Concept: The first decision we made with the band was that the video would not be a performance video. While we did want to show off the band, they wanted a video that had more of a story, rather than shots of them playing and singing. This is why the video has no band set up. This is also why we created the “office supply instruments”. We wanted to show what each member played, without cutting to a performance shot.
Female heroes and secret identities
The song’s topic is very clear. Dan raps about this mysterious, special girl who he knows so much about, yet strangely doesn’t even know her name. We knew that we wanted to make the video revolve around a very strong female lead, thinking that the song and video could be inspiring to young ladies who might watch it. In a broader sense, the song is also showing that someone could know a lot about a girl on the surface, and still not know anything about who she really is. Often, girls have many layers of emotions and personalities, putting forth a strong face, when really, they are troubled inside. As a guy, I really respect many girls who have been through a lot personally, yet still hold it together on the outside. This is where the idea for a “secret identity” and “super heroine” came about, because we felt many girls have secret identities.
Why an office?
We wanted to bring the idea of a female superhero into everyday life. The initial idea had the video take place at a school, with Dan and the band members caught in detention. They would’ve be playing instruments made of school supplies, and Angela would’ve been saving them from an evil teacher. This would also relate to their name “afterschoolspecial”. But ultimately we decided that we wanted to make the video more “grown up”, so we thought, for someone older, what’s the equivalent of being stuck at school? Being stuck at work.
And so the story of Dan and his bandmate coworkers in the office was finalized. Angela is the mysterious girl that Dan knows little about, and just as they finally get to meet, the evil boss catches them and makes him and his friends all stay after. Just before they get separated, Dan gives Angela the drawing on the paper, which she later reveals as her symbol (like the bat signal for Batman). This is her cue to “transform” and go back to save the band. After an epic stapler war, and a helpful distraction from Paul Dateh, everyone escapes!
Production: The entire video was shot in one day at an office in San Diego. All the actors and extras were friends of the band. The great thing about the video was that it was all in one location, an indoor location. Everything was contained and we literally had this “set” to ourselves. This made shooting go much smoother and more comfortable (no need to worry about external interference)
The fight scene was done with Philip (the boss) and Angela pretending everything. At first we tried to see what it would look like if they really shot the staples. Sadly, the staples only went a few feet, and couldn’t even be seen on camera. So we removed all the staples from the staplers and decided that adding special effects later would look better anyway. The “enhanced” staple guns were done by our friend Eugene Gauran, the same friend who did the photo tornado in the “That Girl” music video. All the paper “explosions” were done just by throwing the paper on top of the actors, but props to Philip for having to really take a hit from the clip board and falling to the ground many takes!
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