“In a Big City” is the first single from the new Titus Andronicus album "Local Business." For the video, director Isaac Ravishankara creates a world where time appears to move around a beardless Patrick Stickles as he walks through New Jersey. We talked to Isaac to find out what inspired this concept, and how they were able to pull it off. 

Doug: When you first submitted the treatment, was there something specific about your idea that you thought would connect with the band?

Isaac: I’ve been a big fan of theirs for a long time, so when Danielle reached out to me and told me there was a Titus song I was super excited about it. Their last album is so good, and I’ve been a huge fan, that I was immediately thinking about what would work really well for them. I kind of beat myself up about it for a little bit, until I even let it go almost. There were a few things in what they were looking for when they approached me about doing it that I was trying to keep in my mind. Their last album was a big, cohesive, theme album and Patrick got really well known for that, the band has always been him and then a bunch of other people playing. One thing he was really interested in doing, and the label, was having the video more centered on him. Everything they’ve done before has been (a) live performances, and (b) based around live performance with all of them, although it’s basically his project. So I tried to do something that keeps him centered in it. I had just reread “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner, and I was thinking about that a lot. The specific phrases they used was “having something centered around Patrick.” And so I did this interpretation of the first section of “The Sound and the Fury” where everything is centered on a character that, as he moves through the world, the world moves around him. When I talked to the commissioner Jill Kaplan, she reiterated to me that Patrick was really a scholar of sorts, more of a history buff but he reads a lot. So, I thought it would be nice to do something that is tonally based in something that’s more serious, and scholarly, and literature based. 

Doug: You mentioned there were a few things in the brief, was the location on of them? Because they're definitely a band that lets you know about their New Jersey roots.

Isaac: In my head, it always had to shoot in New Jersey. It already had to shoot in the New York area for budgetary reasons, in terms of where the band was going to be and scheduling. Although most of their other videos are also very Jersey centered, the band is just so proud of being from New Jersey and of New Jersey, and I think it’s really great how they support that. I’ve become more of a fan of New Jersey. It has kind of a bad rap, but the last few videos that I’ve shot on the East Coast have all been in Jersey. There is something about it that is not entirely undiscovered, but unique about it. I think everyone has seen New York so much, and New Jersey is a totally different thing, while still being accessible to New York. I think the video resonates with people who aren’t there, but if you’re in New York and have been over to Jersey, that sight of New York from across the water is such a pristine thing, you can feel the separateness of it. 

Doug: You play a lot with time in this video. As it follows Patrick though New Jersey, the sun seems to almost bounce around him in every location. How did you guys achieve this effect?

Isaac: We shot for 28 hours straight, which was the most fun part about the video, and also the biggest challenge. We wanted to have similar locations at multiple times of day, so the sun would the different, and the aesthetic would be different, and the feel would be different. We did that by basically planning the route. In the original treatment, he walks from New Jersey to New York, but practically we tried to find locations that felt that way without being too far out of the way. We set out to go to each location four times, or as many times as possible. So we planned a route that we would do once, then by the time we were done it would be later in the day and we’d do it again. And then it would be later on in the day and we’d do it again. And then it would be later on in the day and we’d do it a third time. And then it would be night and we’d do it the fourth time. It was fun, but it was super challenging. Patrick was on board with it from the beginning, but getting the band and crew work 28 hours straight took some reframing. It would be unfair to just tell people they were hired for a day and just go crazy and do overtime. We reframed it as a challenge to see if we could stay up this long and make something that’s worth making. Jill the commissioner got a bunch of Red Bull, and dropped off like 3 cases of it for us and we all just took on the challenge of staying awake. It was fun; crewmembers were taking pictures of themselves every hour as we all went more crazy. The whole experience of it plays into the video in the end.

Doug: You guys did a little bit of fan casting with this video, did that present any complications with you guys running around from location to location, and back again all day?

Isaac: The people who came out were really awesome and understanding. We basically had two home bases, and once we got everyone’s response to the casting we had our day, which became two days over the course of the shoot. We broke it down into chunks, and would say, “For this chunk, this is where our home base is going to be. And for that chunk, that is where our home base is going to be.” And Cindy my producer did a really great of job arranging people. Their fans are super amazing; the amount of turnout wasn’t representative of how excited people were. We had a lot of people show up multiple times. They’d come for one chunk of four hours, then they would go to work, and then come back after work. Since we were shooting for so long, and we just needed people to fill in bodies, that was possible. It was really nice being in a location with people, saying bye to them, and then 12 hours later they’d come back and say “Hey! You guys are still here!”

Doug: Since it is fan casting, do they ever actually act like fans? Do they try to get autographs and stuff, or are they able to put their game faces on for the purpose of the video?

Isaac: There are always going to be a few people who do that a little bit more, but in general the experience I've had is that people understand. They think, "I really support the band and I'm trying to show up to show my support." Especially for a band like Titus Andronics, their fans are their support. It's not like they're a top radio band or anything like that, so everyone who showed up for this one especially were there to work. And they were all really excited - we had people for four hour shifts and pretty much everyone were like "we can stay longer if need us to, if you want us to." They were really good about it not being about meeting Patrick. And every time I've done this it's more or less been a good experience. There have been a few bad apples, where people just use it as a way of getting close to the band, and usually myself or my AD or someone with have to say, "hey, so here's the deal, you know we really appreciate it, but..." It's only in the case of there's a lot to get done and we don't have time for it. But, bands also tend to be really good about knowing that people are coming out to be supportive and helping them, so any artist I've worked with has always been really supportive of realizing that if they have some downtime that they should go hang out with the fans. To me there's two advantages. One is since we're working on such a limited budget, it's really nice to be able to cast people to come out and help out that you aren't having to pay as extras. But actually to be honest, to me the thing that's more important is that it further fosters a sense of community that we all have when making this project. Everyone is mutually supportive and in it together, and it's a really special opportunity for fans. And then when you go back and watch the video, it's really great that everyone who's in the video is connected to the band. As opposed "oh, we cast these people as actors or whatever." I think any chance you can get to give someone a special experience and they're helping you out is a no brainer.

Doug: Throughout the process, was there ever any pushback from the band or anybody even in your crew who said "hey, let's just do this over a week," or were you able to convince everybody that that shooting over that short span would also benefit the finished product?

Isaac: I knew from the start that if we were going to do it, we'd have to do it in one chunk, just because of budget reasons. If you're bringing people back then you run into a problem. But more importantly, if you split it into two days, we would've actually had to split it into almost three days to make it happen, and then you have to pay people for three days. But I really just try to think of the culture of the shoot each time we do one, and each time is totally different. Myself and Kevin, my DP, we tend to think of each project as its own thing, and one of the first things we talk about going into a project is "what is the culture going to be on this shoot?" To me, it's really important that on every shoot, whether or not the end product is good, that the experience is really great.

For this one, it was inherent from the start that this was the way it was going to work, and not just work but be a really good experience. If you're not paying attention to that, you're letting everyone down. I thought if everyone saw it as a challenge, it would make for a really good experience. When we were reaching out to crew, we knew it was always going to be friends and people who were excited about the challenge. The one thing that we were just really careful about is just making sure that our assistant camera, who was doing the camera check out and check in, had a break. The one person who really got to take a break for a chunk was our assistant camera, and we had him break off and take a nap before we wrapped the camera. The one expensive piece of equipment we had on this shoot was our Red Epic camera package, the whole camera package. It's one thing to run around being crazy, but it's another when you're handling expensive equipment and lenses. Patrick was down from the get-go, and he approached the band the same way, "hey guys, we're doing this thing. I'd really love for you guys to be in the video, so if you're going to be in it here's how you have to do it, it'll be really fun." There was a lot of downtime for people who weren't Patrick, so people could go get pizza or watch a baseball game. And the last video we did, the culture was really different. That Outasight video, that one was also really run and gun, but we shot that one over the course of three days. That one was much more "we want everyone to be everything on this" so all of the cast and all of the crew, everyone on the call sheet had to have two roles. So, maybe you're like lead cast member and the art department, or maybe you're the gaffer and you're cast, or maybe you're the AD and you're the gaffer on the B unit. The culture on that one was that everyone is going to wear multiple hats. Going back two videos to 3OH!3, that one was a different culture. It was like "we're in Vegas. We're all gambling here. This whole video is going to be a gamble." Everyone had a lot of fun with it like that, and we knew that most of it's not going to work. I think that was really important, that going into Titus, it was like "we're going to have 24 hours, and as long as we shoot the whole time the video's going to be amazing." There wasn't any pushback, we were just very honest with people from the beginning about what it was going to be.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.