words by Sean Holohan
There’s someone out there for everyone. Even you, mannequins, as we learn in civicminded’s new music video for “The Vandal.”
The concept of the video originated from a brainstorming session between civicminded vocalist Lawrence Deal and director Aaron Gum (who’s previously worked with Omaha’s Jimmy Hooligan and Young Votta) last July. Deal says he and Gum shared an affinity for using inanimate objects in film.
“We wanted to illustrate the whole fish-out-of-water contrast between mannequins and the living,” Deal says. “It is a metaphor for how people can sometimes feel ostracized in society.”
“The Vandal” is the first single off the band’s forthcoming album, Fan Fiction, set for a May release.
The video revolves around concepts of human isolation and detachment from society and follows the lives of a man and woman mannequin. The video opens with the “man” surfing dating websites and shifts to him lying in bed with a living woman he met online.
Over eerie, spooky-sounding synths, which fit the video’s mood, Deal sings about feeling alone in the world and the hope that there might just be someone out there.
“He who holds the flame lights the candle,” the singer exclaims in the chorus.
“The song is about being not afraid to be a pioneering spirit when it comes to things like love and war,” Deal says. “Sometimes in life, what is crazy to one person may be normal to the other.”
Throughout the video, the “man” is seen trying to engage in various “human” activities such as ordering coffee at a coffee shop, playing frisbee in the park and going to a movie. But in every scene, the dummy is tormented by humans for being different. What he doesn’t know is that his parallel, star-crossed woman mannequin is having an equally rough go of it. Eventually, of course, they meet, finding solace in each other’s similar understanding of the world.
And although the video was underway as of July 2013 and took the next six months to fully produce, Deal says his “actors” were certainly not to blame.
“If nothing else, it was way easier working with mannequins than real people for this video.”
Watch “The Vandal” music video here:
Sean Holohan is Hear Nebraska’s editorial intern. Mannequins give him nightmares. Reach him at seanh@hearnebraska.org.