Pocket released their first music video on Tuesday

by David Miller,

Loveland, Ohio – Loveland 2016 graduate Ryan Mangan and his alternative rock band, Pocket, released their second album in August. The Things You Think At Night is available on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music. Mangan self-produced, wrote and performed nearly the entire album. In collaboration with Loveland senior and Loveland Magazine writer, Sam Smith, Pocket released their first music video on Tuesday.

The Delusion music video is a mix of live action, digital and practical VFX and 3d computer renderings. The video tells a story through hands, statues and falling actors.

The video was shot over the course of only two days on a shoestring budget and with almost no crew. The Delusion music video stars 2017 Loveland graduate, Jacalyn Parsley and was produced with help from Loveland High School seniors Ricky Vilar and Stone Taul.

“Delusion is about all the unwanted anxiety that comes when you’re falling for someone. You start to wonder if they like you back, if they feel same. After a while you kind of just get to this point of ‘let’s stop thinking about this stuff, I’m not going to figure it out right now’,” Mangan explained.

The video is largely based around looping, long exposure stop-motion sequences created with a device called a Pixelstick. The Pixelstick works by “scanning” across individual pixels of an image in succession and are captured by moving the device laterally in a long exposure. Smith created images and sequences that were loaded onto the tool, and then it was moved laterally hundreds of time, displaying slightly varied frames. This created the illusion of movement and a holographic-like effect that is easier seen than described. Smith said, “Yeah, it was two months of spending most of my free time editing since it was so effects heavy.”

“Honestly I don’t know much about videography, but I had seen some videos that Smith had done before and he’s just flat out amazing with that stuff,” said Mangan. He gave Smith some ideas for what he wanted the video to be like, and then he took it from there and beyond, is how Mangan described the collaboration.

Mangan is now a sophomore at  pursuing music production. His band’s first EP, L’Appelle Du Vide, can be found here.

“The video goes past my wildest dreams honestly. Shooting was a lot of fun as well, I’ve never done anything like this before so seeing it come from the start to the end was a very cool process,” Mangan said.

“Shooting the music video was an incredible experience. It was a lot of run-and-gun, shooting from the hip and making things up as we went along,” said Smith who added, “It was a pretty ambitious project for our resources, so we tried to embrace the flaws and go for a little bit of a low-fi look.” Smith said it was his first time doing something like this and he felt that he was able to put a lot of his own style and aesthetic into the piece. “Working with Ryan was wonderful– he gave me a great song and pretty much total creative freedom. I’m really excited to see where his career goes,” Smith explained.

In addition to being a photographer, videographer, and writer for Loveland Magazine, Smith is president of the Loveland High School Film Club, Overture Award recipient and has had work shown at festivals such as NFFTY, AAHSFF, Vidcon and Nashville Film Festival.

The video is available on the Pocket Youtube Channel. Keep up with Mangan’s new releases on Spotify, Apple Music, and Twitter. You can follow Smith’s work on Instagram and Vimeo.

Sample other songs on The Things You Think at Night:

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