Having a music video selected to screen at SXSW doesn’t just benefit the director of the video. Everyone involved with video, from the artist and through to each crew member, contributed to the success of the project. That’s why we were excited when our first interview at SXSW this year was not only with Taylor Engel, director of “Stroker's Row” by Righchus, but also with camera operator Josh Bishop, as well as Righchus himself. We talked to them about their relationship, about the light painting effect in the video, and about what it means to them to be screening at SXSW.

Doug: You guys have worked together previously on "Ridin'," which is a one-shot music video. What’s the relationship like between all of you guys? And is that how this project came about?

Taylor: Actually, we’ve done two videos before this one with Righchus, and for all three we’ve kept basically the same crew. It started in college. My friend Max Berry was one of my roommates and Righchus would always come over, and they would be working on music together in his room. Max creates all of the beats and produces Righchus’ songs. I always wanted to do a music video, but I never really thought about doing a rap video, honestly. I didn’t know if I was thinking about doing a music video at the time, and Dale, our producer said, “Listen, you do music, you do videos. You guys should just get together and make a music video.” I was like, “Yeah, all right, but we don’t have any money, but we’ll just figure it out.” It just kind of came together thanks to this great crew of friends I had been working with. We met in college in South Carolina. Josh is the camera operator, and we have Dale as our producer, and we have Jonathan as our DP. And then there’s Andrew, who does basically every other job, from being the AD to actually clapping the slate himself. It’s always the same people. I gave them my usual speech, which is that we didn’t have any money and we didn’t have a lot to work with, but I would do my best to make something that everyone was proud to have worked on and that was worth their time. That video, "Ridin’," it made its way around the internet because we only spent $42 on it, yet it really stood out from other hip-hop videos at the time.

Josh: We lucked out because we were still in with the school enough to be able to use some of their equipment so we had a steadicam and a bunch of lights. We knew it was going to be our last hurrah because we were all about to graduate. We knew it was like our last time that we were going to be able to really use that privilege so we made it worth it. Taylor came up with a really creative idea. Let’s be honest, rap videos aren’t usually very innovative. It’s usually pretty simple. So, you have a cool concept - I think that’s the best thing about music videos, is that you can just experiment. You can come up with a simple concept, especially like Michel Gondry. You can just come up with a really cool idea and just play on it for an entire video. It’s sad that it’s a dying art form. I hope it’s making a comeback. It’s great, especially for the independent filmmaker just to do a simple project. You could do it for usually a pretty low budget, one or two shoot days. You can find an audience if you know how to market it.

Taylor: I think that’s what excited us about it. What was exciting about working together with Righchus for the first time was that in reality I kind of hated rap videos. There are a couple of rap videos where someone like Spike Jonze or Keith Schofield gets behind it and really creates something unique, but usually they’re just full of terrible clichés and boring imagery. I thought it would be interesting to try to make a rap video that really doesn’t look like a rap video. What’s great about Righchus is that he is into that idea too, and he doesn’t want to stand in front of a fancy car while rapping and surrounded by girls and champagne. He’s open to all of my ideas which are generally pretty out of the box. That’s why it’s fun to work with him. Fast forward to Stroker’s Row, I had just finished doing a video featuring Snoop Dogg, and it had a big budget and great people working on it, but along with all of that money can sometimes come more restrictions in terms of the flexibility that you have while shooting and the time that you have to work on it in post. So I was looking forward to doing another Righchus video where I could go back to the basics and have the time and freedom to really go for something crazy, which is nice to do every once in awhile. With videos for independent artists you don’t always have as much money in the budget as you’d like so you have to come up with an idea that really stands out because the production value is not going to be what makes the video special. You don’t have that to fall back on – that it just “looks nice." You’re forced to come up with something more. Righchus was actually just coming to visit LA anyway. I wasn’t even sure we were going to do the video because I hadn’t really had time to even think about it. I was working on another project at the time. I really didn’t have time to plan it. I usually spend days or weeks trying to work through the concept, especially when it’s complex, just trying to determine if it’s actually feasible and how we’re going to pull it off. For this, I really didn’t know if it was going to work or not. For the couple of days before, I was actually really depressed about it because I knew we should make it. I knew we should make it happen, but I just didn’t want to make it if it wasn’t going to be great, and I have very high standards. We just didn’t have a lot of time or money to work with. Righchus kind of pushed me. He was like, "let’s just do this. Make it happen." He knew it would be great and so I agreed. We should just go for it. We rented a couple of lights, spent about 200 bucks, and started shooting.

Taylor, Josh, and Righchus being interviewed by Doug

Doug: I wanted to go back quickly to where you were talking about rap videos not always blowing people away and how they can sometimes be pretty standard. Righchus, I wanted to ask you what were your goals going into this music video? Was that something you definitely had in mind going into it, that you wanted to do something that wasn’t that standard hip hop video?

Righchus: Yes. That’s something that I considered from the first video we made. I always know when I work with Taylor it’s not going to be that style of video that everyone else does. It helps because it helps me stand out even more. We’re from South Carolina. The music I make there stands out already, so why not have the visuals to accompany it. Just going in, when he was telling me the idea - first of all, when he tells me ideas, I kind of nod my head like I know what he’s saying. I never really know what he’s saying. I just know it’s going to come out well. I trust him. So I say, “OK, it’s perfect. Let’s do it.” I don’t think I ever want to go up into that platform where the videos look like everyone else’s. I think I want to be consistent with what we’ve done. You can still take it to the next level, but still be different than what everybody else was doing. You just kind of step it up, and we did. Matter of fact, every video we’ve done has stepped up more and more because we did "Ridin'" which was in one shot, and everybody says, “Oh man, that’s one shot. That’s crazy.” Then we did "Go Hard," which was like at the end I disappeared in like smoke. And again, everyone said It was crazy. This one with the light painting, now it’s like, "Oh my God. What else can we do? How much further can we go?" I think that’s what goes with giving them creative freedom each time, letting them do what they want to do.

Doug: What about your performance? Pantomiming on camera is a difficult thing to try to make it seem like they’re like painting this picture without actually being able to manipulate light magically in front of you. What was that kind of process like? Was that difficult to get on board with and understand how to do that?

Righchus: For me, it was easy because I’m trained in theater and in film acting so I can pantomime pretty well. He gave me the perfect direction to know that this is going to be here, and this is what’s happening. He gave me a visual in my mind of what it would probably look like and I just went off of that.

Taylor: What was amazing was while we were shooting it, I don’t really know what he’s drawing necessarily. We had a couple of key set pieces that we decided on beforehand – specific drawings he would create, but a good bit of it is just Righchus improving. We talked about it, and I said, “All right. I think that’s going to look good," but there’s no way to see it in camera. Basically I had to go through the process of creating the light streak by digitally tracking his flashlight, and only then can I really see what he has actually drawn in the air. I can alter it from there a little bit, but really the final product is a direct result of what Righchus draws on the day. I was so blown away by how he did everything so perfectly. Also, watching it over again, he does it so naturally. He wasn’t awkward about it, it just made sense to him somehow. If someone told me to hold the flashlight and twirl it around, I don’t think I’d know what to do, but for him it worked. He just naturally figured it out immediately. We actually did some test light painting shots, and I think he got a little practice there, I guess, so he knew how to create some of the shapes ahead of time. Then we had Max. He has this one little cameo where he draws his signature with light that ends up being about a two second shot in the video. After we shot that, we were out of time. He came up to me, he’s like, “I think I did it all backwards.” I realized that he had drawn it completely backwards so that shot I had to fudge a little.”

Failed light painting test

Doug: I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about the light painting effect and how you achieve it and what you do to make it happen.

Taylor: At first, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I wanted to find a way to make it look as realistic as possible. We did one night of testing before we shot the actual light painting photographs that Josh took. Part of it was just for tests, and part of it was for reference so we would know how to recreate the light paintings. First we shoot Righchus with a flashlight drawing the imaginary shapes in the air. Then for every setup, we would shoot an actual light painting photograph with a long exposure of him doing it again, for real. Then we’d have Righchus step out, and we would expose the frame and different elements in the background. We would take a long exposure photograph and hold a flashlight up on the left side of the couch, then the right side of the couch, in the middle of the couch, and the floor. It creates that effect of different sources of light that you usually see in the light painting photographs. In postproduction, I would take those exposures and composite elements of that onto the video because the video is pretty dark. I would animate it so that if he moves his hand to the right, then I would reveal this composite of the couch where it’s lit up by the light on the right side. That way I could kind of make it look like the light painting is giving off a source of light. For the actual streaks themselves, basically the flashlight is a great tracking point so I use the computer to track the flashlight as much as possible, and then I do the rest by hand, frame by frame. I use a system of particles that are designed to freeze in the air while retaining a little bit of animation. I’d use different methods for each element depending on what he was drawing. It’s basically just a particle-based system and a lot of added lens flairs and various 3D elements.

Doug: Are you shooting locked off for everything?

Taylor: Yes. We shot everything locked off, which was part of the style, and it also made it easier.

Josh: I couldn't imagine trying to do that without it locked off.

Taylor: Almost every shot had to be rotoscoped. We could’ve done the green screen, but it wouldn’t have looked as good.

Josh: I think we tried, didn’t we?

Taylor: We tried. But, we didn’t have the money, frankly - the money or the lighting, or the green screen. A lot of the time I spent, I was just, again, cutting him out frame-by-frame, almost every shot of the video.

1st AD Andrew Stepp and Righchus on set

Doug: I wonder if we could talk a little bit about SXSW and having the music video screen here. To each of you in your particular position as a director, camera operator, and artist, what that means to have your music video screen here?

Righchus: For me, it’s a huge accomplishment. It’s a huge deal for us to be here because the last time I came here it was ’07. I came for the music portion just to check it out. But to have your video here, there’s not many festivals that are a platform for music videos, so I think this is basically the biggest one. So for it to be here is just a huge deal. I saw all the work they put in. As far as from a team effort from them, they always give 100% so I think they really deserve it. Normally, I say we’re from Charleston in South Carolina, so not a lot of people come out and do something like this. It was a big deal back home. It was like in the paper.

Taylor: He got a full page spread of just Righchus. He was on the cover, too.

Righchus: Yes. The cover. It was crazy.

Taylor: He got his first celebrity moment, like people walking up to him, “Aren’t you the guy in the paper?”

Righchus: I was like, “Oh my gosh.” It’s a big deal. Like I say, they definitely deserve it. Anytime I’m working with them, they make sure I’m taken care of. Even Josh behind the camera, he always lets me know, "You got this frame or don’t move pass this point, and this is what you could do." It’s comfortable, and I trust him, and hopefully, we’ll continue to do more work until they tell me I can’t have any more videos.

Josh: I think this is a great experience for us because it’s the biggest venue we’ve really done. We’ve been in little festivals here and there, local festivals. It’s kind of rewarding, but in the end it doesn’t really amount of very much, especially if you’re in somewhere South Carolina where there’s not a whole lot of film going on. You can make some connects, but they’re going to be South Carolina connects, and at the end of the day you’re not really going to be making any money off that. That’s why we took the leap of faith and came out to LA, because we knew we were just going to get stagnant staying in South Carolina. We needed to take the next step. But, SXSW, this is all Taylor. Taylor is a really outgoing guy. We were just hanging out one night. We go out drinking once or twice a week, and then one night he’s like, “Oh, by the way guys, I got the music video into SXSW.” I was like, "What?! Are you kidding me? You didn’t even tell me you were submitting it!" He’s so sneaky like that. He doesn’t let anyone know that he’s doing things, and suddenly, bam, it’s here already. He’s very good and sneaky like that. I think Dale has a lot to do with it too. They’re a good little producing team. They make shit happen.

Taylor: I didn’t tell Dale either.

Righchus: He called me and said, “Would you be mad if I sent this video to SXSW?” I was like, “No.” He was like, “OK. Good, because I did and we’re in it.”

Josh: I’ve been really excited to be here. I’ve always wanted to go, and I know it’s been getting bigger and bigger. I’ve got some family in Texas. I love Austin. Austin is a great city, and everyone I know that’s like either from Texas, or has visited, says Austin is the place to go. I’m happy to be here, and I think it’s a pretty big deal. A lot of people we’ve met are here just to see this or that and we'll say, “Oh yeah, we have a music video screening here.” We get, “What, really, congratulations!” I almost feel like other people are more excited about it than I am. I mean, I’m excited about it, but it’s just like, OK we’re in a festival. I haven’t been in a festival before. They’re like, “You got accepted to South by Southwest? That’s awesome!" It’s inspiring. It makes me want to do more stuff like this just to get it in. Also, it’s good to come see what other people are doing because we might have a certain vision of what we’ve done, and how good it is, and how good it stacks up to other things - then we get here and see some other more produced things, and it takes us down a peg or two. It also inspires us and lets us know what we need to do to get that next step. It’s all part of the learning process, and I think this is an invaluable experience for us.

Taylor: I had the same thing where I think this is cool. We’re in SXSW, and I think this is a big deal. I tell people, they’re like, “What do you do?” I say, “I’m going to SXSW with a music video." They’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing!” I think it’s really cool. But, then again, we saw the other music videos that screened here, and there was part of me that was hoping it would be a bunch of shitty videos, and our video would easily be the best one. It turned out to be the complete opposite. Every video was amazing. It was humbling, like, “Wow. We’ve got some big competition.” I think we were talking to LAMAR+NIK, and they said that they looked into it, and they think that our video and their video are the only two videos that weren’t produced by a production company. We felt good about that. I think a lot of the videos had a lot more money behind them and things going on. Either way, it's great for all of us. It’s great for Righchus because it’s good exposure for him. I think he’s really about to make it big. He’s starting to get a lot of recognition, and he’s hugely talented. He just needs to get out there. As soon as people hear him, he’ll make it. That’s all he needs. The most exciting part for me is for the crew because I asked them to work on all these things, and a lot of times they do it for free. You want it to pay off for them. If I’m going to ask people to work absolutely for free, all I want is for them to be proud of it and at least come away with something like, “I’m glad I worked on that even though I got paid nothing.” It’s good for them. I just try to make sure their names are in as many places as possible because that’s the only pay that I can give them is for them to get some recognition. For me, it’s exciting too because I want to do more videos, and I’d like to find some representation. I’d love to be with a production company where I could have the opportunity to pitch on more videos. These videos are great calling cards for me, because it’s like “This is what I can do with $200, wait until you see what I can do with a couple of thousand.” I enjoy doing this, and so I hope this allows me to find more artists to work with and gives me the opportunity to do more videos.

Light painting test

Doug: What about just the basic thing that comes along with being in a film festival and that is seeing your video on a giant screen in a theater. How is that?

Taylor: That’s great, because that’s the problem with music videos right now. There’s no MTV, so they’re just going to watch it on the internet, and they’re usually doing other things. In fact, even when I was trying to watch the music videos for the festival, you get ADD, and you can’t sit there with them. You don’t ever get to see videos on a big screen with great sound. That’s the amazing thing that SXSW is providing, showing these videos in a venue like that is incredible. You don’t see that anywhere. It was cool to see it on the big screen. I was worried how it would actually blow up, if there would be any tiny details that maybe I had looked over that would now be huge and glaring. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Righchus: Yeah, I was wondering how it was going to look. I saw it, and matter of fact, it looks better because on the computer screen it looks a little darker. On the big screen, it looks dim on the screen on the dark points and then lights up like crazy.

Taylor: Our video is very dark, so it helps to watch it in the dark. It’s great that they put the audience in that situation.

Josh: I went to this one festival a few years back. This is a project I didn’t work with on Taylor, but it was another music video I shot before I left South Carolina. We got it accepted into this thing called the Scene Festival in Rhode Island, in Providence, so me and Jonathan, one of our other crew members, we took a road trip up there to watch it. This was like the first year of this festival. There was no more than like a hundred people in the entire festival, and the huge city of Providence was empty. It was actually not very cool. They screened our music video - the video was about this chimney that runs around and chases this guy. It’s a guy in a chimney suit. It’s kind of goofy - but they put it in this monster movie section, this category. We played it on this immense screen, and there was like five people in the audience, but it was really awesome because it looked better than I had ever seen it look. They were playing off of like a DVD. It wasn’t even HD, and somehow it looked amazing. So no matter the video, no matter the venue, seeing it on screen is always a nice eye-opening experience. Also, the audience reaction is a big thing to see, too, and also, to see how people take it and like it. With this other festival I went to, the first thing that happened was a girl goes up to ask a question and totally like calls out a technical flaw in our video. “So how come this happen? Did you guys not have time to fix that?”

Taylor: That’s the cool thing about seeing it in the festival, though, is getting other people’s reaction. So far, it’s just been like our friends and family, and they’re like, “It’s great.” When I show to people here at South by, they seem really excited about it. They’re actually surprised. I’m like, “Oh, I have this rap video, and it’s got light painting.” Then they start watching it, and are like, “Whoa, what is this?” They get excited. It’s cool to get real reactions from people who aren't biased. It’s fun to show people something they haven’t seen before.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.