For the past 15 years, one name has single-handedly dominated the music video business. It’s a bold and striking moniker, but totally fitting given its owner’s maniacal work ethic. The name is Rage. It belongs to Dale Resteghini, an acclaimed director, writer, producer, and genuine firebrand who has helmed a near incalculable amount of genre defining music videos since the turn of the millennium. We’re talking hundreds upon hundreds of videos, reaching closer to the one thousand mark every day. The amount of views his videos have accumulated on YouTube is in the billions. Resteghini has worked with everyone from Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy to Escape The Fate and Fallout Boy and always brings his laser focus and unmatched eye for cinematic visuals to his projects.
“I didn’t get started until—I think my first video I did I was 34 years old… I think that, at that point in someone’s life, you either commit to something or end up getting left behind somewhere.”
The reigning music video champion and entertainment industry renaissance man got his start banging out iconic videos for metal and hardcore bands like Hatebreed, Darkest Hour, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. “I was asked to direct a tour called ‘Tattoo The Earth,’” Resteghini recalls, reflecting on his origins in the business, “which had bands like Slipknot, Slayer, Sepultura, Sevendust…” This traveling festival was Slipknot’s aggro metal bonanza and was where Resteghini—then an aspiring indie filmmaker—met Hatebreed mainman, Jamey Jasta. “He asked me to direct the second single off their album Perseverance when they were signed to Universal Republic,” Resteghini explains. “So, we did the video for ‘Perseverance,’ and I remember I was so excited, because it my first real music video opportunity and I was experienced in film. I thought, ‘This was my moment.’”
Shot in less than ideal subzero conditions—“It was so brutally cold, my spine was crinkling up and my body was contorting and I wasn’t aware,” Resteghini laughs—the high energy performance video for “Perseverance” became a showcase for both the band and its director’s frosty resolve. “Because so many bands respected Hatebreed at the time, I ended up doing music videos for bands like Unearth, E. Town Concrete, All That Remains, and so many others,” he says. “I’d do a band like Dry Kill Logic on Tuesday in New York City, Shadows Fall on Ozzfest on a Wednesday, Hatebreed in Connecticut on Thursday, and 100 Demons on a Friday in Massachusetts… And this is back when we shot on film! Then, we’d go back to New York and start processing the negatives.”
Thus began a mindboggling cycle of relentless work schedules and striving for bigger production values that would eventually lead Resteghini into the glamourous realm of rap and pop videos that he’s now dominated as well. “Once that video premiered, it was like a little atomic bomb,” he says. “Everyone knew who I was, it was a staple on MTV’s ‘Headbangers Ball.’ It was kind of the catalyst for what I was seeking to do for a very long time, and appropriately enough, the song title and its message matched that moment in my life,” he says fondly.
“I didn’t get started until—I think my first video I did I was 34 years old. I started way late, and I think that, at that point in someone’s life, you either commit to something or end up getting left behind somewhere,” he admits. “I knew that—even though I didn’t have any formal training or have any friends at labels or friends in bands up until I met someone like Jamey—once my foot was in the door, nothing was going to stop me. No one was going to outwork me, ever.”
That is the very definition of perseverance.
