Death Cab For Cutie Reveal Secrets Of 'New Moon' Video Shoot

'Meet Me on the Equinox' debuts on MTV.com on Sunday, the day of the VMAs.

As soon as Death Cab for Cutie learned their "Meet Me on the Equinox" had been chosen as the first single from the upcoming "New Moon" soundtrack, they immediately began thinking about the accompanying music video.

Their first idea was to go big, as in "cameos by Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner." Of course, that was mostly just wishful thinking, so they went with option number two: make a smart, stylish clip with the directorial tandem known as Walter Robot, a pair of guys known for making smart, stylish clips (including DCFC's VMA-nominated "Grapevine Fires").

And last week, the band, the Robots and an army of lighting techs assembled in a rustic, somewhat creepy ski lodge outside Toronto to film the "Equinox" video. Given the "dark and light" themes of the "Twilight" series (and the fact that the song is named after a solar phenomenon), the clip somewhat fittingly draws heavily on the ideas of day and night and light and shadow.

"The whole idea behind the video is that this house that we're in, this crazy ski lodge of a building here, it's going to get cut together with scenes from the film, sort of like it's a place that might be in Forks, sort of a place that might be next door to Bella's house or something," DCFC guitarist Chris Walla told MTV News. "All the light stuff that's happening through the windows, it's the 'day-turning-into-night-turning-into-day thing,' the idea is that it's supposed to look like a time-lapse thing, only it's not actually a time-lapse thing, and it's quite a trick.

"There's a 50-foot crane outside that some series of structural engineers are operating," he continued. "It's pretty remarkable, I mean, like it's daylight right here, and it's pitch-black right behind us. It's kinda nuts."

Of course, that dark/light interplay is also reflected in the song, which debuts on MTV.com on September 13, the day of the 2009 Video Music Awards. And though Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard has never read a book in the "Twilight" series, he drew from a different inspiration when writing the tune: his childhood memories of Pacific Northwest towns like Forks and Port Angeles, which, as any fan of the books will know, play just as big a role in the "Twilight" series as the characters themselves.

"For me, I grew up on the west side of Puget Sound, and I spent a lot of my youth traveling around those areas — Port Angeles and Forks and down around the peninsula — and for me, who grew up in that area, it's kind of nice to see this kind of new tourism boom," Gibbard said. "It's basically a logging town. There's never been anything going on there, unless you were logging or protesting logging — those are the two things to do in Forks. But it's a really beautiful part of the country, and it's great to see such a beautiful light shone on it through these films."

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards will take place September 13 at 9 p.m. ET. Additional celebrity presenters and performers will be announced in the coming weeks. To be the first to find out the inside scoop, follow the Inside MTV Twitter account at Twitter.com/InsideMTV.