Living Dead Girl’s new Dysfunctional video puts the band in the center of a massive house party. The band is fronted by songwriter/vocalist Molly Rennick, and it was drummer Steve Haining who directed the music video.
According to Haining, Dysfunctional was inspired by the music videos of the early 2000s and came together relatively quickly. The crew found the large house for the shoot via Airbnb, and worked out a contract that would allow for the production — with 40 rowdy partiers — to take place.
In Dysfunctional, the band performs in the suburban home’s large living room while friends and fans of the band party all around them — drinking, hooking up and even getting tattooed. A single day was used to prep for the next day’s five-hour shoot. Two Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6Ks were used for principal photography, and two Sony A7 III cameras were used for gimbal shots. In one segment, Molly was shot at 4x speed and then slowed to 24fps to create a slow-motion effect for the partiers around her.
Haining brought in some of his Canadian crew connections for the shoot, including Troy Sexton (Stomp), who helped with choreographing camera moves, particularly when they drummer was on-camera.
Rotolight provided some of its advanced LED lighting solutions for the shoot, allowing the production change brightness as called for during the day-time shoot.
Drummer, director, editor Steve Haining
The edit evolved over a two-week stretch, with Molly helping to select takes. Haining cut the project in Adobe Premiere Pro and then gave it its color grade using Blackmagic Design's Resolve, playing up some of the pink of the guitars, while also adjusting the contrast.
“The hardest part of the editing was just watching the moments where everyone looked good,” he explains. “Not just the band.”
The band’s performance was recorded in its entirety each time with multiple cameras. Each band member was also shot individually using multiple cameras. The party b-roll was captured arbitrarily with the soundtrack playing back.
“We wanted it to be punchy,” Haining says of the color grade. “We kind of shot in Blackmagic’s standard profiles, and brought up the contrast and blacks to look more metal. We also accented the pinks to contrast with the walls.”
In addition to Rennick and Haining, Living Dead Girl includes Jordan Storring (bass) and Jonni Laww (guitar).