A production company in Jefferson recently brought home hardware from an event that they have never won before.

Art of Aries in Jefferson won Best Music Video at the Iowa Independent Film Festival, which co-owner Tyler Gathercoal says was completely unexpected, having submitted four other projects in the past seven years to this same contest, and it is the only award that is given at the event. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio after seeing the other finalists for the award, he got more confident about possibly being the winner.

“In my head, I didn’t say this, I was like, ‘I think we might (have) got this.’ Kris (Gathercoal) normally has like a speech because he’s the director, he does all of the planning, he didn’t have a speech planned. So when we go up there, we hear our name we’re like, ‘Holy crap, you know?’ So we all go up there and Kris had no speech planned, we’re just like, ‘I don’t know, we didn’t plan for this, so thank you.’ Yeah, it was a really great moment.”

Gathercoal details that the winning entry was the first time Art of Aries has produced a music video for a client and a one-person band, Caleb Brinsfield of “Fallen Castles,” from Colorado. He states that the video was filmed in three days following the 2024 Labor Day holiday. He points out that some of the scenes were from Greene County, including The Centennial, 30-Yard Line, Squirrel Hollow and Spring Lake Parks, the Jefferson downtown square, among others. 

Gathercoal talks about one of his favorite parts about the music video was the co-star and their first-ever hired modeling/actress from Des Moines with Jillian Hicks.

“She was also one of those awesome, I guess assistants, because Caleb didn’t have any prior experience with acting or performance. So, we all kind of tied-in together and we all helped Caleb bring out this awesome performance in the music video.”     

Tollef Sorensen was the cinematographer and in total, Gathercoal adds that the entire project took close to one month with the pre-planning and post production.