We now present to you the official music video for Crossing the Bar, from our 2010 album Stay Awake! Directed by Adam Chinoy, starring me and Brian, filmed at Monmouth Beach, NJ.
We had to wake up in the early AM and drive to the beach in the dark before the sun came up. We couldn’t film a sunset and achieve the same dramatic effect, because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and therefore on the east coast the sun rises over the water and sets over the land. To get the sun over the ocean, we had to film at dawn. It was totally worth it, the colors that day were amazing.
There is one thing that we had to cut from this video, regretfully. We had originally planned on making paper boats, placing them in the water, and then filming them floating out to sea. Sadly, if the paper boats were released too close to shore, they were swamped by waves in seconds. If they were placed too far away from the land, they were too small and hard to see, no matter how much Adam zoomed his camera. After showing the shots to our friends and having them fail to identify the dots in the water as paper boats, we gave up. Adam saved the day by discovering a sailboat on the horizon in several of the shots and emphasizing that instead.
We plan to make more ambitious music videos in the future, but for what it is, a simple performance video, we’re very happy with the results. Sunrise over the ocean is pretty.