Provo, Utah is perhaps best known as the celestial capital of everything Brigham Young. And while it might be a misnomer to lump the city’s some 100,000 residents into a demographic that mainstream America often sees maligned on shows like HBO’s Big Love, a trio of filmmakers named The Occidental Saloon are exporting a new commodity rooted in the identity of their city-in-transit: Damn fine indie music.
RootSpeak recently caught up with the innovative film unit and spoke with them about their videos for The Neon Trees and Joshua James, while also picking their brains on where the evolution of the modern music video heads next.
RS: Who comprises The Occidental Saloon and how did you guys originally assemble?
TOS: The Occidental Saloon is made up of Aaron Hymes, Corey Fox, Dean Cheesman, and Matt Eastin. The story of how the group got together can get quite long. In summary: Dean worked as a sound guy for Corey at his music venue, Velour. Matt and Aaron worked together on their respective film projects. All of us where in some way involved with the music and arts scene here in Provo which is a surprisingly thriving community. Dean and Matt were introduced to each other by a mutual friend in the music scene. After working together on a couple videos for Dean’s older “Provo Acoustic Sessions” project we decided to solidify our group.
RS: Conceptually, your work has been defined by live-performance shots, with a heavy respect paid to organic surroundings. What lead you down this path as far as the intent of your crew, the artists you work with, and the mood you’re trying to capture?
TOS: One of the things we talked about in our first meeting is how we wanted to combine aspects of vintage and modern influences. You’ll see these types of themes spread through our videos and design.
The choice to do live-performance videos has been very intentional. Audiences aren’t as impressed as they used to be with music videos. It’s still an amazing way for artists to express themselves, but the sense of authenticity is taken away from the musicians. A music video may be able to help someone find some new music to listen to on their iPod, but it doesn’t help you decide if a band is worth seeing live. With our videos you’re getting one-take audio recorded on location along with a video that isn’t being shot by a laptop webcam.
RS: One thing that seems abundantly clear is your ability to illicit a side, or persona, of each artist that may not be as accessible in other vantage points of their work. What is the process like in capturing such an honest portrait?
TOS: This happens very naturally. Corey and Dean working at a music venue means that many times they’ve seen the bands perform and in some cases know them personally. Because of this they work to try and match location, bands, and song as best we can. Also during the actual shoots we try to get into the performers space. Even at a live show you can’t get that close to the artists as they perform.
RS: Can you give us a little insight into the technical application of your craft? What do you shoot on and what is the average time from concept to post-production?
TOS: We shoot all video with 2 DSLRs with a variety of lenses. Recording audio with Zoom H4, wireless Senheiser lavaliers, and my favorite MXL mic. On the software side we use Final Cut, Cinema 4D, Syntheyes, After Effects.
RS: Last year, the publication which was actually the precursor to RootSpeak featured a long interview with Joshua James. Even during conversation, you get the sense that there’s very much a duality to his persona as he’s polite and soft-spoken while off-stage, and then he absolutely channels something very dark and heavy when he performs. What was it like capturing him doing such an iconic song like Tom Waits’ Green Grass?
TOS: The funny thing was that we didn’t even know it was a cover until the day we released it. It never actually came up before or during the shoot. Josh was great fun to work with. He is a performer by all accounts.
RS: Where in your minds does the evolution of music video head from here? And what role does it now have in the life of the modern musician?
TOS: The standard produced music video will still have it’s role in art. It’s going to keep pushing the limits for video art, motion graphics, short form video, etc. We are already seeing bands vastly increasing the amount of video they release. The technology to make and share videos is getting so cheap that everyone can do it. As video technology gets better we’ll see things like real time video, or multi-stream performance videos becoming more prevalent.
The modern musician has the challenge of not only creating great music, but experiences. An artist’s music can be supplemented by art, video, performance, interaction, and more. Real enjoyment comes from novel experiences and with the ease of digital copying it makes it hard for a musician to give that to their fans.
RS: Some very clever motion design has subtly found its way into the title credits for each of your films. While sometimes it’s easy for an audience to take elements like these for granted, yours seem to only embellish the complete experience for a viewer. How important are these peripheral aesthetics?
TOS: The titles are something we all enjoy. Aaron does them singlehandedly and even within the group we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. The titles work in with our overarching themes between vintage and modern. There are few ways to implement modern motion design into a video when doing live-performance music video and the titles help accomplish it.
RS: What’s next for The Occidental Saloon?
TOS: So far we’ve concentrated on local Provo bands because there are so many we wanted to share with the world, but we hope to start moving to more touring bands as they come through Utah. We’re also looking more towards marketing ourselves a bit to help support our video making habits.
