Stuck in the Desert

When a bank robbery gets botched, The Gravities have no choice but to destroy the money, or risk being killed. It's a cinematic, high-octane premise for a band's first official music video — and it almost didn't happen the way anyone planned.

In July 2025, Jacob Willett left his full-time job as a busser at Water Grill — juggled alongside a full course load at SDSU — to chase filmmaking full-time. A leap of faith with no guarantee it would work out; he hasn't taken another job since. A few weeks later, at the Black Star Polo Bene-Fest in mid-August, he met The Gravities and a handful of other artists he still works with today — and reconnected with Jacob Clement, a childhood friend from elementary school who now runs No Corners Cut Productions alongside him. Founded by Sante Prince, Black Star Polo brings swimming and water polo to African and African-American communities that don't always have access to the pool — a cause that hit home for Jacob, who played water polo in high school.

Not long after, he went out to film a rehearsal with The Gravities for the Black Star Polo documentary he was producing. That's the first time he heard "Stuck in the Desert." He went home that night and wrote the treatment. He was still a film student at SDSU, and this was the first time he'd ever written and directed a music video.

The band shot it in a single day at the end of September, at Duck Camp — a family property out in the desert near Westmorland, California, next to a stretch of farmland in the Imperial Valley. Jacob's dad and grandfather built it from a dirt lot decades ago as a hunting campsite, and he spent a lot of time out there as a kid. It's an intimate place for him — they'd have "Smokey and the Bandit" running on a loop in the trailer, which is why it's playing on the TV in the film.

Behind the camera was Austin Harris, a cinematographer whose credits include drone and 1st AC work on Hollywood features like Black Panther, Baby Driver, and Barbarian — brought on for this shoot, but the writing, direction, and production were entirely JWMedia's. The rest of the crew was mostly film students. Jacob's dad and his lifelong best friend ran gun, live-ammunition, fire, and boat safety on set.

It was Jacob Clement's first time on a film set, too — his own leap of faith, taken alongside his childhood friend's. Both of them have since left their jobs behind to chase this full-time.

"Stuck in the Desert" won Best Music Video at the 2026 San Diego Music Awards on May 6 at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay — two weeks before Jacob graduated, and less than a year after he walked away from a steady paycheck to bet on this instead.