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MUSIC VIDEOS www.postmagazine.com 15 POST MAY/JUNE 2025 R O L L I N G Q U A RT Z – R E . B O L D South Korea's Rolling Quartz is a five-member female pop/metal band that is capitalizing on the music video format to promote its catchy melodies and photogenic musicians. The band released Re.Bold earlier this year, a music video that combines both performance and narrative elements, with members covertly planting explosives — disguised as chewing gum — throughout their hometown, leading up to a grand finale once detonated. The band once again partnered with director Simon at Desert Beagle on the production, who delivered a highly-polished visual. The relationship dates back to Rolling Quartz's 2022 music video for the track "Good Night." The shoot for Re.Bold took place over two days and spanned two indoor studios, as well as two outdoor locations — Yongma Waterfall Park, for its natural beauty, and Sewoon Plaza, which has a futuristic, city vibe. The video was shot using Arri's Alexa Mini with Sigma cine prime lenses. Rolling Star CEO Han Seung-Oh and Simon collaborated on the edit, cutting the music video in Adobe Premiere Pro. Light beams and explosions were added in post production. Band members say they enjoy working on music videos, but that they can sometimes be stressful. For example, Rolling Quartz had to wear thin outfits for the shoot, even though the outdoor temperature was cold. The tight timelines to complete a project can also add to the stress. At press time, Rolling Quartz (www.rollingquartz.live) had just completed its 2025 "Stand Up" tour across the US and Canada. J A C O B TO L L I V E R - N E V E R M A D E I T TO T H E M O O N Jacob Tolliver, the Nashville-based singer/songwriter/pianist, recently released a video to accompany his new single "Never Made it to the Moon." Directed by Carla Bentley of Bentley Visual Storytelling (www.bentleystories.com), the proj- ect takes on a kitschy, Star Trek-inspired aesthetic, with Tolliver commandeer- ing a spacecraft that looks much like the Enterprise from The Original Series. Never Made it to the Moon tells a heartfelt story about chasing one's dreams, feeling lost and longing for connection. The video starts with Tolliver, alone at home, where he falls asleep after watching mindless television commercials. A vivid dream then takes him on an intergalactic journey with a familiar-looking cast of characters. Wink Martindale, who passed away in April, was a long-time friend of Tolliver and recorded voiceover for the song as one of his last proj- ects. According to Bentley, the music video was in preproduction for several weeks, dating back to January of this year, with the shoot and post production wrapping up in March. She credits Tolliver's vision and a team of volunteers with helping to overcome any budget challenges. "A lot of it was just a small-town kind of thing," she explains. "A lot of people contributing to design the set. We came up with ideas for the set, inspired by Star Trek, and a lot of people came together to make it happen." The main shoot on the spaceship took place in a gymnasium, with several set pieces being moved around to create the various background settings. A second day was spent shooting Tolliver hanging from a pole to create the "weightlessness" shots in which he's seen floating, later in the video. "We discussed having green screen for those [shots], but then for that scene, we knew it would be a problem with his space helmet," Bentley reveals. "The green screen wouldn't show the transparency of the space helmet...so we decided we were going to do it with a star backdrop." They shot the sequence with a starfield backdrop, which solved the helmet's transparency concerns, and then replaced much of the surrounding area in post to match the look of the rest of the video. "It was important for it to be there in reality, so behind his helmet, it would show the stars," she explains. Bentley shot the project using Canon 6D and EOS R cameras. She also served as its editor, focusing on creating a compelling narrative. Her husband, J.D., also helped with the shoot and post production visual effects. The video was edited in Final Cut Pro, and Motion was used for VFX. The alien visuals are based on illustrations provided by Tolliver. "A lot of the rest was putting it together and seeing what would make it more real," Bentley says of the VFX, pointing to the ray guns as an example. "Obviously, when they're shooting those guns, it would look silly without having the laser, so we were going to add that, and smoke," she says of the post VFX. "What we could shoot in terms of the set looking good and looking right, we did in-camera as much as possible." In hindsight, Bentley says the biggest challenge was balancing the retro-look and image quality. "How to make it look bad in a retro-way, but not ugly," she shares, add- ing that she embraced production techniques of the period, employing little camera movement and harsh, sometimes unflattering lighting to achieve the desired results, which were meant to resemble a B movie. Jacob Tolliver (jacobtolliver.com) and Bentley Visual Storytelling both hail from Portsmouth, OH.