Collaborating with directors like AG Rojas, Diane Martel, Adam Powell, and That Go, cinematographer Michael Ragen has shot some of our favorite music videos this year. The videos include a variety of different styles and shooting environments with the one constant element: they all look amazing – even the ones that are supposed to look bad. We talked to Michael about working as a DP, his relationship with directors and the band Portugal. The Man, and what goes into achieving the different looks he incorporates into his work. 

Doug: Was it always a goal of yours to become a DP? How did you find yourself in that position?

Michael: It was never my intention to become a DP. I grew up drawing and went to college for illustration and fine art. A few years after college I started developing an animation project with one of my best friends from elementary school and an anesthesia technician I met at a coffee shop. (Note: If you must know it was a Lovecraftian tale of a WWI ambulance driver trying to save his estranged blind brother from the gravitational clutches of an underwater god.) After spending six months learning After Effects for the project I realized we needed a video camera to shoot some elements. I invested in HVX200 and shortly after that the project began to fall apart as we learned we really didn't have the man power to achieve the level of quality we wanted in the animation. Meanwhile I began shooting little projects for fun and working as a tech on some small productions, and also spending way too much time on online camera forums. I ended up meeting Matt Daniels, That Go (Stefan Moore & Noel Paul) and Sean Pecknold and we all sort of ended up forming our own small music video scene in Seattle. We helped each other out on projects and there was also a healthy sense of competition.

Doug: In addition to shooting most of their videos, you have also directed a few videos for Portugal. The Man. Are those special circumstances because of your relationship with the band, or do you have aspirations to direct?

Michael: I'm happy DPing but having the occasional opportunity to try something new is nice. John Gourley [lead singer of Portuglar. The Man] and I work very closely on the videos creatively so you could say he is the other director on the videos I've made. Most of the time my process with John isn't really something that would work with someone I didn't know. The treatments have mostly been a few sentences or non-existent. For "Evil Friends" we decided last minute to make the video in Alaska before the song was even finished. No one knew we were making it, including the label. The only concrete element was that we were going to shoot in night vision. If we had actually pitched the idea of snow-machining in total darkness on a frozen lake with no support I don't think people would have been down. It's also a complete gamble shooting up there. A few days before I arrived it was -30F and would have been impossible to shoot with the camcorder we were using. We had no traditional crew and Zach from the band produced the whole shoot, securing locations and talent. Working with no crew or expensive equipment allowed us to spread out shooting over five or so days so we didn't have to be in the cold that long and I could edit as we went along. Currently I don't have plans to direct any projects outside of working with Portugal but I'm not going to say it will never happen.

Doug: John tells me that for the most part you've introduced him to most of the directors of the Portugal. The Man videos. Is that typical, you facilitating connections or helping director's get jobs? Or is that something that's again specific to Portugal. The Man?

Michael: I always try and connect people I think would work well together but I'm not friends with a ton of bands and usually not in the position of recommending directors. So in that way it is sort of unique to their band but a lot of the connections happened pretty organically. Noel and Stefan from That Go produced the first video I directed for them for "Guns and Dogs" so John ended up becoming friends with them during the shoot which down the road led to "Purple Yellow Red & Blue." I introduced John and AG last year and they quickly became friends as well. The band had also been a fan of his work for a long time.

Doug: What was the experience like shooting "Modern Jesus" over 15 states in 20 days? What was the process like of getting most of that footage?

Michael: There were four people (AG Rojas, Corbett Jones, Anna Rau, and myself) and six or so cameras in a van for the trip. We always had at least three cameras in reach that anyone could grab immediately and start shooting. Whoever was sitting on the side of the car with the best light had to be prepared to shoot at all times. If we weren't always prepared to roll we would have missed things like the cow birth. We had a plan of attack for the project but everything had to remain very organic and every situation required a slightly different approach. When we shot the wrestlers we didn't really know what we were in for and had to prepare as if we were documenting an event. They gave us a very limited breakdown of where they might physically end up during the matches, mainly so we could stay out of their way. Corbett and I were both operating cameras and once we started rolling and the first match began we quickly realized this was not WWE. The barbed wire baseball bats and flaming punches came out and the blood started to flow but we had to keep rolling and try not to get distracted by the intensity of it. A funny thing about shooting is you can be so close to incredible things but you have to view it all through a small viewfinder or LCD and not lose sight of getting the shot. One of the most difficult things about the shoot was not burning up our limited supply of film in the first few days.

Doug: You've worked with AG Rojas pretty frequently. Do you think you would have been able to take on a project like "Modern Jesus" with a director that you didn't have that built in relationship with?

Michael: All of us who worked on the project have a long history of shooting together which certainly made things easier. We had to spend a lot of time in a small vehicle together. With three people operating cameras throughout the project it was helpful that we were all on the same page in terms of style and the type of shots to get without having to speak too much about it. When there was something very specific to get AG is very good at designing shots on the fly. I think there was only one situation where we spent more than one day in the same city so everything was about moving fast but not sacrificing quality.

Doug: I talked to Carmela Makela a few months ago about her "Ain't Nobody" video and she mentions you specifically as someone who was willing to "take a chance" on her self-funded project. What was it about Carmela and the video that caused you to take that chance?

Michael: I had been working with Carmela for quite a while before she made her first video. We first met on the Jack White "Sixteen Saltines" video where she pulled off a few production miracles. She also played an important roll behind the scenes on Portugal. The Man's "All Your Light" and "Modern Jesus" among many other projects. It was her turn to do something in front of the curtain and I wanted to be there to witness it.

Doug: What do you base the success of each project on? Is it something internal, or is it tied to the opinion of the director, artist, or audience?

Michael: Of course I hope the director is happy with the project but I always look forward to reading all the negative comments on Youtube. If you set out trying to figure out how to please an intended audience you are way off course already but I still enjoy seeing what their expectations were after the fact. With music videos part of the feeling of success can come during the act of actually making the thing which has to do with trying new things, be it a technique or overall style. Or maybe its a narrative element. They are one the best forms of filmmaking for experimenting, and maybe learning something really valuable you can apply to a future project. I see little value in repeating the same formula over and over especially past the point of self improvement. Personally that's where I hit a wall with painting and it helped me move towards filmmaking. Film is a relatively new art form involving collaboration, constantly evolving challenges, and ever changing technology. Those are the reasons I keep doing it.

Doug: Many of your videos have lo-fi elements worked into them, like "My Girl" by Willy Moon, "Sixteen Saltines" by Jack White, and "Evil Eye" by Franz Ferdinand. Does your role as a DP change when trying to achieve that style and using those older cameras?

Michael: Lo-fi elements are always fun to create and I've noticed this year a lot of people getting bored with clean and flat. Of course going with a bold look has to service the performance or the story at the end of the day. There are an infinite number of ways to achieve a lo-fi look and of course an infinite number of looks. On "Guns and Dogs" I ended up reshooting the entire video frame by frame off a projector with a Lensbaby. Sometimes its as simple as just shooting super 8 or VHS. For "Evil Eye" we were initially discussing shooting on tube cameras, but they require a ton of light and we had a few compositing elements to shoot they would not have worked for. Also they aren't too reliable and it would have been a huge problem if one of our cameras went down. We opted to shoot on modern cameras using older uncoated 16mm zooms getting as much of the look as possible in camera then going the rest of the way in post. A big part of it was working with colorist Gregory Reese at The Mill. Diane was really great about getting everyone on set into the right mindset for this project and the final look came from many different elements working together. It was a balancing act of trying to make something visually interesting but also look like crap. We were shooting two units at all times in different rooms of the same house. There were severed limbs and crazy props everywhere and everyone had to imagine we were on the set of some surreal 70's horror movie and try to base all creative decisions on that. We would plan multiple angles that would cut together poorly or instead of trying to go the extra mile to make something beautiful we would step back and say "this lighting doesn't look quite bad enough yet". It was a fun process which allowed me to do some things I would never normally do like shooting 10,000 iso with a completely wacked out white balance and choosing to shoot outside just when the sun was at its worst angle. "My Girl" was about layering all these different textures. Aaron Brown had a bunch of great visual ideas to try and we experimented with mixing and matching them. One setup we had a ring light mounted on a VHS camera with a live feed going to a monitor and we filmed the monitor with a super 8 camera. Aaron and Nick Pezzillo the editor then came up with more lo-fi post ideas to incorporate during the edit and make the whole thing cohesive.

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.