Making The Video: The Supersonics

Late last month we brought you the video for The Supersonics‘ single ‘In Memory Of‘. The video featured the band performing the song in various costumes on a rotating platform. We found out how the video was made, and why an elderly man needs to spin a stage.

Avinash Chordia (drums): The video was shot at a place called Circarena Theatre. Established in 1975, it’s a  unique place with its revolving arena platform which is placed on an elevator.
This hydraulic powered elevator (never seen something like this before) lifts a circular stage, which is manually turned by the 81-year-old proprietor of the joint himself, a gentlemen by the name of Amar Ghosh (Google his name its quite interesting). This place is now dilapidated and in dire need of repair but in the ’70s was apparently bustling with Bengali theatre and cabarets I’m told!

Strangely we did get this feeling like this must have been a cool place at some  point in time with a lot of interesting shit going down, as soon as you get in there.
The video is in line with the general concept of the song of selling out, and not really being happy about having to. We discussed the concept with Ricochet Films the production house that made the video (where I also happen to work!) and admittedly there was a lot of stuff the band was not ok with. A lot of the discomfort you see in the early part of the video is for real (come on we aren’t that good as actors!).

This was shot in just one-day bang in the middle of May, with all those costume changes, burning lights, confetti, and all… very,very HOT. The circular trips with the stage going up and down, I’m guessing about 25 times that day at least, was lets just say… tiring.

This video by Ricochet Films is directed by Avishek Ghosh with camerawork by Manoj Mishra, it was part of nine videos made for HMV Saregama. The idea for the tight close-ups of faces, hands and fingers, and feet while playing comes from some The Strokes videos that we liked. We really would have liked some more people coming in as the audience (we were working on a list of about 60, we had to make do with 6 in the end!) especially for that part when they put up the posters with the “Screw you”, “Fuck you”, but such is life I guess (they did screw us over!).

It was quite an experience really overall, a lot of hiccups through the way but overall a decent job I guess with the available time and money.

The Supersonics’ debut album Maby Baking is out soon via HMV. Here’s ‘In Memory Of’.

The Supersonics on MySpace