One of Richmond’s best mathy-weirdo jazz outfits, Dumb Waiter, have released a new music video for the track “Wet Brain Boy” and true to its creators,
One of Richmond’s best mathy-weirdo jazz outfits, Dumb Waiter, have released a new music video for the track “Wet Brain Boy” and true to its creators, it is weird and mathy.
Set in what appears to be the band’s house and presented in a single shot, the video details what appears the be the Easter Bunny on a failed trek to spread holiday cheer. Have a look below:
Shot, directed and edited by local filmmaker Craig Zirpolo with help from Joey Wharton, the video looks beautiful and obviously involved lots of love… or whatever drug Dumb Waiter prefers.
Shot at Zirpolo’s house in Woodland Heights, the original idea was to shoot in the city but they ended up doing it in the burbs to avoid having to explain someone thrashing around in an bunny costume to passerby’s.
The single shot idea is something Zirpolo and Wharton had been playing around with for some time. They used it for a video with The Trillions due out later this year, but they wanted to try it out with less specific direction.
Zirpolo called the final video “more of an improvisational dance between Keith [Keith Paul, bassist for the band] in the bunny costume and me as the cinematographer.”
The one-shot effect was also literally shot only once because on the second take, Zirpolo went in for a close up and “caught an errant arm flail” and the camera broke.
Luckily it wasn’t Zirpolo’s main rig, but rather a secondary camera made for drone-use. “It took a hard smack and the gimbal stopped working. so I’ve gotta send it off to get fixed before my next music video,” the filmmaker said. “Luckily everyone nailed that first take so we still were able to make it happen in the end.”
As with all of Dumb Waiter’s videos, the imagery used is sure to stick with you, and Zirpolo, who worked with PJ Desutter on the infamous “Vegan Mustache Jazz” video, aimed to keep that tradition alive.
“I definitely felt an impetus to create something cartoonish and similarly stylized to fit the visual universe of Dumb Waiter,” he said. “There are quite a few shots in the video that are direct callouts to ideas that PJ created for the first video. But in terms of unique ideas to this video I know the creepy faux-cheerful veneer of the bunny’s unchanging facial expression will always be burned into my brain.”
Personally, I’m a big fan of the shot of a bunny screaming with anguish to the sky, and Zirpolo agrees, saying it was actually an homage to one of the last shots used in the Vegan Mustache video.
“That has always been one of my favorite shots from Vegan,” he said. “To recreate that within this video was a ton of fun.”
Keep up with Dumb Waiter on facebook here, and check out more of Zirpolo’s work here.
