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The music video for Pale Horseman's single "Conquistador" is now online and it can be viewed right HERE.
Pale Horseman "Conquistador"
from their album Mourn The Black Lotus
(their Facebook page is HERE, their Bandcamp page is HERE, and their profile in the Encyclopedia Metallum is HERE)
a video by Derek Quint
Addovolt Productions
France Jean-Baptiste as the Silver Witch
Joy Donovan as the Gold Witch
Shane Simmons as the Silver King
Michael Moody as the Gold King
fight choreography by Michael Moody
makeup by Erin Rose Almaraz
on-set photography by Howard Wait
Special Thanks to: the witches and warlocks, Mount G., Debi P.W., T. Finnerty, A. Leahy, J.&N. Quint, H., M.M., Howard Wait, Ben Clement, and The City of Gary
The video premiered on HeavyPlanet.com on February 23rd, 2015.
We had a really good time making it despite some cold and snow (we shot the video in bits and pieces from late November '14 to February '15). I was kind of concerned about the weather when shooting inside the church (because we shot that scene right after Thanksgiving) but, luckily, everyone was fine, Pale Horseman sounded fantastic, and it turned out to be the last warm day of the year was the day that we shot that particular sequence. The church still has really good acoustics even though it's in ruins. The battling knights scenes (inside of a crumbling auditorium, this time) were genuinely frigid but both actors ignored the weather completely and put on great performances.
The Story
This is a music video so, in the case of "Conquistador", there's six and a half minutes to tell a story. The narrative has a more dense backstory (detailed at the end of this post) imagined for it but here's the quick(er) version:
There were plenty of influences for the tone and feel of this music video: David Lynch, Dario Argento, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Tarantino, "American Horror Story", Hammer Horror films, "Dark Shadows", "Flowers In The Attic", others, etc.
Pale Horseman's song is about the Spanish soldiers who explored (and caused havoc) in parts of North, Central, and South America in the 16th century. Because this music video was shot in Indiana and Illinois (where everyone involved on this project was based at the time), doing a straightforward visual interpretation of the song wasn't a possibility. We're on a budget here; a 10-person trip to a desert or a south-of-the-border ancient temple was a no-go. If we were based in Arizona, California, or Mexico, for example, it's entirely possible that this music video would have featured a different storyline because we would have had different topography to work with (sure, we could have done something using green screen but I'd rather not). So we ended up going with a mystery and mayhem story that abstractly alluded to the band's original inspiration behind the song. At one point, I was thinking about doing something that involved a really gross, gory, undead conquistador (could've been interesting....) but, instead, I wanted to do b-roll that went closer to the themes sung (annihilation, betrayal, blood-thirst) without being as literal as featuring an angry corpse with his face falling off.
When it came to where we wanted to shoot the band, we went with an incredible place not too far from Chicago. We had never been anywhere like United Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana. "Wow" is putting it mildly....
From what I understand, parts of "Nightmare On Elm Street" (the 2010 remake) and one of the "Transformers" movies shot scenes there. It's a magnificent, highly unusual location. United Methodist was opened in 1925 but was only in use for around half a century until its congregation shrank in the 1970's. It was later completely abandoned and fell into ruin. A history of United Methodist is detailed HERE. It's impossible to be in this building and not have an emotional reaction to it. It's a massive, complicated structure and the pictures don't do it justice.
When it came to the battling knights, I wanted to go with another location that happens to be close to the church. Although I loved shooting in United Methodist, I also found that place to be deeply intimidating and distracting (it just is--you'll understand if you go there.). On a different day, we had to have a place that would be conductive to a fight sequence and, therefore, I needed a lot of easy floor space to work with. The abandoned Memorial Auditorium in Gary fit the bill because of its available, clear floor space and it looked aesthetically linked to the church even though it's actually a few blocks away. It isn't difficult to imagine phantoms dueling with each other in there (maybe they do in the middle of the night when no one is looking--who knows?). The Auditorium's dramatic staircases and crumbling doorways were perfectly suited to the story that we wanted to tell. The history of Memorial Auditorium is summarized HERE.
I would definitely recommend shooting in Gary, Indiana because of these places (among others) and the fact that the Gary Film Office is very cool and really helped us in securing the perfect locations for this project. A very, very big "Thank You!" belongs to the Film Office (Ben C., especially) and, also, to the City of Gary for keeping these breathtaking structures available to artists. Decayed buildings can teach us a lot about history, nature, and architecture as well as adding emotional and metaphoric context to photographs, films, videos, paintings, etc. I wish that other cities would find ways to keep their ruins too. There's a rumor going around that they want to eventually turn United Methodist into a safer version of itself, a "ruin garden", similar to work done in Europe but whether or not that's true, I don't know.
My favorite visual style is the look of 16mm film. I don't like overly-pretty, fussy visuals and lighting; that sort of thing pisses me off sometimes. For a lot of my projects, I actually prefer "ugly", fucked-up lighting and aesthetics in specific cases partially because the kind of work that I do usually features outlandish storylines, strange costumes, surreal characters, etc. so--in order to balance those out and to give my work a certain anchor of grit, timelessness, and believability--I intentionally prefer to keep things a bit dirty and rough, camera-wise. Not always but, with some projects, I prefer for them to look as though the film stock took an extra-long dip in the acid bath; to look a bit neglected and to have a kind of distant, aged, "found footage", mixed-media feel to them. Footage from a documentary of a dream, that sort of thing.
more about the characters and backstory, as imagined for this music video:
(If you enjoyed the music video, and want to learn more about the characters just for the fun of it, here you are...)
What are the two main witches fighting over? Over the years, they've battled over plenty of issues. This time? Real estate. The two main witches were taught by the same warlock who has now died and it was revealed that he owned a piece of property that, at one point, served as a church (a front in order to get approval for licensing and to deflect neighborhood suspicion). When the story that we see takes place, the witches have just learned that he was the true owner (no one knew this until an old document was found in a drawer in his study). Although this piece of property was always considered special to him, no one was quite sure why exactly.....
The significance of the building (now in ruins) has nothing to do with what's in it but, rather, some of the materials that it's made of. Almost a century ago, the warlock smuggled half a cargo plane worth of expensive, extremely rare, and powerful crystals from Mexico and Peru. These were taken without consent from their respective locations, angering plenty of other witches, sorcerers, and shamans (to the point where this warlock's death may have occurred due to their retribution rather than old age but no one is certain; only rumors). These crystals were embedded in some concrete and bricks that were used to build the walls and foundation, turning the structure into something of an occult power generator. The building, practically pulsating with energy, might as well have become a convention center for spirits, demons, and angels and, also, for practitioners looking to mine its power for use in whatever Light and/or Dark Arts that they might be engaged in. The eventual abandonment and ruin of the building was circumstantial. The warlock was intending on revealing the truth about the ownership and nature of the building but he died shortly beforehand, creating a clusterfuck of legal confusion and unanswered questions that remained unanswered for decades (partially due to a rush-job on the lawyer's end, greed, neglect, lost documents, and bureaucratic foolery). Until now.
When the Silver Witch kills the Gold Witch, she creates an entirely new series of problems for herself and her community.
The "Conquistador" Music Video Annotated
Some of the images in the "Conquistador" music video are overt while others are more subversive. Now that you've read the full version of the story that takes place within the video, there are all kinds of things to notice when you view it again.
*Stairways To Heaven: Stairs are everywhere in this music video, from the ruined buildings to inside the toy model near the game poppets. When the band appears (who are muses to the witches within the story taking place), we first see them descending down a staircase. Ditto for the Gold King (the Silver King appears through a doorway but he has his own staircase behind him too). In faith and folklore, holy beings travel down to earth using ladders and staircases. Sacrifices took place at the top of staircases on Aztec temples (like the ones overtaken by conquistadors). Staircases and ladders represent transformation, transition, and travel from one dimension to another. Jacob's Ladder is the perfect example. We can see a ladder in the background while the witches play their game at 1:04 in the video.
*Valley Of The Dolls: The poppets representing the Witches, Kings, and the band are made of plastic, plaster, rubber, tape, weeds, leather, metal, paint, and bones. Their overall design concepts were inspired by objects displayed in the Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum.
*Drinking Buddies: To spark up visions, seers throughout history have guzzled special elixirs before engaging in rituals. These Witches are no different; they're served a vivid, green liquid (absinthe?) that spikes their teas before the dice start to roll and the wheels begin to spin.
*Bloody Mess: Beware of crimson. There's danger mixed in the dice (3 white, 1 red) that the Witches utilize in their game, the paint that they use to mark the injuries of the Kings, the jewel topping the pin, the cynicism of the Silver King's rose, and (of course) the blood that appears when the Gold Witch and King are defeated.
*The Writing's On The Wall: The church and the battle court are defaced by graffiti, traces of long-lost messages; the toy building on the witches' game table is also coated with old stories and messages in the form of newspapers that mimic the graphic lines of bricks and stones.
*Eyes On The Prize: The Gold Witch focuses on a vision of the church (at 5:32) right after she/her King gets hit in the eye. Even though she suffers at that point in the game, she's still in it to win it.
*Stargazers: Lillies (flowers representing death and mourning) are placed uncomfortably close to the doomed Gold Witch throughout the game.
*Stay Golden: The Silver King wears mainly white and silver just like the Silver Witch. The Gold King wears mostly black and gold just like his witch (who even has gold fingernails). Apparently, not all of the warlock's smuggled crystals ended up inside of the church walls; the Silver Witch is wearing some of that stash on her fingers and wrists.
*Friends In High Places: There are the characters within the story....and then there are the other characters within the story. The witches are watched throughout their game by skulls, preserved animals, paintings, and additional sorcerers. On the base of the alter in the church, the face of a Sun God leers out at us at 0:06 while the band plays on. And for all the story about the warlock whose actions lead up to the game/duel, you'd think that he should appear at some point in the video, even though he's dead. Well, he does. That's a portrait of him, perched on an easel, behind the Silver Witch at 7:02. Should we be surprised that she won?
*Call Us If You Need Anything: On top of the crumbling toy building, the witches place poppets of musicians (Pale Horseman) before they start their game at 0:54. A proper duel deserves a nice soundtrack.
