When director Abraham Vilchez-Moran booked the Good As You video by Eternal Summers, he knew he had to find the perfect location. Mainly, because he had already told the band that he had it (to his credit, he probably also told them he had an awesome underwater camera guy, and this was actually true). We talked to Abraham about finding the videos location, shooting underwater, and castration.
Doug: Where did the idea for this video originate?
Abraham: We got on a phone conference with me, my DP Josiah Marroquin, and the whole band, I think they were on tour at the time, to talk about the concept. I had this original idea that had to do more with a youthful, skinny-dipping thing. So they took the idea of people being underwater, and asked if we could incorporate that but make it a little bit darker. I thought if we did a mental hospital, we could put a girl in a straight jacket and she'd be wandering around the hospital, and she's imagining life beyond the walls of the hospital. They loved it. They were really into the idea. Nicole who's the lead singer asked me if I had the location for it, and I said, "yeah, yeah. Of course, I got it. No problem." I didn't have the location for it, but I believed it would come through and it would happen. I'm such a big fan of their work that I thought, "yeah, we'll take care of it. Don't worry about it." Then I got in touch with my producer and said, "look, the band loves the idea but we need a hospital." So she did some research and she found this awesome place called Central State Hospital, which is in Petersburg Virginia, which is right outside of Richmond. I went up there with the cinematographer and met with their staff and they were super cool and relaxed. They actually said that Hannibal had shot some scenes there before. It was perfect.
Doug: You said there staff at the hospital, so there is an active hospital that looks like that?
Abraham: Yeah, the hospital was built in like the late 1800s and it's a big huge property with different types of buildings there. At the time it was built, it was built as a mental asylum. Then 40 years ago, they actually closed that part of the property down. There is other buildings there, and they are people who live there that are criminally insane. They warned us that if we venture off from the place that they told us that we were allowed to go, if we went off into a different direction, we could encounter some of these criminally insane people and to be careful. They're allowed to wander, they live there. At the time it was built, it was crazy because they would castrate the male patients there because they didn't want them to procreate. If they have epilepsy or something, at the time they didn't know what was going on. They just thought they were crazy, they just thought, "we gotta cut these guys' dicks and balls off" basically.
Doug: I'm assuming that's not the kind of story you're used to hearing on music video locations.
Abraham: No, not at all. I actually found out later that my father-in-law's grandfather had been committed to this hospital back in the day, and his grandmother was actually the one who had to sign the paper to saying, "yes, you guys can castrate my husband." That was the only way the hospital would release the patients back into regular society.
Doug: Wow, so that's about as genuine a location as you can get.
Abraham: Oh yeah, super genuine.
Doug: You talked before about shooting underwater, was that something that you wanted to explore going into the video? Did you already have underwater equipment ready to go?
Abraham: Exactly, yeah. I'm based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia and work between New York and here. There is this guy who is based out of the same city I'm based out of and he's like the world's #1 underwater mermaid photographer, this very unique occupation to have. But he makes a shitload of money doing this. He goes to Mexico and Thailand and shoots all the really beautiful stuff underwater. So I contacted him before the video concept came up and said, "I'd love to do work with you, maybe do something underwater." Because he has a pool in his a backyard thats basically his photography studio. It's a really interesting thing because the pool was designed for him to go in there and take pictures of models. There is no sharp corners, all the corners are rounded and the walls themselves are a dark grey color. It's like state of the art. His camera rig that he uses with the 5D Mark III is like a $15,000 camera rig that he uses to shoot. I was super impressed and was like, "man, we have to do something together." The idea was already in the back of my head to do something underwater, and with this guy being local and into my work it really helped me out. He did all the cinematography underwater, which is really weird having to direct someone whos underwater and you're above water and you can't see what they're doing.
Doug: I was wondering about that. So what do you do, you're giving your direction before they go over and then you trust your DP is going to get what you're telling the actors?
Abraham: Yeah, I give him notes telling him what I want. I explain to the models, "I want you guys to make these types of formations." I explained all of that, but I can't direct while they're underwater. He'll shoot a couple different takes, come up above water, and then we review the footage to make sure it's in the same vein as I was expecting it to be. That was our process when it came to the underwater stuff.
Doug: The DP for the hospital stuff, Josiah Marroquin, is actually credited at the beginning of the video. Did you have to clear that with the band?
Abraham: I did, because originally it was just my name. The way we work is I edit the videos and he ends up color correcting. We don't ever really publish that information in the video description or anything because to me, at the end of the day, it's not really important. If you're the DP, that's the highest possible credit you can have after the director. What is the point of sitting there saying "I also did this, and I did this, and I did that." It desaturates and takes away from what you've done. We're a team, and I figure he did as much work as I did. That washed out aesthetic that the video has is a really a result of him color-correcting the footage that he shot. To me, he deserves as much credit as the director does. If anything, he's like a co-director to me, just not technically. I had to clear it with the band, and it was cool. They really appreciated it.
