Audio By Carbonatix
The guys in Surfer Blood have made the most of their time back in West Palm Beach. In addition to some karaoke (here’s a clip of J.P. Pitts singing “Hooked on a Feeling”), deflecting baseless accusations regarding similarities to
Brian Eno that were perhaps summed up by this very publication, they are working locally on a music video for the song “Floating Vibes.”
Not only is the filming happening in Palm Beach County but a team of Surfer Blood cohorts from the area is behind the lens. According to 23-year-old Garth Warner — who has known the band’s bassist, Brian Black, for more than a decade — he and former Palm Beach State College classmate Ralph Blanco were originally approached to create a video with the guys almost a year ago, but scheduling issues (and Surfer Blood blowing up) made it difficult to get together until now. After a 13-hour day of filming at a friend’s house on Sunday, the guys are back at it today using the
facilities at Palm Beach State College. Dedicated shooter Ian Witlen has posted some behind-the-scenes photos (more below).
With production help from director of photography Lucas Marchesani (brother of Surfer Blood
percussionist Marcos Marchesani), assistant cameraman Andre Lopez, and first assistant cameraman Bobby Keegan, Warner and Blanco have been
storyboarding and coming up with ideas that are reminiscent of the
bygone VHS era featuring green-screen special effects. “Our generation
grew up with VHS tapes, and there will be a lot of plays on that,”
according to Warner. “This an homage to a lot of old production
techniques inspired by the area’s public access stations and local
commercials but using high-res cameras. Any channel between 13 and 24
is all I watched for the past month.”
Warner says he was the emaciated guy in a blue tank top running around
filming at Surfer
Blood’s Oil.Spill.Benefit performance recently at Propaganda, and
some of that live footage could figure into the final product. This is
Warner and Blanco’s first music video project, but Warner described a
few past projects for fun that included editing himself into the Home
Improvement intro and replacing the sinister, villainous painting
in Ghostbusters 2 with a friend’s face. If all goes well, there
could be some more projects featuring a local act that has
previously been featured in this space.
