The Artist Explains: AV Super Sunshine - 'I Am Alien' (Video)

Virtuoso musician AV Super Sunshine lets us inside his fascinating mind once again in our latest Q&A, where we discuss Roswell, Area 51,  freaky synchronised dreams and all things 'I Am Alien' single and music video.

AV Super Sunshine Explains:
Where was the video filmed?
We filmed a great portion of the video at a chemical processing site in Torrence California. The indoor scenes where done at a large indoor soccer complex also in Torrence. The director, Jared Sagal, is a professional soccer player turned film maker. His YouTube soccer videos have tens of millions of views so he’s well known there. Some of the driving scenes where done near Jared’s studio in Beverly Hills, California. There’s also quite a few clips shot in Area 51 and Roswell, New Mexico.

How does the video compliment the song?
The song takes place in New Mexico, July 1947, at the sight of the famous Roswell flying saucer incident. It’s rumored a flying saucer crashed and an alien was found alive and is being held at a top secret US government facility called S4 located within the infamous Nevada Area 51 test sight. In the song I’m driving that night and pick up the alien. As I’m trying to help him escape, we become friends. He even tells me his name, “Gabriel”. The song ends with us getting captured and me having my memory of the event erased.

In the video, Jared has my band leader and producer, Michael Bradford, play an alien hunter. I’m his assistant. We follow an alien, played by Philomena Wallin, to the S4 facility where an interrogation is taking place. At the end of the video we have to kidnap the alien to rescue him. Everybody wins.

Any behind the scenes stories?
Since you’ve given me so much support when I was starting out, I’ll go a step beyond and share the freaky stuff with you. For about a two week period in early June of 2015 I was having a very vivid recurring nightly dream. One of those dreams that makes you suddenly wake up. My songs 'I Am Alien'  and 'Starman' (Bass Face CD) were both created from this strange recurring dream.

The dream takes place inside of a large prison cell. The cell has a barred window out of which is seen desert terrain with a mountain range in the distance. There’s a grey alien in the cell whose silhouette can be seen with the light coming through the window. In the dream the alien’s name is “Gabriel”.

Also in the dream is Philomena, the artist Lady Gaga and an entourage of “handlers”. There’s a team of “handlers” in the dream for Lady Gaga as well as for me and Philomena. We discuss how to help our government free “Gabriel” and divulge to the public his story without causing alarm or panic.

Pretty freaky, huh? What’s even freakier, Philomena was having the same dream at the same time I was. That got me thinking. If the conspiracy theorists are right the Roswell alien would now be in his 70th year of captivity. Since the internet “conspiracy theory” people claim grey aliens can live to 300 years so “Gabriel” could still be alive. That’s how I came up with the alien song ideas.

Here’s where we have fun by starting a conversation about “freeing Gabriel” the space alien. To make it even more crazy we have “Missing - Gabriel” milk carton T-shirts available on our home page web store in both men’s and women’s sizes.

Tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
We had a great time putting together Philomena’s alien outfit. She found the green body suit by accident on line as well as the green “alien” platform shoes. However, the mask was custom made for us by a talented young German art student named Pauline Gottschling (Creative P.Art).

We met Pauline on a private Facebook art-group page started by artist Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga) and now run by Pauline. Even cooler, Pauline was asked to take over the page by Stefani when she added acting to her repertoire the fall of 2014. Pauline makes all kinds of masks and digs Lady G so that’s how we started. We’re having Pauline make more masks for future videos.

What is the message the video is trying to convey?
I’d like to quote astronaut Edgar Mitchell: “The evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident and that indeed an alien craft did crash, and that material was recovered from that site. We all know that UFOs are real.All we need to ask is where do they come from, and what do they want?”

Interview feature by Karla Harris