Jared Leto and director Elliott Lester have seemingly figured out how to transform music videos into event for Leto's band 30 Seconds To Mars. Their 2006 clip "From Yesterday" was a big-budget extravaganza shot on-location at The Forbidden City in China. That feat gets one-upped with the band's new video "A Beautiful Lie," shot in the Arctic in order to directly show his fans the effects of global warming. Co-director Elliott Lester shares the adventure in this In Depth...
Elliott Lester, co-director: Jared had the original concept. He wanted to go see the part of the world that's really being affected by global warming. Where you could see those glaciers melt and all that natural beauty literally disappear into the sea. The effects are very noticeable up there, unfortunately.
It took six months to get off the ground since most production companies didn't want to take on the liability and passed on the project. After we got involved, I spent a month there for pre-production and shooting. Flew from L.A. to Baltimore to Greenland and then took a helicopter to these glaciers about 200 kilometers into the Arctic Circle. We had a tiny crew. You could never do something like this in such a remote place with 35mm and Technocrane. That said, we did have a renegade paparazzo that got on a helicopter somehow. We threatened to leave him on the iceberg.
The Inuit man you see in the intro lived in the village near where we shot. He's the real deal —a fisherman hunting whales and seals there his whole life. Most of the Inuit were quite shy, so it was hard to get somebody to come out in traditional garb and be on camera.
Of course we were very careful to carbon offset whatever our production caused and all the money from the track is going to charity. I can't speak for Jared, of course, but I think this was his way of making a contribution to the environmental cause by making sure 30 Seconds To Mars fans knew what was going on. --> watch the video and learn more about the cause at aBeautifulLie.org
30 Seconds To Mars
"A Beautiful Lie" (Virgin)
Angakok Panipaq & Elliott Lester, directors | Yamani Watkins and Edy Enriquez, producers | Karma Kollective, production co | Casper Tuxen, DP | Richard Alacron, editor
