Behind The Scenes: Dreamslain - Burn The Boats (Official Video)

Our song Burn the Boats is about the destruction of local fisheries and the fight against it. The video idea started with us thinking about what we would not manage to do: we knew that we would not have the budget to travel to Greece to film the video. We thought about filming a boat model burning, but this wouldn’t really show what we wanted to show, namely the practices and traditions of coastal fisheries.

 

This got us thinking about alternatives, and there, ideas started popping up quickly, and after a few days of thinking, we had a basic concept: the sea is right outside our doorstep also up here in Northern Norway, and the same goes for local fishing traditions – which are furthermore threatened in a similar way as traditional fisheries in Greece. There we saw a meaningful way of building a bridge between what initially inspired the lyrics of Burn the Boats, and struggles relevant to our homeland, giving us the possibility to accentuate the importance of international solidarity. We also decided to focus on the aspect of local fisheries still going strong despite the pressure, by showing fishing boats “in action” rather than a burning boat – even though the latter sadly also is part of reality.

Igor hoping that the waves won’t be too high:

 

The guitarist and keyboardist like to go for drives or hikes in the surroundings of Tromsø, so location scouting came quite naturally. We thought about different fishing villages and more generally where we would find traditional fishing boats. It turned out that several of the locations where we ended up filming, were right in town. In an industrial area, we found a boat docked on land, which is the background for a part where Igor is singing. Also the part where Daniel pretends to sew floaters was filmed in town, a few houses away from Igor’s childhood home, at a fish flour factory where Igor’s great grandfather once worked. The fishing village Kvaløyvågen, where we filmed a fisherman delivering fish, and also the fishing boats heading back to port, is within Tromsø municipality, but around 1 hour’s drive from the city centre. While driving out there, we discovered quite a bit of wildlife, we saw seals and even managed to film an eagle, which we had to include in the video. The seal filming was less successful, but we did try, which implied us balancing on icy stone beaches in the cold winter weather, also trying to come close to an eagle, which of course took off while we were standing at the worst possible point in the middle of some trees…

this is why we couldn’t include the seal in the video:

 

Igor’s guitar solo was also quite a story. It is filmed close to Kvaløyvågen, we had just ended a take and were packing our things, when a small fishing boat appeared. Anna ordered Igor right back into the snow with his guitar to film another take. By pure coincidence, Igor was positioned in a way that he at no point stood in the way of the view towards the boat, so it ended up as a perfect shot. As soon as we had finished the take, we hurried to pack our things, ran to the car and drove as fast as we could through the snow to the port to film the same boat sailing in towards the pier. We managed to get there just in time and are really happy with the footage we got.

 

We ended up turning the organ around because of the direction of the wind:

 

Filming the organ parts outdoors was also quite an adventure. Someone gave away an old organ that didn’t work, so we thought it wouldn’t be a problem if the instrument took some additional damage from the snow. We fetched it and drove it to a pier, which on that day must have been Tromsø’s windiest and coldest place. And that was the same day we filmed Igor standing in the water, which at that time had a temperature of around 2-3 degrees…several times during the process of filming this video, we asked ourselves earnestly why we only filmed in winter. This was also the reason why we did not bring Daniel’s drum kit outside, we feared it could take damage in the snow and cold. Thus, the shots of Daniel were filmed while recording the song, so this is life from the studio, which enables us to show parts of his improvised drum solo as he plays it on the recorded version!

Daniel had even time to make silly faces while recording:

 

The theme of the video with a lot of impressions of water fits nicely with the heavy organ parts in ¾, that we composed to evoke the rolling of a ship at sea. You will discover similar elements in the sister song! Since both parts of the song, and the topic, are rather rough and harsh, we thought that the harsh winter landscapes of Northern Norway would complement the song nicely and emphasize those elements. Furthermore, the fact that we filmed during the polar night gave us only a very short time frame of around 2-3 hours in the middle of the day when there would be enough light to film. At the same time, the light we managed to catch gives a special atmosphere to the video. This is especially visible in the part where there is a shipwreck in the background, because in these shots, the moon is visible very clearly, with its reflection in the water. This was filmed around 1 o’clock during the day.

Contrary to the previous video (Cosmonautics), we filmed this video all by ourselves, using only mobile phone cameras, and filming each other. It was a different experience, and felt like a much smaller production, even though we filmed at more locations. And yet, we are really happy with the results, remember how much we froze every time we watch the video, and we do hope you enjoy it as much as we ultimately did filming it!

 

timing the music and the walking pace was a challenge given only computer audio and heavy wind: