Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins may stay behind the kit for his side project Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders, but it's his musical vision and vocals that drive this tale about the mysterious "Louise." Video director Alma Har'el handles the visuals, delivering a story about the unreliability of memories. Old Super 8 films are used and recreated with Hawkins and "Louise" — played by his real life wife — to show the jumble inside his head. And, in a very smart idea, Har'el utilized Hawkin's impeccable timekeeping by having him control the edit of some background projections through MIDI triggers on his drums.
Alma Har'el, director: I have a little collection of Super 8 home movies from the '60s through the '80s. I bought most of them on eBay or directly from families at garage sales. I wanted to build a "Louise" character out of all those filmed memories. About 200 hours later I managed to find four blond girls that I could edit into one
"Louise." I wanted it to look like she was growing in front of our eyes and that Taylor has memories of her since she was a baby. Those memories were all mixed up in his head, so I planned to recreate some of those old movies, but with Taylor in them. Luckily, Alan E. Muraoka — who did the art direction on Little Miss Sunshine — agreed to take the job of creating sets on our tiny budget that corresponded with our Super 8 clips of birthday parties and Christmas mornings.
When we got to post, I decided that all the digital effects you can use to age film makes it look fake. I bought a black box for home telecine and used my Super 8 projector to make some homemade scratches and burns. Then Jay Majer and I would composite them into the footage. We were going crazy over it for hours, choosing every hair, scratch and burn until it looked good. I knew nobody would notice, but we had to do it
For the performance, I wanted the background screens to keep changing with video projections that were operated through midi triggers on the drums. That way, the home videos on the screens were cut to the rhythm of the drumming. I did that with the help of Surya Buchwald who's a live video performer. I don't think you can see much of it in the video, but I'm planning on doing a whole video like that when I get a chance.
--> watch "Louise"
Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders "Louise" (Thrive)
Alma Har'el, director/editor | Ari Weiner, producer |
Partizan, production co | Bliss, DP
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