The Chain

While making this music video, I wanted to steer away from the norm of just seeing people lip sync to the lyrics of the song; I wanted to tell some sort of more powerful story through this. In our brainstorming sessions, we came across the idea of some sort of "The Purge" idea where it tells the story of a man who's running away from his murderers while also trying to save one of his loved ones. Over time, it morphed into a man trying to overcome his inner demons. By facing them head on, he hopes to overcome them. 

I really enjoyed the filming process of this video. I wanted to film in locations that were not just in bedrooms and things like that. I found a small woods near campus as well as a building that was going through renovations in which we were allowed to be in. These two locations really sold the vibe that we wanted to go for, and fit in perfectly with the theme of the video. In the building that was being renovated, we had a lot of space to just play with the environment. Most of the time, we just walked around making things that looked creepy because we could, and a lot of it ended up being used in the final product. Editing took forever though. The look of having only the singer in color and everything else in black and white meant going frame-by-frame, creating a custom mask around his body, adding a color filter over top.

This video was made for the International Competition for Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) and was submitted as the Chip's Semifinals round video. Something surprising to note is that we were the only group in the entire competition to make a different video from the one submitted for quarter-finals. In this competition, it won 1st place, outstanding arrangement, outstanding vocal percussion, outstanding soloist, and outstanding videography, on top of moving onto the International Finals. We were able to pull this off, once again, in the matter of only four weeks. After making this video, there were plans to make a 3rd video, but there was a minor COVID outbreak in the group, causing those plans to fall through. Thus, The Chain was submitted for finals as well. Unfortunately, it received no awards, however, making it to finals means being in the top 10 in the contested world for that year, and I was so honored to be able to be highlighted in that capacity and have my work be shown on the world stage. 

Director & Videographer:
Eric DeVore

Storyboard:
Eric DeVore
Clayton Markham
Adam Rakeicki
Ben Samalin
Simon Wu

Props Designer:
Ryan Storto

Song:
The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
Performed by: The Buffalo Chips
Soloist: John Bologna
Mixed by: John Bologna

Performers:
John Bologna
John DellaContrada
Eric DeVore
Zack Farnam
Clayton Markham
Patrick Nembhard
John Perdue
Matthew Pestinger
Adam Rakeicki
Nathan Roberts
Ben Samalin
Ryan Storto
Simon Wu

Special thanks to:
Michael Jankowski
The Buffalo Chips Alumni Association
The University at Buffalo