Author: gonehazel

Gone Hazel’s First Official Video: Alternative This

Alternative This

Finally, a Gone Hazel video before you. No acting, no miming, just an animated companion to one of our best songs: Alternative This. A joy to make, it’s been sitting, waiting since 2013 but enough’s enough. Gone Hazel, formed in 1996, broke down in 1999, did a few things in 2004/5 and coming back to life in 2013, unleashes it’s first official video in 2015. Alternative This.

You can read about the complete dramatic story of Gone Hazel video-making here.

The Long and Winding Dramatic Story of Gone Hazel Video-Making Part 2

This Old Boat

Another video was made for This Old Boat, filmed sometime in 2004. To avoid the work and disaster that became Learning to Crack Part 2, this was a much easier video to make because multiple scenes & multiple takes were shot. With a simple back-drop, Gone Hazel would lip-sync the song (as is the tradition) and then in the editing room, we’d have some fun putting it together. It went really well. The director was so excited that when we took a break he wanted to show us the first few takes. Indeed, it looked great. We finished shooting that afternoon, went off for dinner to the Hard Rock Cafe (it’s a lifestyle, you know) and talked about how much fun it was.

And then the call came.

The director said that the first half of the footage was ruined because – now get this – after showing us the early takes, he forgot to forward the tape. He actually erased all the work we did when we did further filming. Apparently he tried to salvage what he had, which was us singing the ending, maybe, who knows. We’ve never seen disaster number two which was the video for This Old Boat. And there are no still photos of the shoot, as far as we know.

Uh Was a Hound

There is a footnote to the early Gone Hazel videography, which up until today, doesn’t exist. After the heartbreak of the Learning to Crack Part 2 video, the filmmakers, two lovely guys from Sweden, wanted to do another video for a different song, Uh Was a Hound. We said, being as upset as we were, just make the thing, make us look good, and let’s be done. The end product was us in black suits and ties miming to our song except – you hardly saw us. Most of the video was of our equipment. A guitar, a bass, a bass drum, the knobs on the guitar amp. So much for making us look good. The video is out there somewhere in someone’s archive. We saw it once and hated it. There is also a photo of us from the shoot which, by the way, didn’t make us look too good either. So much for the sharp black suits.

Which brings us up to the present day and the video for Alternative This, which has not only been completed, you can see it here.

The Long and Winding Dramatic Story of Gone Hazel Video-Making

Gone Hazel’s history in video-making is tragic (a very loose meaning of the word). Let’s start at the beginning.

Learning to Crack Part 2

In 1998, while The Kids Are Bored was getting regular rotation on college campuses in the US northeast, a video was made for Learning to Crack Part 2. The idea was simple. Since videos at the time were already going crazy with jump cuts, Gone Hazel chose to film a video with one camera angle and in one take. The two minute and twenty second video was not of Gone Hazel singing along but baking a cake. The camera stayed still while a bag of flour was skateboarded in and thrown on the table. Following that, a carton of eggs was delivered – on roller blades – and also thrown on the table. As the skateboard and roller blades circled the table in real time, the ingredients flew through the air: a jug of milk, chocolate syrup, paint, turpentine, mustard…anything that could be crammed onto the table. Then, with the preparation table more or less prepared, the roller blades came off, the skateboard was ditched and all three Gone Hazel members assaulted the ingredients. By the end, the scene was something you’d never see on the Food Network.

And as it turned out, it was also something no one (not even the band) would see at all. The film was exposed to light during developing and ruined. This fun idea, all filmed in one take, with Gone Hazel dressed only in chef hats and aprons, was never to be seen. Except for this: one photo of the film shoot has survived.

Learning to Crack video

To get an approximate effect of the video, listen to Learning to Crack Part 2 while staring at the photo.

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