A Greene County-based business recently won two statewide awards for the work they did on a music video.

The band Through the Darkness created a music video with the help of Art of Aries in Jefferson with the band’s song “Infinite Battleground” and it won two Iowa Motion Picture Awards, including Award of Achievement for Direction and Award of Excellence for Editing. Tyler Gathercoal is the producer and engineer of Art of Aries Studio and also plays drums in Through the Darkness and he tells Raccoon Valley Radio what “Infinite Battleground” is about.

“What is the purpose of life? Is it to work or is it to dream and to work towards something that you’re really passionate about. And one thing I used to say back in the day and I still say this occasionally today is like waking up is pretty hard to go to work if you’re not really happy, but waking up is not hard when you’re excited to go do something, a passion or a hobby. The whole music video is about that battle of how much are you going to invest in yourself.”  

Gathercoal says all of the shots in the music video are from Greene County. He points out the video was recorded in one day, on June 4, 2022, with most of the band shots in the upper story of the Sierra Community Theatre and the focus of the place of work at Gravitate Coworking. The additional footage is from the 30 Yard Line in Grand Junction and Squirrel Hollow Park.

Gathercoal explains that some of the reasons why the band chose to film the entire music video in Greene County is because the band is local and well-known in the county.

“We are known enough to where if I ask for something, normally people are like, ‘Oh, okay we can trust him. He’s been around for a long time, he’s somebody that we can count on to show up, to pay, to do whatever he needs to do, (and) he’s a professional.’ And one thing that’s nice about having a place here in Jefferson is that it’s a very welcoming community and they do appreciate the arts.”   

Art of Aries has won several other awards from the Iowa Motion Picture Awards previously, including 2023 the Award of Excellence for Editing and 2022 for Award of Excellence for Best Music Video. The other crew members of Art of Aries Studio includes Tyler’s brother Kristopher, who is the director; Tollef Sorensen as the cinematographer, Brett Bojack is the Chief Engineer, Derek Austin and Chaz Wessels are studio musicians. Tyler adds the music video will be live and hitting platforms such as YouTube on September 6th.