Hands in the Sky (Big Shot)

Probably more than any other Straylight Run song people have asked me what this one is about. The uninteresting truth is that there’s no big story behind the words. They were meant to capture a feeling that I think was just in the air at that time. There was fear and suspicion everywhere. Terrorist threats, fear of our own government, our army, our media. The song wasn’t really meant to make a judgement on any of it, just to express the terror that I and a lot of other people were feeling at that time. I was also reading 1984 by George Orwell again around that time and it was really hitting home with me. I’m pretty sure I even took a line or two directly from the book. Making the video for this song was an insane experience. I remember we had gotten some interest from a few directors and Travis Kopach was one of them. We met with him at Friday’s (where any good business meeting should take place) and he pitched his concept for the video to us. We couldn’t believe the ideas he had. I mean, he basically described the video to us exactly as it would end up being, but imagine someone explaining all that to you if you’d never seen it before. It was crazy. We were just sitting there listening to him excitedly paint this whole picture of us in a giant tank of water with monsters and children and business men everywhere. He was so excited by his concept and so confident that he could make it all happen that we had to go for it with him. We all knew it was going to be amazing as long as he really knew how to do what he was talking about doing. The video shoot itself was so surreal. Everything that you see in the video was really happening. You walked into this giant warehouse and in the middle of it was a huge tank of water with an enormous screen behind it playing these insane clips. There were two sets around the tank that came on and off for the different scenes. One for the class room scenes and one for the office scenes. The water in the tank was probably room temperature but when you were immersed in it for ten minutes it started to feel really cold. We also had to take turns doing our scenes in the tank, so you’d get in with your full outfit on, get out and change in to dry clothes and warm up, then twenty minutes later put your soaking wet clothes on and get back in. The water also started to get very dirty because all of our outfits were from second hand stores and had little bits of fiber and lint that started coming off and floating around the tank. At one point Shaun decided it would be cool take an old suitcase, fill it with bricks, take it into the tank and walk around with it under water. The suitcase was really old though and made of leather. Pieces of old, musty leather started breaking off and floating around. Things got pretty disgusting towards the end of the shoot. We were all shivering, covered with some kind of slimy feeling film and our eyes were burning from having to open them in filthy water. It was an amazing video shoot though. We all knew that what we were doing was more than worth the discomfort we were experiencing. It was so exciting to watch Travis’ vision unfolding in front of us. We continued to work with him from that point on. He even shot the video for Wait And Watch for us for free. He’s one of those rare people you meet who’s a great person and also great at what they do.

taken from john nolan's blog.