Empyrean "Le Retour" Music Video

I had the pleasure of recently creating a Music Video for our good friends in the Orlando-based Metal band, Empyrean. The hired me on to Shoot, Direct, and Edit the video, for their song "Le Retour De Mere-Terre", on their album Resurrection Engine. The video was quite an undertaking, and we spent 6 days on location, 2 days in the mountains of North Georgia, a day in a Victorian manor in Gainesville, FL, a day in the woods of Geneva, FL, and 2 days in the Florida Keys. The the amount of labor and travelling (40 hrs of driving), this would be a great feat for any normal full sized film crew. None the less, we went armed with myself, the band, actors, and 5 makeup artists. We chose to laugh in the face of adversity (and Tifton, GA folk).

The video had it's grand premiere at the House Of Blues in Orlando, this past Saturday night, where the band, and 4 other local acts also performed. What should have been a magical evening, turned into turmoil, when after weeks of assurance from HOB that this was totally cool, they decide an hour before doors open, that they will NOT allow our video to play, due to content. We have a guy being hung, and a girl falling into the ocean... My argument was that just because our film didn't have "Pirates of the Caribbean" in front of it, didn't mean it should be censored. After a while of serious arguments and negotiations with HOB and Disney, we finally threatened legal action, and they decided they would let us show the video, if we blacked out the parts they deemed inappropriate. This amounted to 45 seconds of the 7.5 min video. Luckily, Drew, the band's drummer had a laptop only 20min away he could edit on, and he ran home to throw in the black. They were literally arguing over whether to play it, up till the time the screen rolled down. The crowd laughed and Boo'ed over the sections that suddenly cut to black and read "HOB EDIT". So other than suffering mild heart palpitations, the night ended on a high note, and we still came out on top.

Watch the final video here for Le Retour, in all of it's uncensored glory.

^Click Full Screen for Full HD