LH: You guys released the “Belcarra” music video and, along with a vocal cover that you did live. What has the response been and how did it feel to finally get that song out there, because it is powerful?
Courtney: We are so excited because we shot that music video in December and we had this song done since, god, I guess June or something like that. Yeah. So the song’s been done since June of 2018 and we shot the video in December 2018, and so we’ve just been sitting there wanting to put this song out for a long time, but we just kept pushing it back, because we just wanted to make sure it was a good release and we had all our artwork looking good, and we added our own video, so we wanted to make sure that it was looking as good as possible, right? So, it was so awesome to finally put out that really more heavy song, because we led all of our releases with a bit more of a groovy, more prog song, so it was nice. This song is a little tornado of heaviness, so I’m happy to dump this one on the world.
LH: You mentioned that you guys edit your own videos. I would like to say that, as a person that has definitely dove into you guys head first, you really take pride in the music videos. They’re edited well, they’re unique, and I sort of get a ’90s vibe in some of the music videos.
Courtney: You know what? You probably get the ’90s is probably because aesthetically, the more low fi something is, the easier it is to pull off, you know what I mean? We really lean into the fact that our stuff is very low fi visually, because we’re literally just doing it ourselves on our iPhones, except for, of course, you can see if you were to look at all of our videos, I don’t even have to say this, because it’s so obvious, but our video for “Perennial” clearly was shot by a professional. Our friend Dylan did that one and so we’re hoping that he’s… we have one more song to put out, and we’re hoping that Dylan is going to direct that one as well, so we can begin and end with Dylan doing our videos.
LH: What goes into making the videos? I’ve always been one to say that visuals are very important, and you guys seem to have an emphasis on visuals. Do you always try to make the best visual for the song, or do you make something a little different?
Courtney: Yeah. We don’t do it because we are truly talented at making visuals and stuff like that. We do it purely out of necessity, because we’re such a new band that any way that we could get more people to find out about our band and have sharable content that we can stand by is gonna help us so much rather than just putting out one song and hope people buy an EP. So, throughout the last year or so, Michael, my husband and our guitar player, we just taught ourselves how to do that and, obviously, our first and our only love is just making music and we’d rather focus on that. But, because of the necessity of needing to get people to be aware of our band, he’s really stumbled into finding that he’s actually quite good at doing music videos. But, in a perfect world, we would rather just pay the professionals to come up with, work with them to come up with something more finessed, but until that day comes, we want as many people to see us as possible, so we’re gonna continue to put out that visual aspect of our band. And it’s been really fun to learn how to do all that stuff.
LH: Now, what would you say has been your personal favorite music video to film?
Courtney: Well, obviously the one that our friend Dylan did, “Perennial,” was really cool because we got to watch a professional work, but I loved shooting… you know what? I think my favorite one was the one from our previous EP release that we put out last year. It’s a song called “The Mara Effect, Part One,” and I like that one because that was the first time that we got to make an actual performance music video. Before that, it was just more of a storyboarded video, because we didn’t have a full band to do a live performance then, and so I was so happy when I got to do that one, because it was really, really simple, because we finally got to perform a song as a band in a more traditional sense. So, that was my favorite one to do, I’d say. It’s like an all black and white video and we’re in an old warehouse. If you get time to check it out.
LH: I’d have to say that my personal favorite, I think, would have to be, I’d definitely say “The Mara Effect, Part 3” would be my favorite. I thought just the white water around your face and how you moved around, and it was appropriate for the tone of the song, as well. Just the movements that you had and I felt like, especially at the end, when you’re mixing the screams and clings together, it all meshed together so well and I just felt like it was very artistic.
Courtney: Well, that one was literally just Michael just standing above me on our bathtub and me lip syncing the song, which I couldn’t hear, because my ears were under the water and I had to just hope that I was on time. And then, we spent $10 on a couple gallons of milk and then $10 on some flour, and that’s all that, and he just shot it on his iPhone.
LH: Wait. So you were in a bathtub filled with milk?
Courtney: Yeah. You put in half water and then a couple gallons of milk and it all works out.
LH: Now, one more general question about the video. In the “Perennial” video, when you were actually in the body of water, you had this effect on your face. It was really bright and glittery. How did you guys manage to get that effect? It was really cool.
Courtney: Oh, well, I literally had glitter all over my whole body. I was covered in glitter. So, if you saw me in person, I looked crazy, but Bill, our bass player, his wife happens to be a professional makeup artist, so she was kind enough, for that video, to come and do my makeup for all the scenes. She put glitter from my whole head down to my chest and my arms and my fingers, everything, so I was covered in glitter, so it looks very, I’m so glad that you could kind of see that, because it was really subtle, but it makes me so happy because it was very uncomfortable to be covered in glitter for 10 hours, because I had to wait. She was leaving that day to go back to… we live on the island, and she was leaving that day to go back to Vancouver, and so she had to put the glitter on me before she left, but we had to wait till sunset to do that scene, so I had to just sit there all day covered with head to toe with glitter.
From: https://www.loudhailermagazine.com/interviews/interview-with-courtney-laplante-of-spiritbox/
