Behind The Scenes: The Divine Project - The Revolt (Official Video)

The opening track for our REBIRTH EP, The Revolt, is a high-energy, in-your-face, anthemic-style song that will get the blood pumping. As such, we wanted to make sure the music video properly showcased this energy. A straightforward, epic performance video; the goal was to capture what it’s like to be at a TDP show. The crowd would represent the average person, coming from their office or blue-collar job, heading straight to a warehouse- style show.

In this video, being our second, we took everything we’ve learned from making DSTM and applied it to this one to help make things run smoother. Filmed a week apart, again with the Trenches Media team (The Ocean Cure, Big Wreck and Red-Handed Denial), we were excited to see what we could capture from the unpredictability of all the extras.

The Video

Although the video appears to be done in one setting, there were 2 separate stages prepared to capture all the footage: the concert with all the extras, and the solo performances.

A lot of the band and instrument close-up footage was captured during the solo performances. We think Trenches did an awesome job at blending the scenes, as you can’t really tell which shots are done with the band alone. While these scenes are shot and a few in between, the process of capturing them took hours. We started with individual shots of the guitarists and bassist, then did shots of the drummers, then the singer, and finally the band as a whole.

Another key element that we used for these shots was the 3 sets of lighting. These were the overhead spotlights, the horizontal atmosphere lights, and the ceiling sky lights. Adding a lot of fog and letting it dissipate in the room created a nice, somewhat dream-state atmosphere, which helped let the lights shine through in a manner that filled up the scene. We chose colour schemes that were the opposite of DSTM, to bring a different vibe to the video.

There were a couple of challenging parts to filming this video. To start, we didn’t have any lighting techs on site, so setting up, positioning, and operating the sky lights was done by us…. Eric, to be exact. It took him about 20 minutes, but he managed to figure out how to change the settings for the lights, positioning and colours, and managed to capture the tones needed for the feel of the video.

Second, and most importantly, was the filming of the crowd scenes. As these played a pivotal role in the overall video, we needed the crowd to be energetic, engaging, and really enjoying themselves. This was key to making the video great. Another challenge was having the crowd get into ‘the mood’ of the song without having anyone listen to it before the day of the shoot. We spent the first 20-30 minutes playing the song for everyone to enjoy, but also to help get an idea of the overall structure of the song. From there, time was of the essence as everyone had different time commitments. We expected it to be approximately 3 hours of filming max, and it ended up being closer to 4 hours. As the shoot went on, we started losing people, so we had to think of creative ways to keep the ‘grand’ feeling of the video intact. The crowd was the main driver to achieve this goal.

The cool thing to note was how awesome the crowd engagement was. We were surprised by how quickly they learned the words and when to join the bang for the breakdown. When the crowd started to get smaller, they started doing mosh pits to help fill in the spaces for the scene. That was wicked to see from our side. The energy that they brought was amazing. Everyone seemed to have a blast rocking out with us, even after filming the same scene over and over again. Our fans truly made the video what it was, and if it wasn’t for them, it would be as epic as it turned out! Overall, it was a huge success.

Here’s something for the brave. Someone mentioned to us that they tried a drinking game with The Revolt’s music video. It’s called “see the suit, take a sip”. It’s simple, there’s a person who showed up ‘dressed to the nines’ and really stood out; we think you all can figure it out when you watch the video. Anyways, the rules are simple: every time this person shows up on the screen, you take a sip. We haven’t tried the game, but we bet it’ll get you seeing stars very quickly *laughs*.

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