If you’re into Very Famous Millennials and angsty lesbian drama (and you are, or else you wouldn’t be on this website), today is the day you’ve been waiting for. Today, the world has been given the gift of Los Angeles-based Satchmode‘s brand new video for “Happiness Pt. 1,” directed and conceived of by Allison Raskin and starring herself, Suicide Kale‘s Brianna Baker and Raskin’s YouTube partner in crime Gaby Dunn. The video was shot at Scheme Machine Studios, produced by our own Robin Roemer, styled by former Autostraddle Calendar stylist Sara Medd, edited by your friend and mine Kip Reinsmith and otherwise created and curated entirely by women and queers.
As Allison tells us, the video was conceived as a way for her to expand her directorial portfolio and diversify the kind of content she and Dunn were putting on the Just Between Us YouTube channel; the band were friends of hers and were happy to oblige. Although she’d never done a music video before, Satchmode’s singer Gabe gave her complete creative control over the project. “I pitched him the basic idea and sent him cuts, but he really let me do my vision, which was amazing. It was a great partnership because I had access to brand new music – it’s the premiere of their single, and he gets our fanbase to watch the video, so it was a cool collaboration.”
The video was shot at Carly Usdin and Robin Roemer’s own Scheme Machine studios and features a very sweet love story between Raskin and Dunn, mostly shown through subtle touches and glances but building up to a heart-wrenching finale. Of the shoot, Raskin says, “It was all women on set, everyone was just in such a good mood and it was amazing that this thing that I thought, oh, why don’t I do a music video? suddenly happened and I had all of these amazing collaborators there making it happen. There was never a moment where we were stressed or freaking out or where people were fighting – it was seamless, which was amazing, and has never happened to me on set before.”
“I worked backwards in terms of what locations I knew I could use with the money we had,” Raskin explains. “I know it’s a weird thing to say but that’s why we’re able to make as much stuff as we are. I’m not actually sure where the idea came from, to be honest–” “You wanted us to wear costumes,” interjects Dunn. “Costumes, yeah.. I just kind of wanted to deal with the theme we deal with a lot, which is who we are on camera vs who we are off camera, and having to pretend to be happy when you’re not. That obviously works with the song… searching for how to be happy, but knowing what’s bad for you and not necessarily having the willpower to totally turn things away – this mixup that we have in our lives.”
“Happiness Pt. 1” is the debut single from Satchmode’s forthcoming debut album, Love Hz, available February 7. You can learn more at the band’s website.
I just watched this this morning and loooved it!
That is an amazing wizard name you have there ma’am
I was hella confused about what this was when it popped up in my subscriptions, but it was super cute and I love it when they get to stretch creatively. Thanks for the article!
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. This is amazing.
yay i was just searching autostraddle to see if you’d linked this already, of course you have <3