Arrested Development - Mr. Wendal

Tony Bingham, a sincere friend, found our location for this video at the last minute - and we were of course elated. But on the shooting day in question, the skies produced rain clouds for miles.

I sat silently, thinking how I'd finally gotten to shoot a music video for this band (I had already directed their EPK and documentary), and now the heavens were not cooperating. Clearly a disaster was abound. I decided to shoot anyway. Maybe two takes in, I'd pretty much given up on the clip having any signature look...everything was drab, muddy and dark.

But within, it seemed, seconds, a wondrous thing happened. I received a call from my steadicam operator who said prior his schedule would not allow for him to be there - now he was asking for directions. My smile began. Once he arrived, the cloud cover peeled back. We had a stretch of about 3 hours of moist sunlight! Outstanding!

After a bit of fertile photography, we packed up and left the farm location, stumbling accidently on a small shack in the middle of nowhere. Funny, when I entered the rickety structure, a visible hole stood out in the middle of the place. I thought out loud, "Quick, let's place the camera down there, and spin it in a circle to catch each band member in a different part of this open house. Worked like a charm!

And when I suggested Speech sit in the window, the sun grew brighter for our two only takes. God...is all one can say.

We traveled back to downtown ATL, where I was favored with the distinct honor of working with famed artist, Radcliffe Bailey. A polished professional. He braved rush hour traffic, and seedy alleyways for us to capture what was pure about his work even then.

We ended our spirited day at the Scoville Hotel, where we finalized our efforts for the remainder of the concept.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Arrested
• Development
• Mr.
• Wendal
• music
• video
• Speech
• Headliner
• Eshe
• Rasadon
• Baba-Oje
• Aerlee
• Taree
• Radcliffe
• Bailey
• hip-hop

[louietheduke]

back when hip hop had a message and black guys had that leather tricolor africa necklace. I miss the 90s hip hop :(

[MoneyC225]

Conscious Music! It worked out well in da late 80s & early 90s cuz of da Black uprising. Dem punk ass record execs of today won't promote this kinda music now becuz they won't us 2 hate ourselves.

[Fusionfreakdrummer]

man..... nothing like the 90's! i remember this so well, and how positive and deep it is!

[boliverful1]

@wiscounter You're probably thinking of Digital Underground...check out "Same Song" by them, Tup's on that one...

[haroon19able]

" Nice "...

[wiscounter]

wasn't 2pac in this group too?

[KennyObiWanKenobi]

Love it :-D

[polistyrenejassband]

@MoneyC225 alot of the big rap record execs are actually black (bad boy/roca fella) i think its more about making disposebel music you can fire out easily and make the most profit not keeping a culture down

[MrXcxcxcxcxcxc]

best video intro 0:48 ever

[alexhettig]

@Bindydog still is