Despite the fact 95 percent of my work is photography, the craziest shoot I’ve ever done came in the form of video taping.
I was asked by Holes and Hearts to create a music video for their new song “Shake the Cage”, a song about going insane. The problem was the band moved to Las Vegas and therefore I couldn’t incorporate them into the video for a theme. I had them singing the song at their CD release party so I used that. I needed a theme still so I went to the drawing board.
What I came up with was my shoot “Isolated and Insane”. The subject in the shoot goes slowly mad being completely isolated from the world. All she has is her thoughts. She even let her house go into a state of being condemned. It was perfect.
I had Katie “Willow” Marcotte reprise her role for the video. We were going to shoot the insanity scenes at this old abandoned house in Brooksville.
When we got there we were shocked that one wall was filled with thousands of bees. You could hear them buzzing from the living room. As we searched more we came across old pictures drawn by a child, probably in the 1970s – early 80s. It added a much needed “creep” factor.
The first shot was taken in the “attic” which looked like it was remodeled at one point to be a bedroom or loft. It had nasty green shag carpet and everything. While we were in the attic this bat flew in and dive bombed me and the crew.
After we shot these scenes, we then took ourselves to downtown Tampa to use the steel cage in a gutted crypt – to start the video as she “shakes the cage”.
Katie decided prior to arriving that she wanted to get dressed in normal clothes so she doesn’t look “too freaky” as we drive down the road and luckily she did. As we got into downtown Tampa it became a bit crazy with all the one way streets.
Frustrated not being able to get to the cemetery we finally took a street that would lead us right to the front gate. As we came to the cross street touching the cemetery wall, we didn’t see the stop sign. Our street was the only street with a stop sign. Katie, who was driving, accidentally ran it almost hitting the car coming down the street.
We stopped and backed up only to see a cop was right there watching the whole thing. He lights up his lights and stops us.
She explained she was lost and frustrated and wanted to get to the cemetery to visit a relative – never being there. She didn’t see the sign and with the heat and newness of the area combined she lost sight of the sign.
The cop didn’t do anything but warn us to be careful.
When we got in the cemetery we took the shot of her shaking the gates and were off.
As we walked out of the cemetery we saw a red fox roaming the grounds. This was strange since there were NO trees or woods as far as the eye can see. How it ended up there I have no idea.
The shoot commenced and we got a video that was intense to say the least.
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