Video Chats: Abraham Vilchez-Moran on 'Come Aboard' by Sydney Wayser

It’s rare for a director to have an underwater mermaid specialist in their back pocket, but that’s one of the luxuries that director Abraham Vilchez-Moran has in his relationship with underwater photographer Chris Crumley. Although this isn’t a feature that works in every music video, when the artist you’re working with was obsessed with being a mermaid as a child in the way Sydney Wayser was, it becomes the perfect addition to the project. We talked to Abraham about working with Sydney on "Come Aboard," premiering on MTV’s Catfish, and why you need Vaseline when shooting underwater mermaids.

Doug: Where did the original idea for this video come from?

Abraham: I was overseas last summer, I was in Spain. I had been talking to Sydney through email and phone calls. We had this really great concept for a video but it just didn’t work out. She saw on twitter I was going to be up in New York that weekend and she was there, since she’s from LA. She hit me up and asked me, “Hey do you want to do the music video?” I said, "OK I guess so." We didn’t have a concept or a budget or anything. We talked on the phone for an hour and I asked her if she likes mermaids and she freaked out. I guess she was obsessed with being a mermaid when she was little. The same underwater guy who I worked with on the Eternal Summers video does underwater mermaid photography. I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate that stuff. I just asked her on a whim and she was obsessed with the idea. I thought I would work that into the video and then to mix that with almost like an Eyes Wide Shut feeling, where these people show up to this weird building, and go in through this Chinese tea ceremony, and they get all drugged up and high and then they just started dancing to the music. There’s not much of a concept, but it turned out really well, I thought.

Doug: You mentioned it was the same guy, Chris Crumley, that you worked with for the under water stuff. Is the mermaid costume his?

Abraham: Yeah, he owns that. He got it commissioned by some mermaid guy. I don’t know what you would call him. He makes the mermaid scales for a living. He owns these pieces.

Doug: As like the way they move, that’s all actually seems pretty realistic. I wonder if you could explain what these mermaid tails look like when not on the screen. Does it kind of look like half of a giant fish?

Abraham: Yeah, but it looks really fake when it’s not under water. And also for the girl to get in, her name is Chelsey, we had to douse her in Vaseline. Like a tub of Vaseline to slide in, and she is super skinny. She almost couldn’t get in. I think the inside is like latex and rubber or something. But you have to douse yourself in Vaseline if you have to get in.

Doug: He shoots with this thing pretty frequently though, right?

Abraham: Yeah he is used to it but the girl obviously wasn’t used to doing it, so it was kind of hard. It took like two hours just to get her comfortable in the water with the tail on. It was just a different feeling swimming like that where your feet become one.

Doug: Did Chelsea have any idea what she was getting into before you guys started? Did she know she was going to have to get lubed up?

Abraham: She had no idea that lube was involved. I’m glad that I didn’t pitch it that I didn’t pitch it that way, she would have been freaked out.

Doug: So does Chris have everything you need on hand to get her into the tail, I guess Vaseline included?

Abraham: I left that to him. He goes to Mexico, and Costa Rica, and all these places and he just shoots stuff like this all the time as his job. I didn’t really have to worry about it. I couldn’t really direct because I don’t swim. I don’t know how to swim, so I couldn’t be down there for a long period of time even if I wanted to.

Doug: And so some other comparisons to the "Good As You" video is the kind of washed out look to the video. I’m curious what it is about that look that you thought would be most effective, and why you chose to use that for this video?

Abraham: Since I used the same DP, which is Josiah, I wanted a visual continuity between those two pieces. Because of the nature of the underwater footage. It just looked kind of ugly when it was raw and without the color correction. That bleached out, washed out look kind of added this mysterious dreamy feeling to the video. I just thought it would be cool to have two videos that share that same aesthetic.

Doug: You give Josiah credit again at the beginning of this video just like before. Is that something that we can expect from you going forward?

Abraham: Yeah. Not for every video, but I think it’s because of the color correction, since he also does the color correction. Not on every video I work on, but for those two he did. It’s such an important part of the piece that I felt like he needed to be credited in the beginning just like the director. I wouldn’t use this type of look for every video - I have a video with Pusha T and Wale in two weeks and I would not use that look for that type of video. It’s a specific type of mood that you are trying to create.

Doug: So when working with Josiah, is that his style or is that a style that you came upon together?

Abraham: It’s kind of a little bit of both because I knew he was going to bring it to the table but also he sends me different samples and then what I do is I go through them and I figure out which one suits the video the best.

Doug: This video premiered on MTV’s Catfish, right? Did anything sweet come from that?

Abraham: A friend of mine called another friend of mine during a shoot, just out of the blue. He was excited because he finally saw a music video on MTV for the first time in a long time and it was really good. He was with a girl who he was thinking about dumping and she was making him watch some "reality show crap called Catfish." His words! Then, he tells my friend that a great video comes on and all of a sudden he sees my name flash across the screen and says, "Holy shit! Abe directed this!" Most surreal feeling ever.

Doug: Getting into the actual performance of the video and Sydney’s performance, does that stuff come from you and are you giving performance directions during those portions or is she naturally like that on camera?

Abraham: She’s just like that. It was amazing. She has this hippy personality, so that was all her. I didn’t really direct her as far as to do that stuff with the crown and all that. That’s her crown, she owns that.

Doug: That's awesome because that’s actually another thing I was going to ask. Her styling, even in the stuff that’s part of the narrative, is all very distinct and interesting. Was most of that stuff hers as well?

Abraham: It was kind of a mix. They just gave me five different options and I told her what to wear. But she owned that jacket with the sequins on it and stuff. A lot of that stuff is in her real closet which is kind of weird. I don’t know when she would ever wear that but it works for the video.

Doug: Who brought the masks and stuff?

Abraham: She actually bought those and I think she rented some of those. Mainly the styling was all her. I sent her pictures. I was on my way to New York, there was no production at all. I just said, "this is what I want it to look like" and she went out and she put everything together.

Doug: With Chris, you've basically got a working relationship with it now that you guys can collaborate without much warning, right? Normally, to get these epic underwater shots and you don’t associate with that with like not having much planning and involved with a video. Do you have it where you can shoot with him whenever you want to?

Abraham: Yeah, because the mermaid thing was an afterthought. I shot that stuff the weekend after we were in New York. I kind of gave him general guidelines of what I wanted him to do as far as specific camera movements, and then he just went and did his own thing and then we checked out the footage and it was good. Again, that was more so his collaboration. I couldn’t really direct underwater specific camera movements. He’s based out of Virginia Beach, but now he’s in Mexico actually.

Doug: Doing mermaid stuff?

Abraham: Doing mermaid stuff.