2013 has been a great year so far for Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman, also known as BRTHR. Each of their five videos released this year has been more complex and ambitious than the one before it, and each has served as a way to further their aesthetic as directors. Their latest video, "Think Of You" by MS MR, features a boy (Kyle’s brother, Aidan) who is literally sucked into his television white watching a vintage looking public access TV show. The video combines both modern and retro elements, and features some great performances from the band and other cast members (who are actually all members of other bands). We talked to BRTHR about the video, collaborating with a post team, and progressing into larger scale projects. 

Doug: Was the show that the band is performing on based on a specific public access show from the past? Or was it more of just a general, old school public access vibe that you were going for?

BRTHR: The show was based off an actual TV show from the 80s called TV PARTY, which we had never heard of before. It was a show that featured a tight community of bands that knew each other - and it was all about being yourself, playing some music, and having a good time. We went back and watched some of the actual episodes and grasped that it was sort of like a low budget, unscripted, "do whatever you want" sort of show. It was also pretty druggy. The band wanted the video to feature their friends, kind of like this show, which is why MS MR's friends are all in the music video.

Glenn O'Brien, host of the original TV Party

Doug: What was the process of achieving the VHS look to some of the footage? Were you guys shooting with multiple cameras?

Alex: It was actually super easy! Kyle's mom actually had a hi8 cam lying around the house, so we fixed it up and used that. We think the hardest part was finding hi8 tapes, actually. Those are so not in stock anymore. We were primarily on a DVX cam and the hi8, but we passed around the hi8 cam quite a bit to people we trusted. We also thought that would bring about a "randomness" to the footage, which we totally wanted. So at the end of the shoot, there was about an hour of hi8 footage, and an hour of DVX footage. We scaled it up, and graded it as is. We thought about shooting entirely on the Alexa and processing it to VHS but ditched that idea when we found a hi8 cam. The main camera for the shoot was the Alexa, but there isn't that much of the footage used, to be honest.

Doug: The main character of this video is actually Kyle's younger brother, who also makes a brief cameo in your I/O video from a few months ago. Did you guys do any rehearsing with him for this part, or did you just have him show up and hope for the best?

Kyle: When we asked my little brother, Aidan, if he wanted to be in another music video, he was so stoked. It's really cool to be able to share the experience of making a video with your family. At first, I could tell he was a bit nervous being in front of the camera, but I think that ultimately added a genuineness to his character. We're really happy with his deadpan expression when he first transports to the performance with the band. We walked him through the whole idea behind the boy watching the television, but kind of just went with the flow when we shot his parts. We didn't want to overwhelm him with rehearsals and memorization. It was all very spontaneous. Fortunately, there was a great vibe on set, with all of these colorful personalities, and everyone made him feel really comfortable.

Max Hershenow on set

Doug: Many of the other cast members in this video are members of New York City based bands, like Emil and Friends and Grouplove. Was MS MR in charge of assembling those cast members?

BRTHR: Something cool we found out about as we planned for the shoot was that Lizzy, from MS MR, is actually one of the co-founders of the label Neon Gold - which is an awesome label with cool artists. She was in charge of inviting these bands to come over for the shoot, and luckily we were able to have all these NY-based, indie artists on set. It felt super authentic, and they were all just having a good time. Other notable acts in the video are Alex Winston, Derek (the other co-founder of Neon Gold), and their really good friend, Emmie Lichtenberg. Max, from MS MR, also brought along one of his old dancing classmates from when he used to dance. She killed it with her part-- it was so cool to watch.

Doug: You guys had some help in the back end of this video with editing and animation. What was that process like? When you have someone contribute to the post-production process, how involved do you get with what they're doing?

BRTHR: It was such a great experience collaborating with our friends Evan Borja and Willie Russell on this project. Evan worked on the 2D animation of the video, and Willie focused on the VFX. In all of our previous videos, we worked on all elements of post-production, so this project was definitely a unique experience for us. Before and after the shoot, we had several meetings with the guys, to talk about how we wanted to approach the post process and divide the work. We walked them through our vision for the piece and then when they started working, we had an open dialogue where we fine-tuned each element. We really trusted their creative talents. Evan specifically dialed in on the 2D slime coming out from the television, while Willie worked on the VFX of the little boy inside of the television abyss. For us, since this project was so post heavy, it was great working with these two awesome artists to not only help us with the workload, but contribute their own unique styles to the piece.

Animated GIF by Evan Borja

Doug: In the past few months, you've worked on a video where you guys shot with just the two of you, literally in your backyard, all the way up to a video with a massive cast and crew that included an elephant and shot in India. This video had a little bit of both, with the first day being a crazy busy day with lots of actors and additional crew-members, and the second day back home in Long Island with just you guys and your producer, Brendan. Is there a style of film-making you prefer? Do you like the bigger production and bigger crew, or do your prefer to really get hands-on with things?

BRTHR: When we first started making music videos, our mindset was very DIY, so working with just us and our close friends is something we're very comfortable doing. The progression to bigger budget videos with real crews, a producer, ect, is amazing and helps us fulfill bigger ideas we have. However, we definitely like to maintain our early mentality, of just going out there and creating work, without the fear of not having a massive crew and budget. With this project, being able to mix both processes of working with a larger crew on day one and more of a minimal, hands on shoot on day two, is something we really enjoyed and hope to do more of in the future.

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.