Behind the Scenes of the New Wheelchair Sports Camp Video

Hot off the heels of a music video showing at the Denver Film Festival, which runs through the end of this week, Wheelchair Sports Camp is back at work filming a video for "Hard Out Here for a Gimp."

The song is from WheelGrabbers, a collaboration between the local hip-hop group and producer GirlGrabbers. It was released physically for this past Record Store Day, in April, with "Hard Out Here for a Gimp" the only single available digitally. According to Wheelchair Sports Camp frontwoman Kalyn Heffernan, the single did so well she decided to create a video for it.


"It's the 'Stairway to Heaven' concept," Heffernan says, referring to the song lyrics "There's the stairway to heaven/how the hell am I going to get in?" Heffernan herself is disabled and wheelchair-bound, so the song and the video focus on the particular challenges she has faced through her life. 

"It's about being crippled, basically," Heffernan says. The video, which was shot over two days this past weekend, features many disabled extras and highlights the battle faced by those fighting for disabled rights. Sunday's filming took place at Union Station. Director Chris Bagley, who is also filming a documentary on Heffernan, shot the participants rolling and limping through the lower levels of the station, constantly blocked by sets of stairs.

The Colorado Cross Disability Coalition sued Union Station's developers in 2014, shortly after the station was renovated, because there was no permanent ramp access to an elevated portion of the Grand Hall; the two entities settled the suit in November 2014, when the Union Station Alliance agreed to add a permanent ramp.

"The video will come out in the next two weeks or sometime in the next year," Heffernan jokes. For now, you can listen to the single above and check out behind-the-scenes photos below.