Behind the Scenes of the 'Backstabber' Music Video

Wait… What’s the “Backstabber” music video? Glad you asked!

Dragon Inn 3 is a sister band to the Springfield favorite, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and they released their debut album, Double Line, this August. It's a really wonderful homage to the '80s and early '90s both in sound and style. For their album's release, a handful of Springfield artists and filmmakers made music videos for certain songs to create a visual album which premiered at the Moxie.

Locke and Stache, the production company my husband Austin owns with two of our friends, Chris and Josh, decided to tackle the song "Backstabber", and I got to do the production design! Recently, the video was released on NPR's World Cafe, which was such a fun "pinch me" moment to see a project we worked so hard on earn a spot on a site we really admire.

Here's the video. The blog post that follows is a little bit of a "behind the scenes" insight for you, reader-friend, into how this got made... and a little bit of a page for my own digital memory book.

If you’re like me, you get distracted while watching TV and movies. So, so distracted. I think this happens to a lot of people who have some interest in cameras or lighting… gearheads, or whatever you want to call them. I’m occasionally plagued by these questions, too (was that “outdoor” scene really shot outdoors?), but most of my inner-movie-monologue revolves around production design.

My degree is in English — reading, understanding and dissecting literature — and one huge part of story is setting. In the real world, you can learn a lot about a person based off where they hang out and even how they dress themselves. For these reasons, it was so fun to take the incredible script Josh wrote and do a deep dive into setting.

Photos by Bradley Balsters

Parts of it were challenging. I was around in Springfield during the summer of 1992 (the setting for the music video), but, like... in a stroller. I wanted to really explore what our hometown would have looked like in those years; a lot of what comes to mind when we think '90s is more 1995-1999. For Detective Shepard, Chuck, Hank, Mr. Business, etc. in our video, the late '80s were certainly an influence in their appearance. I also wanted to depict these settings as accurately as we possibly could 30 years later. Some of my favorite little details we were able to throw in were the McSalty's pizza boxes, fictional newspaper clippings in the "crazy wall" scene and all the familiar Springfield faces and locations we could squeeze into three minutes. I studied crime scene photos from the "3 Missing Women" scene to do our best to accurately depict who these women were in the few seconds this concept plays out on screen. It's a small way to show respect to their human dignity, but I believe it's meaningful.

Let's talk about sets: Two of the sets were built in the Locke and Stache office, and those guys are so innovative I'm convinced they can pull off anything. The "mom's basement/crazy wall" scene was built in 4 hours, and this photo of Kaylinn and me gives a glimpse into what we were working with in that room. We took down the set the very next day to prep for the "Mr. Business" scene, which left the office covered in champagne and confetti. Whoops! 😂

Photos by Josh Pfaff

Let's talk about donating a lot of time and energy to a "just for fun" project with a group of people: Do it. If you have the opportunity, do it. If you don't see an opportunity, consider heading one up. For this music video, we shot five days in a row, sometimes until 3 a.m. or even later because many of the scenes were set at night. During the day, we hunted for any last-minute props and worked ahead on the next scenes. It was exhausting but worthwhile, and getting to know crew and other creatives on a more personal level is insanely rewarding. I've gotten to do prop styling on editorial shoots (both for photo and video), and exploring this new avenue of styling with more of a narrative to consider was really fun for me.

Let's talk about how talented EVERYBODY I KNOW is: I'm always impressed when I look around at our "little" city and how many big ideas live here. Every single person who was on this set made it better, but special shoutout to Kaylinn Clotfelter and her killer instincts on set. My job would have been a lot more challenging without the help of her and Isaiah Satterfield. Keep an eye out for those two and photographer Bradley Balsters; they're in a fun stage of life and able to be involved in a bunch of creative projects right now.

Annnnd, that's a wrap! Thanks for sticking with me if you've made it this far. 🤗

Photo by Bradley Balsters

Photography by Bradley Balsters, graphic design by Logan Triplett

p.s. If you want to hear more than just my take on the behind the scenes of this production (which I'm sure you do!), head over to Locke and Stache's BTS video released today.

and p.p.s. If you want to read more about Dragon Inn 3 (you should!), check out this News-Leader article. Big thanks to Phil and the band for making some great music and giving us the opportunity to work on this project.