By Will Yannacoulias
January 19th Saskatoon alternative electro-pop duo Actor Director released a new video to support their second summer single “Gold”. Long-time friends Emily M. Kohlert and Jared T. Beattie self produced the video, shooting with Super 8 on a pair of perfect summer days to capture the warm, nostalgic vibe of a fuzzy-edged fond memory. Kohlert and Beattie, both experienced in visual and performing arts, produced an ambitious but fun film; onscreen the two collaborators seek out creative inspiration, which playfully eludes them in plain sight time and again. The video debuted last October at the One Take Super 8 Film Festival at Saskatoon’s Roxy Theatre before being released on Actor Director’s social media this week.
“We wrote, planned, shot, edited, and coloured the video together” Actor Director told NSMZ. “The concept was to visually embody the spark, the thought, the cue, the moment when every thought in your mind, the questions, the indecision, the doubt, the conflicts we go through with each other, it all suddenly just clicks and you’ve got pure gold. We shot it in our neighbourhoods, our favourite parks and banks of the river. Its about us doing our favourite things, and making music through both hard work and the ease of inspiration. Searching, and working for that gold idea.”
The sun-soaked golden hue of the video captures perfectly the energy of the song, but the outdoor summer backdrop combined with the limitations of Super 8 brought unique challenges to the project. As the band explained, “It was hard work. Two days at the height of a heatwave. The constraint of only being able to shoot one take, each and every shot in sequence, because of the limitations of the film and in-camera editing. We would stage short rehearsals, then rest in the shade. We were putting this thing together one step barely in front of the last. Writing the next scene on the drive to the next location with the AC blasting. With a limited shot list, we followed our intuition and found conceptual links to the structure and lyrical capacity of the song. In that way, the process of the video was exactly the same as writing the song. That’s what we wanted. To capture the fluid process that is creativity.”
Kohlert and Beattie have professional backgrounds in film, graphic design, sound design and theatre, yet found themselves in uncharted creative waters producing the video for “Gold”. The pair see the DIY experience as a logical next step for the band artistically. “Our philosophy is that, if we can do it, we want to do it ourselves” they shared. “We knew if this this thing was getting done the way we wanted, we were doing it ourselves. Though we have our own experience in many mediums and projects, we’d never made anything like this together before, and we committed to the medium that presented the most challenges. It was a fulfilling experience, and another successful attempt at creating something that feels wholly like Actor Director.”