Music video shoots are often fraught with drama, but rarely so much so as Imagine Dragons” shoot for “Radioactive.” While the Las Vegas rock band was filming the clip in New York, the quartet came face to face with Superstorm Sandy.
In this exclusive behind-the-scenes footage below, lead singer Dan Reynolds talks about how the wacky concept for the video came about. As you know, the music video, which came out last week, features stuffed animals and puppets fighting it out in a “puppet octagon.” The losers who survive are sent to a prison, where the members of the band are being held. The clip also stars Lou “Diamond” Phillips as the evil overlord and Alexandra Daddario as a force for good. Director James Larese calls it “‘Fight Club for puppets.””
Not only do the band members, Daddario and Phillips talk about making the clip in this exclusive footage, the victorious Pink Bear, whom Phillips refers to as “The Jackie Chan of the bear world,” also does his share of interviewing. Turns out shooting lasers out of his eyes isn”t his only talent.
About half-way through the the shoot, Sandy closed production down and after being evacuated, the band hightailed it to London to complete the shoot. Appropriately, the band realizes its trials are nothing in the grand scheme of things. “We all got stuck [In New York] for a few days, but we made it out with our health, so we count ourselves as lucky for that,” Reynolds says.
“Radioactive,” the band”s follow up to its breakthrough hit, “It”s Time,” is No. 8 with a bullet on Billboard”s Rock Songs chart. The group”s new album, “Night Visions,” bowed at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September. The band will embark on its first headlining tour this spring. For more tour info, go here.