Envy on the Coast offers up a new video for its soulful, danceable track “Virginia Girls”, culled from the duo’s latest EP, Ritual. Vocalist Ryan Hunter wrote the screen treatment while he and partner Brian Byrne directed, cast, shot and edited the video at the famed Paramount on Long Island.
Hunter says that the idea was to “show the suburban experience as an all-enveloping vacuum of boredom, mischief, and frustration.” He adds, “We had a lot of long talks about the trappings of suburbia. The song and, by extension, the video presented an opportunity to represent some of those ideas.” Attempting to translate their ideas to a third party proved frustrating, so he and Byrne took matters into their own hands. “We are not filmmakers by any stretch of the imagination”, he says. “But we shot over a hundred gigs of footage over two days. We wanted to make sure that we had enough raw material to end up with something watchable.”
The pair needn’t have worried about that as the video is entertaining and brimming with images that enhance its funky vibe. “We’ve always embraced the DIY ethic when it comes to creative endeavors”, continues Hunter. “But that also comes with its own set of problems. Completing the video was challenging because we aren’t seasoned directors. You could say this is us graduating from the shallow end of the pool and diving into the deep end without any idea of what would happen.”