Interview with Mark Cote Singer/Songwriter "Fun House" Director Daniel Mitchell

Mark Cote Singer/songwriter -wrote the song 'Fun House' and performed in the music video Fun House which premiered on Monday 15^th August 730pm

Interview by Jasmina Nevada

-Would you like to tell me a little bit about the style of the video and how did it come about?

I would say that the video evolved, it was a process that began initially with my sitting down with my director Daniel Mitchell. He heard the song Fun House that I had written and pitched to me a concept. The concept involved the use of a flip book in which images would take place as the pages turn and I like that kind of whimsical idea,that had a retro feel that I thought was appropriate we had some more discussions and eventually presented me a rough story board of his whole vision from A to Z. When I saw his vision I was sold and from there he brought on the producer Steven Sweeney who had a production company called Devil's Table productions. They produced the video and we used an incredible cinematographer Jazz Shelton as well as an amazing art director who flew over from Sydney to art direct the video called Bob Hill. He did all the incredible dressing of the sets with the props

-How long did it take from the initial concept to the finished product?

After Dan and I met, we agreed and approved where we were going forward with the video & we sat down with the producer. We had probably about a week's worth of meetings to work within the budget and kind of tailor the vision to work within the dictation of what the budget was and from there we worked out a shooting schedule. We had a two day shoot prior to that. There was about a week spent in terms of getting the permits, getting the props and getting everything approved as far as assembling the crew. The actual shoot was a 2 day shoot, the first day was all exterior, we shot that in Topanga Canyon in a grotto of trees which actually had a standing film set. It was a house(where we got the permit to film) which had been built for a movie filmed about 15- 20 years before there was no working electricity and plumbing,it worked as far as an exterior house. We shot the interior on day 2 in a nightclub in Los Angeles called the Bordello bar

-What is next for you after this video?

We are using this video to bring about public awareness and to promote about the release of the CD

-Is this the message you were trying to bring across?

I think our goal was to give the audience an idea of what we can expect from the album and the sense of fun and style of just whimsical playfulness which characterises the music and the CD. We are using this to kind of launch the CD which is called 'Fun House of your Mind'. From here we would like to build out and do more music videos in the same style

How would you describe your style of this particular video?

The style I would say we were definitely trying to think outside the box and approach this, and give it the production values of a feature film in terms of the cinematography and just the overall production values we were trying to do more than just a traditional music video. Something more along the lines of a short film that actually had music in it and it incorporated sound effects just to kind of bring the viewer into the story and bring the story along

-What kind of format did you shoot in?

We shot with a red camera

-Where are you from?

I Mark Cote am based in L.A. My website is

http://markcote.com/

Director is Daniel Mitchell he can be found at his website which is

http://steelypictures.com/Steely_Pictures_Main.html

-I certainly hope that viewers will have a look at both these websites because your music video was very inspiring interesting tasteful and stylish and it touched a few hearts..

Thank you for your time