuck. He’s not totally connected to his emotions and is unable to totally grieve since having to now single handedly raise his son. The son isn’t totally able to connect with or understand his feelings as well, but still a boy and finds a way to keep himself busy and work through things that way. Through the son’s unique way of dealing with things, the surrounding community, and the responsibility at hand, the dad is pulled out of his solitude and is able to help the son feel loved and connected and even remember together the life of the mother. Or at least that was the hope.

This sort of film was a hard one to navigate. Finding the right level of performance from the acting to hopefully keep it from feeling cheesy but go deep enough to read on camera was tricky. Some things we shot we didn’t include because they just didn’t pass that test. We also didn’t want it to come across as depressing or that the dad is a jerk. Cause he’s not. We just wanted it to feel like an honest look at what it’s like just after a father and son have lost a mother.