It comes in winter. It always comes in winter. During that period just before one year ends and another begins, a message from Jeff Cloud of Velvet Blue Music mysteriously appears in my inbox. I was not expecting to get word that a new album from long-time favorite band, Starflyer 59, was on it’s way so soon. It was December 2023 and their previous album, “In Search of Vanity,” had come out mid-October 2021. But there it was. Jeff wanted to discuss having me make another short film for the project.
When Jeff and I spoke on the phone, he told me about the new album with an enthusiasm that almost broke his California cool vibe. Jason Martin and company had written a record placing themselves in the same sonic territory as their iconic second self-titled effort, colloquially referred to as "Gold." He told me that the album was to be titled "Lust for Gold." He mentioned Jason had employed some of the same gear used to create SF59 tunes of days gone by. And he added that the artwork was being created by the same graphic designer that had done the “Gold” layout 30 years ago, the legendary Jason 71. Jeff chuckled that, like it’s namesake, the album might even have a solid gold cover again (spoiler alert, it does). It was like he was speaking some magical language to me. Taking a film hiatus to work on my own music, I had no plans of working on videos in 2024, and certainly nothing as huge as another short film, but the way he described the project...
I got an early mix of the single, “909,” in February, and Jeff and I had several conversations about the ideas and themes of both the album and the song. When I get a track from an artist, I don’t usually ask them what they intended it to mean. Usually, I’m relying on my interpretation and the emotions that the music and lyrics convey to me. So, I listen and I listen and I listen…a lot. I try to let the snapshots that my brain generates take me in as many different directions as it can. Suddenly, one of these little snapshots will stick in my gut, and then a story quickly starts falling into place. Listening to “909,” I could feel the heavy weight of life bearing down on the lyrics. The song made me pine for a simpler time. I thought about how we can become so caught up in trying to stay afloat that when we actually stop and sit with our existence, we realize the toll that life can take on us. Listening, I kept asking myself "when is the last time you felt safe and totally content? How do I get there again? Can I ever really go back? What does the journey to that place look like?"
I landed on three ideas I really liked. When I actually called Jeff to pitch these to him, he said "This is good timing. I'm at a gas station about to head over to Martin’s house." I pitched all three in the length of time it takes to fill up a tank. Afterwards, he told me Jason had liked "the idea with the guy walking.”
As soon as I got the thumbs up from the band and label, I started building a team. My friend, Ross Billman, graciously agreed to co-produce with me. He’s such a great people person, and was instrumental in this short coming together. Cadence Heden, who is literally the nicest person in the entire world, both acted as craft services and helped with locations. Then, my brother, Harrison, half of the directorial duo The Bragg Brothers, Meredith, and the incredibly enthusiastic and helpful Lauren Holland acted as production assistants.
Ross, Mark and Lauren - Day 1
I put together a long list of idyllic settings, and by late March, Ross and I were out scouting locations. Building on the nostalgic direction I had decided on, while seeking backgrounds for our Traveler to walk through, I thought back to places or things that had an impact on my childhood. Methods of transportation always fascinated me, and I tried to include several here - the wonder of a plane flying through the sky, a train station at which my mother and I dropped my grandfather off, boats waiting to be set to sail. I thought of the types of places that I would get visually lost in – the sea, farmland that goes on as far as the eye can see, an alley that gave me eerie vibes.
Our Traveler carries with him a photograph of a picturesque home, and embarks on a pilgrimage towards it. Later, when he arrives, he finds the house in disrepair. Along a small US route outside of my hometown, I saw a perfect location; this husk of a home, abandoned many years ago. Suffice it to say, we didn’t exactly have permission to film there. I wouldn’t even have known who to contact to get permission to film at this abandoned home. I thought back to my old college theatre professor, Tom King, who once commented “if you had a car with ‘Authorized Vehicle’ on the side, you could go anywhere.” I hatched a plan; I bought two high visibility yellow vests. A week before principal filming began, I waited until morning rush hour time, when there would be a lot of cars out on the road, and parked on the shoulder near the home. I put on a hard hat, and had someone else acting as lookout while walking around with a clipboard; very official looking. Acting like I was surveying the land, I filmed as much as I could before it felt like someone might notice us being suspicious. Once that was done, I spent several hours in Photoshop, putting together the picturesque photo the Traveler carries with him. I printed four copies of the photo, and had two photo frames – you never know what could go wrong on set, and we knew one was going to be broken at the end.
Run down house
This project, more than many I have worked on, is so reliant on performance. With little in the way of props or costumes, a lot of single take shots with sparse editing, and the fact that there is no dialogue, you need someone who can convey emotion with a look, a head turn, a step. I cold-called my old friend Mark, The Patient from the previous Starflyer 59 short film for 2021’s “Life in Bed,” and timidly said “So…I got asked to direct another short film for Starflyer 59.” I was still in the process of trying to formulate my next sentence, and without hesitation, Mark said “I’m in.” The only other “character” in the piece is the Traveler's partner. Erica Breig is an extremely talented actress that I’ve wanted to work with for a long time, and thought she would be perfect for the role. Even in joking conversation, she commits so hard to a bit or an idea that you start to wonder where the character ends and she begins. I was delighted that she agreed to join the team.
Mark, Erica and Periwinkle - Photo by Ross Billman
The first day of filming with the cast was May 29th, 2024. The main piece we filmed that day was the ‘couch in the field’ scene that begins our journey. Apparently, the tractor operator at the farm didn’t get the memo that we’d be on location, and just as I called ‘action’ he began circling the field, bailing hay. He almost ran over my Pelican case full of lenses before Ross was able to run and have someone flag them down. Between this, a storm looming overhead in the field, and having to learn to fly a brand new drone for the first time ever, admittedly, the whole day was a terrifying shoot. On May 30th, Erica joined us for the day. We returned to the same farm for flashback scenes of a picnic and the couple feeding some animals, and a drone shot of Mark walking on a small bridge over a pond. Then, production was moved to Cadence’s home for the bulk of the interior shots; the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and dining room scenes were all filmed here. While we worked, Cadence made food for the cast and crew, and it’s actually that meal that Mark and Erica are eating on screen. Let me say this, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, Cadence’s Beyond Meat vegetarian lasagna is the stuff of legends.
Having a bit while watching the playback of a take
The following day, we began filming the travelling / walking scenes. Big take-aways from this day include the train shot, and re-visiting the alley in which the climax of “Life in Bed” was shot. We rounded out the day filming the grocery store scene, having a crew dinner, and two sequences that didn’t make the final cut - more on that later.
Over the next two weeks of production, Mark and I had days planned that involved several hours of travel. One day, we ventured north to Alexandria (tunnel scene), Arlington (laundromat shot), Washington, D.C. (the airplane taking off, and the boats on the dock), and Baltimore (another cut shipping container scene). The next day, we headed south to Richmond, VA, filming the truck stop, the beginning office scene, the graffiti wall shot, some shots near the river, and the nighttime city skyline.
Downtown RVA - knee braces being pushed to their limits
We had almost an entire day dedicated to filming Mark reacting to seeing the house. We couldn’t film Mark’s reverse shots at the actual location; it was just highway and cars. But on my cousins’ property in Stafford, VA, on land that has been in the Christy family for generations, we found a corner with a tree line that perfectly paired with the house footage. Additionally, we really lucked out that the sky that day matched the shots of the dilapidated house filmed two weeks prior; I’m always excited when I don’t have to do extra work, like replacing the sky, to make shots match.
I don’t want to speak for Mark but, for me, this was the most emotionally draining day. Mark has to move through so many feelings in such a short span of time, over and over, take after take until we landed on the perfect formula. He has to move through feelings of shock, of sorrow, of despair, of self-deprecating humor, of anger. It was emotional and cathartic and tense and tough, but in all of the best ways. Later in the evening, we headed back to the grocery store to film the opening exterior shot of Mark walking into the store. While we were packing up for the night, as it had every other filming day, the sky opened up and it began pouring. I decided to open the trunk of my SUV and sit in the back with the camera, and asked Mark to walk through the rain. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t scripted, and it was totally in the moment, but that shot is one of my absolute favorites of the short.
Mark is a good sport for letting me put him through this.
A few weeks later, Mark and I reconvened for a final day of a few re-shoots. I was already well into the post-production process, and the visual effect of having the picture frame be in color while the rest of the shot was in black and white was very time consuming. It was accomplished through a process known as ‘rotoscoping.’ In cinema, there are 24 images that make up one second of film. And in the rotoscoping process, I’m meticulously tracing the photograph, frame by frame by frame of the footage. If Mark’s hand or body obscured part of the photo, I had to also trace those bits to remove them from outline of the frame. The 22 second drone shot of the couch in the field was over 500 frames long, and took something like 24 hours of work. Looking at all of these effects shots that I had left to complete, I realized that if we re-shot a few moments with these obstacles in mind, it could save me hours of labor. We re-filmed an overhead spinning drone scene and a shot in which Mark holds the frame in an alley. That evening, I wrapped production with Mark, shooting the poster image for the short.
Example of rotoscoping. In this case, masks are applied and moved, frame by frame to show or obscure pieces of the image
Aside from the narrative bookends to the film, it was shot in a way that I could assemble the journey based on feel - what feels right, what flows, what works together. I’ve never filmed this way before. I’m usually adhering to a script and intense shot lists defining which moments are wide, medium or close ups, and in what order. Though they all didn't make the final cut, "909" was filmed at almost 50 different locations. Add in the fact that it rained every single outdoor shoot day, and you start racking up a lot of hours racing to set up and then tear down. We were fighting time and daylight and the weather to get some of those shots, but when we nailed it, we would all stand around the playback monitor beaming at what we'd captured.
For the flashback sequences, so many elements were taken directly from my adolescence; everything from the toys, to the Oregon Trail type computer game, to the rotary phone with a Mr. Yuck sticker. The sheets on the bed were literally sheets of mine that my mother had kept packed away for the last 30-some years. The drawings on the wall in the bedroom were made by my brother and myself. I filmed my family's rotary phone (that my parents still had for some reason). It was my real mother setting down the cake at the spot of their dining room table where I used to sit for birthdays. So much of my real life childhood was poured into these little slivers of colorful nostalgia. Then, to further visually separate the Travelers’ current reality versus the warm flashback sequences, I photographed the two situations with very different lens systems - a modern, very sharp, photography zoom lens to create a harsher, grittier 'now,' as opposed to manual focus cinema prime lenses to create a softer vintage aesthetic.
Some childhood buddies, hanging out
While there are the obvious coloring visual effects, or the little SF59-centric Easter eggs I hid in the background of a few shots, by and large we filmed this practically. That is to say, when we needed that couch in the middle of a huge field, we had to carry it out into the middle of a huge field. When we wanted a train, we had to wait for a train. When we shattered a picture frame, we really broke the glass. While we digitally created the visuals for the video games, I actually filmed them on the old CRT screens. To me, all of these little painstaking things incrementally add authenticity. We wanted this to feel as genuine and honest as we could make it. I hope we succeeded.
One of several SF59-centric Easter eggs hidden throughout; One Shot Juanita’s Cleaners
The couch in the field - storm brewing overhead
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The release cycle for “Lust For Gold” saw me generating more media than any other project I’ve worked on. In the middle of production on the short film, I had to schedule a week to create the trailer for the audio single – the idea was to keep the short film and audio release as separate thoughts. Once this was created, I used a single shot of Mark walking across the flat top of a dam to create a visualizer for the single …No further context - just something to give audiences and listeners something to look at and ponder.
Next, a trailer was made for the short film. When it comes to short films, especially those which rely so heavily on visual cues being delivered at precise moments in the story, it can be hard to not spoil something in a trailer. But I cobbled together something that was, if nothing else, enough to pique curiosity.
Here’s where things get really interesting. During the filming of “Life in Bed,” there was loose talk of creating a music video for a second song off of the album “In Search of Vanity.” Prior to striking the hospital set, Mark and I filmed a scene that was going to be included in this proposed follow up video. Since this second video was ultimately scrapped, this shot was just sitting there. But, since I was working with Mark again, I had hatched a plan. As we traveled and filmed, I asked Mark to perform additional takes for a kind of alternate timeline music video, wherein The Traveler never realizes what he has waiting for him at home, and ends up in a mental state that requires hospitalization. This version, the “Dark” version of the short film, ends with that outtake from “Life in Bed” - Mark being put into a hospital room with the door closing behind him, which leads directly into the beginning of “Life in Bed.” Cloud had no idea I had done this until production was almost completed…I just kind of did it. Luckily, when I sent it to him, he was excited – “LOVE the dark version…I love bonus, kinda sneaky add ons.”
still from “909 - DARK”
A very brief teaser trailer was created for the “dark” version, and then I set my sights on creating the trailer for the actual album release. One thing I love to do when I'm creating multiple pieces in a release cycle is give each one I'm working on its own visual identity, while still finding elements to tie it all together. The album artwork crafted by Jason Pickersgill was that unifying thread; even though the single trailer was very 90’s / VHS styled, the short films and their trailers were more cinematic, and the visualizer was just meant to be panoramic and epic, the font selections and color scheme he laid out in the artwork weaves it’s way through each of the pieces. When time came to create and style an album trailer, having heard the title "Lust for Gold" so many times and the more orchestrated nature of the song, I started subconsciously thinking about the James Bond film "GoldenEye" - the first 007 film I ever saw in a theater. The "GoldenEye" title sequence by Daniel Kleinman was one of those pivotal moments that really got me interested in motion graphics to begin with and was definitely an inspiration for this trailer.
I’ll close by saying this. Every project I work on, I learn so much. More than that, the running mental list titled “People That I Insist on Roping into My Next Project” grows and grows. Thank you to everyone involved; Everyone who helped, everyone who watched, everyone who said an encouraging word or inspired me, everyone who gave of their time or knowledge or enthusiasm. Thank you.
-HC
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