The video for ‘Get What You Deserve’ was shot on a DC-3 plane wreck in Sólheimasandur, south Iceland near the town of Vik. The plane, belonging to the United States Navy, ran out of fuel and crashed landed here on November 24, 1973. This post includes the clip, the story behind the video, production details and photos from the shoot.

The Video

About
Get What You Deserve is a song about the fear of inevitability – that the mistakes of our past may catch-up with us; that the risks we take may eventually play against us – even those untenable predicaments we find ourselves in through no fault of our own. If one flew enough old, rickety planes, for example, eventually the laws of probability would call for a plane crash – and therein lies the concept for the video.

The Shoot
The shoot proved to be a challenging one. The plane wreck was in the middle of nowhere – with no real road and quite difficult to find. It took us three attempts to find the plane driving through a vast desert-like field of fine black gravel. It was truly freezing (or a lovely Icelandic summer’s day depending on where you are from) and having come down with a cold the day before, I was one big mucus factory! When I climbed onto the plane to perform, the thin rusted metal sheeting felt like it was about to collapse – luckily it didn’t because I really would have gotten what I deserved! Trying to dance on that propeller was a real challenge too and not something I’d particularly recommend. We had a really limited window to shoot between other photography enthusiasts arriving on the scene, so we managed about six different shots and only one take performing each.

Post-production
Like the Space Cowboy video, I created all the visual effects in Adobe After Effects. I used Red Giant plug-ins to generate the fire, clouds and smoke effects which consist of multiple layers of different blended effects. I wasn’t so much going for realism but rather trying to achieve a certain look. It was a time consuming process to get things looking right, but it gave me ideas for other videos too.

Video Credits
Direction, Visual Effects and Editing by Craig Simmons
Director of Photography: Alex Harris

Music Production Notes
I know I have quite a few synth enthusiasts as fans, so here’s a little about the music production too. The song has three layered bass parts. There’s a 60s bass guitar sound, a tight Jupiter 8 synth-bass and a big, fuzzy ARP2600 synth. Originally all three played through-out the entire song, but one of Mark Saunders clever production tricks was to filter sweep the ARP2600 in the chorus and just have the other two basses in the verse. This gave more impact to the chorus. The bouncy Vince Clarke style synth part is the impOSCar (a software version of the unique OSCar lead synth) as well as the chimes sound – this synth really cuts through in a mix. There are 60s lead guitar and string sounds and a real mixed bag in the drum department – a LinnDrum kick and snare, 808 hi-hat, synthesized handclaps, and retro acoustic snare, hats and cymbals.