photo credit The crowd looks on during the shooting of the wrestling match scene of the music video for “Record Store.”   photo credit Joseph Williams applies make up to Tommy Dowell before the shoot.   photo credit Above: The crowd looks on during the shooting of the wrestling match scene of the music video for “Record Store.” Right: Joseph Williams applies make up to Tommy Dowell before the shoot.

The Making of
“Record Store”
Surprising mix of people
join to film local band’s first video

By Sally Carraher
Northern Light

All under 23 years old, the members of the band Nothing Less have a lot under their belts, including a label contract and some die-hard groupies. But the band still has a lot they want to accomplish in Alaska before hitting the road for their new home in California this May, after bassist Tommy Dowell and drummer Henry Hartman graduate from the University of Alaska Anchorage. And Alaska has plenty of people who want to help them.

Nothing Less, made up of Dowell, Hartman and guitarist Tim Waters, spent most of last week with Alaskan Nomad Productions director Sean Morris and his crew shooting their first music video “Record Store.”

The video will be released with their new album later this winter. But more than film crew guys and groupies, the real sight to see on the shoot location at Hilltop Ski Area last Wednesday and Thursday was the incredible variety of Alaskans who banded together to help make the video a reality.

Many of the people involved had not known anything about Nothing Less before they got involved with this project. In fact, mother-of-two, Tammy Easely (who plays the record store girl in “Record Store”) had never heard their music before. The band’s manager Pat Waters is Easley’s “sheet rock guy” for the remodeling of her house.

“I listen to similar music, but I’d never heard of them before. They don’t really play in bars or that venue, so I never heard them,” Easely said.

An Anchorage man who had never known of Nothing Less before, responded to a radio announcement aired late Wednesday to be included as an extra in the crowd shots for the video. The man was welcomed aboard and jumped right into the mosh pit for the concert scene, bouncing around despite his broken foot.

Other extras included people more familiar with Nothing Less, like 20-year-old Tim “Spike” Todd, who drove from Soldotna to be in the shoot.

“I hung out with the band a few times while they were practicing,” Todd said.

“The process is weird because we get everything set and then wait and then do a couple of takes. It’s 35mm film, so we can’t go back and erase,” Tim Waters said. “I don’t think we took a break yesterday.”

Hartman took his own camcorder around and filmed the filmers filming them. Hartman appeared in the indie film “Killing the Shrew” and likes to make home movies of himself and his band mates riding down the snowy hills in his La-Z-Boy-on-skies.

“I really didn’t think it was going to happen until today,” Hartman said at the first night of the shoot. “When you get something really archaic and expensive-looking [the Arriflex 35mm camera] pointed right at you, you say ‘it’s time to get serious.’”

“It’s a small community so everyone’s either friends or not friends,”

Pat Donnelly, film lights and electrician said. Donnelly is what the business calls a “gaffer.” Speaking of small worlds, Donnelly and the make-up artist and hairdresser for the shoot, Joseph Williams, worked together in New Zealand on the indie film “Tikanga Amerikana,” which came to UAA Oct. 11.

“Joe’s a really good accidental therapist,” Hartman said while waiting to get made up for the wrestling shoot.

“There’s people in third-world countries who would die to be in your position in this work! So stop your bitching!” Williams said.

“See?” Hartman said.

Fan Hellen Fleming, a student at Bartlett high school, stayed with the band and production crew to the very end of the first night – near 7 a.m., Thursday. She then went, the same day, to get her wisdom teeth extracted. Fleming returned on-site less than 12 hours after surgery to be included in the crowd during the wrestling match scene.

Alaska Wrestling Federation member “Big Dave” donated his time and a real wrestling ring to the filming process, and will appear in the video hoisting Hartman by his britches into the ring, leaving the record store girl to Dowell and Waters.

Working right along with the band and crew through the whole process has been local scenester and Tim Water’s girlfriend, Alyssa Adamcik.

“I’m pretty much a gopher or whatever they need,” Adamcik said. “I go to Sean, who’s the director, and I say ‘Please direct to me to do something.’ Usually it’s to get pizza.”

The shoots were long and non-stop. This week should mark the beginning of the editing process for the video.

“Any time, with production, you can guess on about ten hours from the first shot,” Morris said.

Nothing Less will show their video at their CD release party and will also release it to be aired on television networks. The band is equally concerned with finishing a lot of production work as well as doing live shows before leaving Alaska.

“You get to a point where you can’t do anymore in the place you’re at. So maybe we’ll stay in California or maybe we’ll end up in, like, New Jersey – wherever the music takes us,” Waters said.

For video updates, including sneak peeks at film clips from the shooting process, visit www.nothingless.net.