James and Joseph Kennedy Sr. said their goodbyes to Chris Cornell, Friedrich Wilhem Murnau and the crew members after that morning.
And as usual, the filming still carried on.
The whole set up of the music video was for them to use an ARRIFLEX 16SR camera, it was a16mm camera with crystal sync motor, to make filming crisp and with an expressive film grain into it.
Then, a Mitchell BNC, for slow-motion and stable lock shots. Next was the Dolly track & crane rig for dramatic push in and overheads. While the lighting were Mole-Richardson fresnels, they were open-face tungsten lights with homemade gel rigs.
The crew members were majorly Chris Cornell as the lead performer, then the two contemporary dancers, one was a male, he was Robert Mason, a male dancer from Seattle's local ballet theater, and the other one was a female, she was Lorna Griggs, a female dancer trained in Martha Graham modern style. They both were symbolic to the "entities of death and fate".
Last ones were the four background extras dressed in ragged cloaks, they represented "the forgotten".
The opening scene was a wide shot of a steel mill, drenched in pre-dawn fog. The camera tracked slowly past the rusted chains, cracked pipes, and still-burning embers on a smoldering concrete floor.
Chris Cornell stood motionless, he was drenched in sweat, and dressed in black slacks while bare-chested. Only a single spotlight silhouetted him.
The guitar began.
Friedrich Wilhem Murnau used long takes with dolly movement, letting the empty industrial space breathe, creating an almost sacred atmosphere.
When the first verse came, Chris Cornell sang in low register. The camera pushed in slowly. His face is partially in shadow, lips moving slowly and deliberately.
Behind him were the two dancers emerging from the smoke, they moved with contorted, slow movements, like spirits being born from ashes.
The female dancer wrapped around the male dancer, who lifted her as if she's weightless. Friedrich Wilhem Murnau intercuts this with close-ups of Chris Cornell's face, trembling from intensity.
The chorus echoed within the set.
"Pray now for how long…"
The light flared behind Chris Cornell. As he lets loose the first scream, the dancers break into violent movement, and sharp cuts of limbs slashing through light.
The camera shifted to handheld, shaky, visceral, capturing the panic.
Sparks rained down, it was a practical effect using magnesium ribbon and blowers. The shadows stretched grotesquely across the walls, a signature of Friedrich Wilhem Murnau's expressionist touch.
The bride followed where they intercut between Chris Cornell's walking slowly down a hallway filled with smoke, voices whispering indistinctly on the track and the male dancer collapsing to the floor as the female lifts his limp body into the fog and then to Chris Cornell's slowly descending a staircase built from discarded steel beams, it was a visual metaphor for descent into fate.
The entire sequence was shot in infrared black and white, giving it an eerie, timeless quality.
As the final chorus sounded, the lighting turned amber-orange. A giant wind machine blasted smoke past Chris Cornell as he stood before an open furnace, screaming the final lines.
Behind him, the dancers disappeared into silhouette. As the last scream echoed out, the shot pulled back on a crane, revealing Chris Cornell as a tiny figure inside the cavernous ruins of the mill.
The ending scene cuts to an outdoor valley, in an early morning scene. Chris Cornell stood alone under gray skies, looking out beyond the mountains.
///////////////////////////////////NEXT SCENE///////////////////////////////////
After filming the whole day, Chris Cornell was given a day of rest and then will proceed with the next music video, it was for "Flower".
///////////////////////////////////NEXT SCENE///////////////////////////////////
While Chris Cornell was resting, on August 6, 1981, With all the filming materials, Friedrich Wilhem Murnau started the post production non-stop.
The whole raw footage was edited using a Steenbeck flatbed editor, analog fades, double exposure using an optical printer.
The color grading was done photochemically to alternate between cool blues and high-contrast sepia tones and all effects were practical. They were fog, lighting tricks, and lens overlays.
The optical printer was used for double exposure sequences in the bridge section.
For the whole thing, James invested a total of $143,600.
The cost were for:
[Location rentals (2 sites)] [$9,000]
[Equipment & film stock] [$25,000]
[Crew (lighting, camera)] [$22,000]
[Dancers & choreography] [$8,000]
[Practical effects (fire, fog, sparks)] [$10,000]
[Murnau's directing & editing team] [$40,000]
[Post-production & mastering (Betamax & 16mm reels)] [$18,600]
[Permits, catering, transport] [$11,000]
///////////////////////////////////NEXT SCENE///////////////////////////////////
After Friedrich Wilhem Murnau finished the whole thing, the video was unlike anything MTV had seen at launch, it was haunting, emotional, and mythic. It positioned Chris Cornell not just as a vocalist, but as a vision, delivering doom-blues with the intensity of early metal and the soul of classic expressionist film!