Coverstars Thirty Seconds To Mars made a bonkers video for 'A Beautiful Lie', in an online exclusive the band tell Rock Sound just how dangerous and stupid the whole endeavour was...but first the video...
A Beautiful Lie
So, how much fighting did it take to do this video?
Says guitarist Tomo Milicevic: ''I think it was a lot of fighting. The record label did not think it could be done. They were worried if we were going to turn anything in. I do know that it took the better part of an entire year to plan this video, Jared was talking about this around the time we did 'From Yesterday'. Almost as soon we were done with it he worked on the idea of going to the arctic. Which was the first idea before anything else for this record. He wanted to go for antartica but it was 24 hour darkness when we needed to film.''
Continues brother Shannon Leto: ''It was an idea a year and a half. Lots of conversations. Some heated. Anytime you bring up a new idea to anybody the usual response is negative. Jared is good at convincing people and he has ideas that work.''
Do you think that a film shot entirely in the Peoples Republic of China helped?
Tomo: ''It must have helped that he pulled off China.''
Was that video tough to make too?
Shannon: ''Once we were in it was definitely challenging. But once we landed there was no union and so everyone on the crew just worked all the time.''
Tomo: ''There were certain things that were worrying. The government sent a minister of culture to watch over us during the shoot. He had to approve every shot before it took place and it made it stressful for sure. And only 6 people out of 600 hundred onset spoke English. The first assistant director was talking through speakers to the soldiers, it was like an old communist rally or something. Then for 'A Beautiful Lie we had only 6 people to do the whole thing. The town we were in was called Illulisat, a town famous for its icebergs and they thought we were crazy for doing it. People thought we were out of our minds. The guide in the beginning of the video who was the inuit ice expert he said to Jared that he would not go with him to where Jared wanted to be posted for the shot. He was afraid he was going to die. We carried the gear ourselves and everything.''
Were either of you in danger?
Shannon: ''The icebergs are always changing and so we were doing a shot and we see Tomo jump as he heard the shotgun sound which means the ice is about to split. Two days before we went there someone fell into an iceberg and died. The waters were pretty bad too, so we threw bags into the boat and trying to jump in every day. It was cold as shit and rough.''
Tomo: ''There is no way to describe how stupid the whole affair was. We lost an entire day as it rained. We got lucky on the glacier though but it was an experience you cannot forget. Oh, we nearly got left on the iceberg too. At night the weather changes so drastically that it becomes unsafe to fly and the glacier starts to crack and change dramatically. We were trying to get the final shot. The helicopter guy gave us five minutes and he is started to leave, he got in the chopper and he nearly left without us, we would have died for sure.''
But surely he would not have actually left?
Shannon: ''It was all under the radar anyway so he would not get in trouble. It was a sketch video. We were not covered by insurance for most of it and no one was unionised. The director of photography was the only legit dude on the crew.''
Andrew Kelham
30 Seconds To Mars MySpace
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