Success Through Violence

STV-fg06 — Nicole Nelson and Joseph Vasquez in one of the dream subplots in the Director's Cut of the music video.

Success Through Violence (2003) is a 5-minute music video created by Christopher Jacobs.

Main Details[]

Plot Summary[]

The heavy metal band Sons of Poseidon perform their song Success Through Violence, which was used in the movie Dark Highways.

Production Information[]

The complete song was used in two separate versions of this music video edited for use on the DVD and for the band. The Director's Cut uses an experimental style to present a visual interpretation of the song within a loose framing story (and runs about a half-minute longer as a result). The "band's cut" is a more traditional record of the band performing, mainly in front of an audience in a bar. An alternate version of the director's cut, abridging the song somewhat, ran during the closing credits to Dark Highways, serving as an epilogue to wrap up one of the early plot threads of the feature.

Both versions of the video intercut views of the band performing in a bar setting (shot at Rick's Bar in Fargo) and on the farm location used for the movie Dark Highways. The Director's Cut also includes multiple simultaneous subplots of a farmgirl discovering the band playing in her yard, a chase nightmare, clips from Dark Highways, and clips from various other movies showing violence through the ages. Films excerpted include the silent classics Intolerance, The Birth of a Nation, The Lost World, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The farm location scenes for the video were shot in August 2003 and the bar performance was shot in September. At each location the song was shot several times, with each take using two cameras in different setups as the band lip-synched to their CD.

In April 2004, the music video played at the "Arlene's Grocery Picture Show," a film festival held annually at a popular bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. Two days later the complete feature Dark Highways screened several blocks away for the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival.