How did Restorations make their music video for “D” look like an 8th-gen VHS bootleg?

Philly’s Restorations have a love-hate relationship with the “adult punk” tag they often get. But in this case, it actually fits. As we see in the music video for “D” – a roaring, galloping track from their new LP2 – these are guys who are old enough to remember the weird world of 90s bootleg swapping. They grew up not on cameraphone-filmed YouTube videos, but on sketchily-traded VHS copies-of-copies-of-copies of, say, Jawbox playing some basement in D.C. As anybody who has also done this knows, the more you copy a video in that manner, the more it deteriorates, and the folks at the bottom of the trade-chain end up with this frantically flickering, warped mess that’s kind of awesome in its own right.

As the band’s Jon Loudon explains in a video premier on Verbicide today, that’s the exact look they were going for. Enter filmmaker Mitchell Wojcik, who shot and edited the band’s First Unitarian Church album release show in HD, and then played it back on a TV, re-shooting in VHS – the rig you see above. As Wojcik explains to Verbicide:

Before working on this video, I spoke heavily with Jon about his influences in music and just bands he enjoyed in general. Through those conversations, we found videos we loved, and looked to the way Fugazi’s Instrument and Nirvana’s Live! Tonight! Sold out! looked and felt. They were home movies, and quite personal. I just wanted everything to feel like it could belong anywhere and to anyone, so I made a home movie.

Check out the video for “D” below. Restorations are currently out on tour with The Menzingers.