You know youve hit gold with your casting call when a Ukrainian ex-circus member, a real estate broker, and a straight up junkie all show up to be in the same video. In Crystal Vases by The Last Royals, director Michal Lawrence follows a team of older women, lead by Alice Callahan from Gossip Girl, as they trash Brooklyn, old lady style. We talked to Michal about casting the video, animation, and smashing televisions.
Doug: What was the animation in the video inspired by?
Michael: I kept on coming back to this idea of the older women having flashbacks. 70's psychedelia, rock'n'roll posters, and early 90's advertising all came up as visual references. They are in a state of euphoric denial, and I figured that the environment should interact around them in a way that highlighted this.
Doug: I see that Alex Amoling animated this video, but you're both credited as the animation director. How did the animation process work out?
Michael: Alex and I watched through the rough cut over and over. We threw around ideas, scribbled on some napkins, and then sent those ideas to the band. When they said yes, we got to making Photoshop comps using a tablet - I did rough sketches and Alex did all of the frame-by-frame work.
Doug: You don't have band performance portions in a lot of your other videos, was that something you wanted to explore, or was it something that the band asked for?
Michael: I'm not usually a fan of having band performance in videos. But it can work, if done right. In this case, the brief from the label stated that the band had to appear in it. I wanted to tell this story of these older women re-living their youth, but in modern-day Brooklyn. So I thought - how can we fit the band in? Why don't the women be super-fans, and end up at the show?
Doug: You mentioned shooting this video a year ago, do you know what took it so long to come out?
Michael: Ooh La La Records ended up releasing the album a bit later than expected, I think. To follow with that release schedule, the video premiere got continually pushed back. Really happy to finally have it out there.
Director of Photography David Kruta
Doug: What was the casting process like for this video?
Michael: Alice Callahan, of Gossip Girl, is a friend of the band and had already agreed to star in the video. It was a conscious decision to try and find an older version of her to play the alternate ego. We cast via Craigslist, personal recommendations, and a few other casting sites. In our two sessions, we had a Ukrainian ex-circus member who juggles on the roof, a real estate broker, a self-proclaimed "Street Hustler," and a straight-up junkie. We ran through some directions, did a quick little screen test, and ended it with "Do you have any special skills or party tricks that you'd like to share?" The women that seemed most enthusiastic, had the funniest stories, and the best attitudes are the one's that we used in the video. Carrie, Cindy, Catherine, Barbara - thanks again, for helping make my hallucinogenic dream come to life. You rock. I will buy each of you a Rolling Rock 40 any day of the week.
Doug: Was everyone hired to be there, or were some of the extras found there on the street?
Michael: All of the extras were cast from friends, friends of friends, and a bit of social media magic.
Doug: What kind of direction were you giving the performers? Was most of their action really defined beforehand, or was their performance a bit more organice than that?
Michael: A couple of the women were nervous on the day of the shoot. They were like "I'm old, what do I do!?" We sent them in to wardrobe and they came out sparkling, jazzed up. We gave them a bit of a movie-star treatment. Blasted some music, set the mood. I told them "Remember what it was like to be 22? This is your chance to re-live that." We had a steadicam on the street but really just ran around and improvised. A couple of hours into it and they were totally in the part. One of them was like "can we light more stuff on fire?" - I looked over to the producer and was like "can we do that?" A cop car rolled by and he was like "No, definitely not." My favorite bit was when they smash the television. That was entirely improvised - we just found it next to a dumpster on the street in Bushwick. I pointed to it and was like, "Do you think you would you maybe want to smash this?" They slammed a few beers and got at it.
