DJDS x Gorilla vs. Bear takeover: BEHIND THE SCENES – MUSIC VIDEOS
We love to make music videos. We started doing them on our first album, Friend Of Mine two summers ago. The ones we made then were pretty simple, we just rented a drone and filmed arial footage of the neighborhood around our studio. Our friends Dan Pappas and Nick Walker helped with those and have been doing our videos ever since.
For this album we started by doing a video for "You Don't Have To Be Alone." We shot it in a few locations directly outside of LA: Chatsworth (in the valley), the picnic area by the Troutdale Fish Farm, and at the beach north of Malibu. We did it all one really long day. The big thing here is that we were working with non professional dogs that we hired off Craigslist. They were all incredible, but we spent literally hours chasing after them when they'd run away in the woods after takes.
The next video we did was for "In The Flames." This one was really pretty simple. We basically made a small stage in the parking lot behind our studio and filmed a single long take of us performing the song. The big reveal here was that we lit the table on fire in end. To do that we purchased some lighter fluid at the Home Depot across the street and poured it all over some crumpled telephone book pages.
Our third video for this album was for the title track "Stand Up And Speak." This one was really fun to do because of the kids that we worked with. They were all family friends of Nick Walker's, and there wasn't a bad seed in the bunch. They were all so cool and fun to be around. We bought them all boogie boards and spray paint at Costco, and started by letting them go wild customizing their gear (for that post apocalyptic flair). They all looked pretty psycho out there singing in the gas masks and the lifeguards drove by a couple times but we never got shut down.
Lastly, we made the video for "I Don't Love You" which premiered on this very site earlier in the week. This was primarily shot on Hollywood Blvd but it begins at the observatory and also features the Hollywood Cemetery and some final footage filmed at a Body High party downtown. Our friend Dasha Nekrasov played the lead here and really carries the whole thing. She is an amazing actress and patient enough to deal with having to film on the Hollywood strip for 5 hours. It's a unique and dark place and hopefully the video captures that.
— DJDS