Mike Southworth can now fondly look back on the 12 hours he spent submerged in a pool and being pelted with water.
It had, after all, seemed like such a simple idea why not shoot most of his bands next music video under water?
But you try it.
You try mouthing the lyrics to Scatterhearts latest single from the bottom of a pool at night. You make it look like anyone can spend 30 continuous seconds singing under water as if there was nothing more natural in the world to do unless, of course, youre playing your drums on a stage far below the waters surface.
Southworth is the drummer and one of the lead singers in the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»band. Hes also a recording engineer and video maker for other bands.
Somehow, he managed to convince Doug Fury (guitar and vocals) and Wes Deboer (bass and back vocals) that it would be neat to film 90 per cent of the video for their new single, either submerged under water or while having buckets upon buckets of water tossed on them.
Theres an inside joke that I say, No, I dont think it will be that difficult, Southworth says of his approach to coming up with some of the ideas for the bands videos. Then he admits, Its rare that it ends up getting simpler.
Thats what Scatterhearts fans have come to expect, however. The bands videos are visual art, as creative as the music itself. In Better Than Before, the camera follows one of the Green Men as he runs through an obstacle course as a single shot. The even more complex Awesome Machine split each band members face in three as a constantly changing and yet perfectly matched Rubiks Cube.
In this new video the third since former lead singer Jesse Enright left the band Scatterheart spent an entire night at a private pool in Tswassen called Water Vision at the end of September. I love water and I love swimming under water so I thought, Hey, why not?, Southworth says. While the video portrays them jumping into a well, off a wharf into the Pacific, and into a fountain pool, they spent from seven at night to seven in the morning at Water Vision.
Its nerdy but I did do some training [for singing under water], Southworth says. I sat in the bottom of a pool pretending to sing and drum.
The singing was fairly easy. Playing instruments proved more challenging. Not only do drums want to float, but band members expended more energy, and therefore more air, making long shots by submerged cameraman Stefan Berrill impossible.
For those worried about the equipment, fear not. The water-soaked drums and guitars were purchased on CraigsList and while the drums survived, Southworth says they can use the waterlogged guitars if they want to burn them or throw them into a wood chipper for the next video.
Scatterheart recently opened for Men Without Hats but have no immediate concerts planned. Instead of waiting for an entire albums worth of new songs, theyre releasing their singles, including I Get the Feeling, one by one every six weeks. Of course, when they do play live, it will be impossible to replicate the video but, that said, I was renting some equipment from Holly North and they actually have a 20 by 20 water tank, Southworth muses. You could do it.
