“Truckee … Dog Country; A destination not for the faint of soul. One must always know where their towel is when Sneaky Creatures run amuck; for on this evening, a celestial meeting beneath the house of the Black Steed was under way. Creatures gathered from the farthest reaches of the Laniakea Supercluster to participate in a performance, whose vibes were felt clear past the Extragalactic Symphonic Houses of Andromeda. Celebrated and broadcast to more than 100,000 galaxies throughout our multiverse, Earth’s own Sneaky Creatures rocked the Cosmos with their live performance of ‘Dirt Circus’, the title track off their latest album. Due to the broadcast constraints of 26-Dimensional Fractal-HD, and Sneaky Creatures’ uncanny ability to throw a great party, the band stuck around to record a second hit, ‘Ragamuffin’. It was said that Intergalactic President Rodrigo Darlithian was in attendance, under the cover of a lei, as to not stun the earthlings with his first ever visit to the system. It is unknown whether the Intergalactic President participated in the actual performance, and what ramifications this may have on Extragalactic Relations. “ – Front page excerpt from The Relative Times, Sep 3, 2016
What a show, eh!? The energy, the people, the setting, it was incredible! Everything we were looking for in our third installment, we found with our friends, Sneaky Creatures. We all had way too much fun producing this piece, and I can’t thank everyone enough for helping my vision come to life!
The idea for the filming of the Sneaky Creatures Dark Horse After Hours performance came when I was thumbing through the channels one evening with the homies. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was on, and it’s always worth a click to see what scene of absolute chaos you land on. This time, we just so happened to land on the Ether-Induced entropy that is Mr. Thompson’s Circus Circus escapade. While the characters stumble through this vaudeville nightmare, the camera follows as if it were a fly in the room, going dutch (aka rolling sideways) to introduce this unease to the viewer. We were in the concept development for the Sneaky Creatures After Hours at the time and I had to text the team immediately. Coincidentally, Todd was reading the Fear and Loathing graphic novel at the time, and we immediately knew we were on the right track.
Sneaky Creatures have such a cool, vaudeville-esque sound, and we wanted to capture a performance that was true to their style. Something different. Something fun, with a dash of sinister weirdness and psychedelic funk. We knew we needed the sneakiest of creatures to pull this off, and we didn’t truly have more than a week to work out all the details.
A week: the perfect amount of time in Truckee. Spontaneous enough to make it in the schedule, but not too close that you can’t find a babysitter.
We started our search by posting up flyers at Dark Horse, asking people to join us if they had an odd talent, or a general interest in being weird with us for an evening. Luckily, between ourselves, our friends, and our town, there’s no shortage of weirdo’s runnin’ ‘round these parts. The creatures were starting to assemble, but we needed set the scene in order to make this thing come together like Voltron.
Drew and I had no problems finding ways to make the Dark Horse a carn-evil nightmare, for we live in close proximity to the biggest little city in the world.
Reno: A concrete jungle of remorse and sorrow. Also See: Mini Vegas
Not really, we just say that because we like to act that we don’t rely on Reno for every luxury of modern society. Have you tried to live without Trader Joe’s after you’ve been awakened? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
The King of Light Roast and myself got to thriftin’. The weirder and more out of place an object seemed, the better prop it was going to be for our show. We also grabbed a ton of random costume materials, and we were pretty stoked at how guests put the box of randomness to use. This one dude put the hula skirt on his head! And I have no idea where he got that massive umbrella…
The last piece of our puzzle were the wonderful ladies over at Tahoe Flow Arts. We honestly didn’t know if they were going to be able to make it or not until the day of the show, but I’m so amped they did. They’ve worked closely with Sneaky Creatures before, and had a dialed routine for the songs we chose to perform. They really made the show and I’m so grateful they took an evening out of their schedules to come join us!
I had been doing a bit of film study on revealing characters and building suspense, and I wanted to put what I was learning in to practice. I wanted to have the creatures awaken to the music, and after the initial curiosity of their new mortal form wears away, they begin to look for who awoke them, and what it is that is causing them to dance. I wanted to follow the creatures through the front door on their search for the illustrious orchestrators, keeping it all one cohesive take. This means we were handing the camera off through the window, an effect I’ve been wanting to put in to practice A LONG TIME.
We nailed it. The awakening, the gathering by the door, the perfectly timed handoff as the door opened, all in front of a live audience, and without countless rehearsals.
We envision every After Hours being a raw experience, where your watch your favorite acts, live, in a scene set for a music video. Where anything can happen, because there are no rules, no strict guidelines. Sneaky Creatures @ Dark Horse After Hours is a perfect example of this.
Endless creativity. Endless possibilities. And we’re just gettin’ started.
E