"Fightsong" video online now!

From Paul Thompson, the director of "The Prisoner" video, comes our latest for "Fightsong". A great vid of a couple's relationship unraveling, the story's told backward a la Memento. Lensed by Juan Montalvo and shot on a high-end RED Camera, it features the full band plus a sexy debut from Deniz Reno. There's even two different cameos from Elena Vardon, star of "The Prisoner" vid. See if you can find her!

Making “Fightsong”: The Shootist’s Adventure

Alright. No shootists were involved. Although I suppose you could say I was a shootee.

We shot the video for “Fightsong” on Friday, March 13th (not being a superstitious lot). The video was a great chance for Paul Thompson and I to renew our Martini MacGuffin film collaboration. Paul shot my first video, for “The Prisoner”, and together we’ve made a few short films with him directing, and me throwing words together in a semblance of writing.

The “Fightsong” concept is pretty cool. The song’s a moody, apocalyptic love-song. In the video, we watch a relationship unraveling as a musician (that’d be me) succumbs to the trappings of success. Except that the scenes play like Irreversible or Memento, occurring in reverse. So we begin with me alone in my now empty apartment, and work our way backward through the relationship in crisis to happier days to when the couple first views the apartment together. The video’s being edited right now, but that’s what we’re going for, and I think we got it.

We had a lot of luck getting the video off the ground, and got to work with a bunch of great people and familiar faces. Juan Montalvo was our cinematographer, back after lensing our short Quarantine. Album producer Marc Koecher joined my bandmates Scott Hannigan and Zack Mykula to round out the onscreen band. And Elena Vardon, featured in “The Prisoner” video, was a huge help, connecting us up with both the studio where we shot the film (Walnut Studio), and our gorgeous leading lady, Deniz Maria Reno. A great bunch of friends and newly cast strangers rounded out our cast, and the crew was capable, efficient and a pleasure to work with. Our art director Rahema Mohamed did a wonderful job creating the apartment, with much help and driving around from Carmela Versace.

The capper was the Red Camera Paul managed to lay hands on through David Woods. That thing is a **monster**, a magnificent, gleaming black beast with a resolution vastly superior to Blu-Ray. Geeks can feast on its specs here. That camera alone will lend the video incredible cinematic depth and luster.

The shoot was long, brutal and loads of fun. Of course we blew out the power in the studio at one point, frying some fuses in a terrifying old-school circuit box. By fluke, one of our extras was an electrician’s assistant, and helped us to track down the right fuses to replace, which Carm, ever intrepid, had to source at 11pm on a Friday.

In the party and photo-shoot scenes, energy and exuberance were in abundance, fuelled by a little of the ol’ alkey-haul, natch! The people that came out fell right into the spirit(s) of the shoot, and had themselves a blast. Can’t thank them enough for being part of it.

The couple scenes played really well, too. It’s strange, falling into instant intimacy with someone you barely know. But Deniz was a beautiful trooper, and I managed my acting neophyte status the best way I knew, with fits of blazing dorkiness.

The band played great – so what if half of it was pantomime? One of the night’s many magic moments that stood out for me was a scene we shot in the wee hours, when the band was working out “Fightsong” as if for the first time. Scott hunkered on his bass and Zack took drumming notes (evincing the possibility of consciousness in a drummer!), as I played guitar and Marc the accordion. The accordion’s reedy sound drifted haunting over the strains of the track as we played together, gathered on the couch of my fictitious living room, and sang the song together. A perfect film moment, concocted, artificial, yet for a fleeting moment amazingly moving and real.

With the great contributions we got on Friday, and a generous dollop of luck, “Fightsong” will feel the same way.

New Vid in the Works!

What're you looking at, you say? Is this Where's Waldo 3D??

Nope. What we have here is a still from the planning for the next Luke Sneyd video! I'm teaming up with Paul Thompson again, after the fab work he did on "The Prisoner". This time, instead of rockin' out to multiple me's, Zack and Scott are gonna be making an appearance. And where we'll all be apparating to is a miniature land that time forgot. The track's gonna be "Waiting". We're just working it out right now, but it should be pretty cool. Shooting will begin in the next week or so....

All of Us Cities - About the album

The album was a lot of work. Like nearly two years. I recorded it with Marc Koecher producing, out of his west end basement studio. We got into a great groove, working every couple of nights, getting together to lay down the bits and pieces that would take shape as All of Us Cities.

We first met when I was making a short film with Paul Thompson, a buddy from the Cinema Studies program at U of T. The flick was called Where the Wild Things Go. It was a sombre mood piece, a twenty-minute serial killer thriller about a bar infamous for its nefarious clientele of mass murderers. Marc approached us via an ad we'd posted on the internet calling for crew. He was interested in doing the soundtrack for the film, but we were nowhere near that stage. A year later, the film complete, we reconnected. Following Paul's suggestion of a score in the vein of Bernard Hermann (Psycho, Taxi Driver), Marc put together a fantastic string soundtrack that propelled the latter half of the film with an energy that was both spooky and convulsive. We also needed some background music for the bar scenes, something jukebox appropriate. I dug into my grab-bag of dusty demos and came up with a track called "Stay Too Long". Marc and I did a rushed collaboration to lay it down, but more important we set the stage for the album that would come.

With the film wrapped up, I sent Marc a mess of demos in the fall of 2005. Among them were the early demos for "The Prisoner", "Starstruck" and "Dallas", as well as a few others that fell by the wayside. As we began recording, I laid down most of the guitar tracks and the vocals. I enlisted Chris Osti of The Action Mob and The Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir to play bass. I knew Chris from previous Toronto bands, me in Mountain Mama and him in Audiobomb. Chris was great, happy to help out and a solid guy. The bassline that he and Marc put together for "Starstruck" is a testament to great, simple melodic playing. Chris moved on to other projects as Marc and I toiled away. In the end, Marc played bass for eight of the tracks that made All of Us Cities, as well as keys, synths, a few extra guitars here and there, and some incredibly realistic drum programming. Yeah. Those drums are programmed. Zack, my drummer now, was impressed when he found that out.

Recording was long, but deeply satisfying. Trudging through bitter winter, blustery thaws or the burnished heat of summer, there was a steady, cyclic rhythm to our work. Now it's done and there's a whole new slew of work to be done, putting a band together and gigging and spreading the word and letting the synchronicity of things just happen.

But as to that record, All of Us Cities, my deep gratitude to Marc for all his work in helping to realize such a solid album. Thanks to Chris for his help, to Tim Branton for his great mastering job at Joao Carvalho, to William Mokrynski for his brilliant photography that adorns the cover, and to Will Skol for a clean, understated CD design.

Now I'm just pushing the record, like a paper-boat on the water, waiting to see if this fragile craft catches the stream.