Kaiya On The Mountain recently teamed up with cinematographer David Kearns to create a modern-day, fantasy-driven story about the balance between life and karma. As producer of the video, I was curious to know the story behind it, and I recently caught up with singer Kaiya Pelletier in a phone interview to learn more.
It turns out that the entire video was shot on a zero-dollar budget. The way Pelletier explains it, “David was actually my keyboardist a couple of years ago. He was about to go shoot a feature film and needed an excuse to test out all his new gear, so he offered to shoot a free music video for us.”
The idea behind the video is twofold. One, the movement of the members of the band represents how you can try to escape karma, but eventually it will catch up to you. Two, it shows the band searching for their instruments and honing their craft. In the end, they all come together in the clearing and karma, a benevolent force in this instance, meets up with them and brings them all together to form a band.
When asked about the inspiration behind the music video, Pelletier says, “During our pre-production meeting, Matt, our bassist, mentioned that Portugal. The Man shot The Oregon City Sessions at Supernatural Sound, in the exact room where we were going to be shooting, and they put religious candles all over the room. We had already scheduled to shoot through the night and had about a hundred candles we were hoping to use, so we garnered inspiration from The Lords of Portland and did the same thing.” Additionally, none of the outdoor footage was scripted. The crew drove around a state park outside of Oregon City and looked for some cool forest areas. “The vision was clear, but the way it all came together was just very organic,” Pelletier says.
