As we’ve probably all learned as kids, with the help of cardboard boxes and a little imagination, anything is possible. Want to build a mythical princess castle? Go for it! A never-ending maze? Sure. A fictional fight scene with a giant killer opossum? You bet your ass that’s doable.
Today, showing just how far you can take things with ingenuity and recycled materials, alt-emo outfit Dollar Signs are teaming up with The Noise to premiere their brand new DIY, Godzilla-inspired music video for “Fistfight!” / “Nihilist Gundam.”
Discussing just how challenging it was to make an epic battle video made entirely out of cardboard boxes and creativity, frontman Erik Button said, “Our newest music video for our songs ‘Fist Fight’ and ‘Nihilist Gundam’ was a huge undertaking. Our director Chris Baker and I wanted to do a video in the style of a Kaiju fight/Godzilla monster movie. After we figured out the design of the city and making it look like paper and cardboard we decided that the whole video should have a consistent visual style which meant not only would we be building a fake city for the robot and monster to fight in but also we’d have to construct that reflected [with the] same style for all the scenes involving the band and the other actors (our friends).”
“This was a massive undertaking,” he continued. “The band (and our partners) took to building most of the sets and props while Baker handled the costumes and a lot of the on-screen elements like the butterfly we see in the beginning.”
Button adds, “It was incredibly challenging but an absolute blast to put this world together and explore it. With an idea like this our only limitations were budget and our own creativity. We came up with many many little elements that I love, like the news ticker for the scenes that Tommy played a newscaster, the miniature set we built for the rocket launch, the robot wearing the same shirt as me and the confetti cannon we used for Arion’s demise. All of these small little elements give the video lots of character and personality and I really could watch Luke be a crazed-but-proven-right conspiracy theorist and Dylan be a violence-hungry general everyday for the rest of my life.”
As for video director Chris Baker, he touched on video’s backstory saying, “This was my first time designing and constructing costumes of this nature and I spent many late nights futzing around with cardboard, duct tape, a hot glue gun, and vinyl wraps and fake fur. My first concept drawings of the Giant Robot included lots of 80s/90s influences (like Mega Man, Transformers, and Gundam) but that’s all it was – a mish-mashed collection of others’ ideas; it didn’t have personality.”
“For some reason,” Baker added, “I decided to draw a t-shirt on the robot, and once I did that, the codpiece suddenly looked like underwear, and now I could see who this character was: A burnout loser-bot, stumbling around in a t-shirt and tighty-whities, wearing socks and shoes but completely forgetting to put on his pants. Once the design of our hero settled, the story of how he tries to save the city but fails because he’s still a little drunk and accidentally destructive to others suddenly came together.”
“The lyrics ‘If you’re not going to change, why would you say sorry,’ stood out because I think we’ve all been there in some way,” Baker notes. “Where we know we need to ‘break these patterns of self-destructive behavior’ and try to do right, but we get pulled back into the lure and comfort of what we’re used to – often to our own detriment. And if we’re not careful in the end, there will be nothing left but dust and debris in the wake of our choices.”
To check out the extraordinary new video made in support of Dollar Signs brand new album Hearts Of Gold, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to pick up a copy of the band’s new 12-track release here.
