Interview by Mia Lopez -
"Video was always in the forefront of my mind even when Hans, Geoff and I were roughing out the tracks in the rehearsal room before even recording anything to tape." Michael further explains. "Many times I would envision motion imagery that could possibly accompany a particular song or passage. It was like seeing a movie in my mind as we would rehearse a song. It was for this reason that I knew that music videos were in our future as well as for the purpose of expanding our creative horizons.
When it came time to select a track to create a video from, it was obvious that Eve would make a great video for the simple fact that the lyric had many references to concepts that lend themselves to motion picture imagery. Eve is also a song that has some great action in terms of what each band member is playing on their instrument. With this in mind, I thought the video could be primarily a performance video with some cutaways to conceptual scenes. Eventually the time came when we could draw up a storyboard and get the process rolling. The storyboard only took a few hours to layout due to the fact that I had already thought out the scenes in my mind at rehearsals, during the track's mixdown in the recording studio, and sleepless nights lying in bed.
Once the story board was prepared, I assembled a small camera crew. Lou Richards was called in as director of photography. Lou brought with him 30 years of experience behind the camera as well as experience in theater. Derek Sipple was assistant to Lou. Derek was earning his degree in film at Rochester Institute of Technology. He was the first to actually show up at design co. studios earlier to sit in on some of the storyboarding. Last but not least, Zach McQuaid was called in as a camera man as well as an all around technical person. He ended up conducting some informal interviews as well as overall documentation of the video shoot which may end up as bonus material for a dvd release. Zach had years of experience as a film projection engineer as well as experience with cameras and production. My role was that of director.
With our crew assembled we shot the intro "Garden of Eden" scene on 8_13_06 and the band performance scene on 8_20_06." The footage sat in storage for some time before Michael had a chance to start editing. "I was busy with the design and layout of the X7 cd package and the cd lyric and art booklet (as well as dealing with other business). The video was edited over a period of time starting in November 2006 through June 2007. The video was released on 7_7_07. Different versions of the video may be released with various treatments and cuts as well. The on-line video is available on our videos page along with other video clips from other projects. At this time we have the Eve "teaser" clip posted which is the intro to the song as well as the full length video. We hope you enjoy the video as well as the song."
Photos at right are from the intro "Garden of Eden" scene. Lou Richards is the camera man in the photos. Gailyn Guzolik is playing the role of Eve and Michael is playing the intro guitar part.
