Last Updated on March 16, 2024 by Phil Nobile Jr.
We’re big fans of filmmaker Lucky McKee (The Woman, May) around these parts, so when we got word he’d directed a creepy, water-centric music video for AJ Lambert, we hit him up for the scoop. “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” (from her upcoming album Manhattan Beach, Swept By Ocean Breezes) is a deceptively simple concept (woman on a little boat is bound and thrown overboard to drown), but it’s in the details where the Lucky McKee of it all comes together, as you’ll see below.
How’d you first become involved with this project?
AJ Lambert and I knew each other from our college days at USC. My band played a few of the same parties as some bands she was in. I hadn’t spoken to her in at least 15-20 years. Then one day she hit me up on Instagram and said she had a new album coming out and an idea for a music vid for the single that was very ambitious. She had directed all her own videos up to that point but she felt she needed help on this particular one. I agreed to direct it so we ended up bringing her out to our shop in El Paso to make it all happen with our little band of filmmakers here.
What was the inspiration for the video’s narrative?
AJ had a concept from the outset. I was going to write the script but got hung up working on my new film. She decided to bang out a draft to get things started, but I just loved it right out of the gate and didn’t change a thing. Then I set about visualizing it and started to puzzle out with my team how to pull it all off. Initially, she hoped we could do it all underwater for real but it quickly became apparent that that approach would be very limiting creatively. So we decided to shoot all on a stage and make it all feel like rear projection in an old film. I was soaking in a lot of Bava films at the time so I feel like there’s a heavy influence from that direction.
What was the most challenging aspect of this project?
The most challenging stuff really was really all in post-production. We knew that with our shooting approach we could never make it super realistic so we went for the stylized old-timey approach. I’d never done anything like it. Every shot is a visual effect. It was a big learning curve for me but also really expanded my palette for the future.
Zach Passero handled all the VFX work which was a huge workload. My wife Vanessa contributed the background and the little animated characters and my colorist Ryan Martinez brought it all home in the DI. I think only about eight people total worked on the whole video. It was all an intimate affair with a lot of shared duties!
Speaking of collaborators, how’d you snag Arthur Bear McKee (your four-year-old son) as a creature designer?
My son inherited his mother’s gift for drawing. He’s been drawing recognizable characters and objects since around his second birthday. He’s always sketching, painting, sculpting or building something. His sketch “Mister Television” was one we had posted online earlier this year and suddenly some really amazing artists started doing their own recreations of it; Trevor Henderson, Ashley Laurence and more. Shortly after that, when I was storyboarding the video I thought it would be cool to bring my son’s character to life. He’s pretty damned delighted with the results.
So are we, Lucky!
AJ Lambert’s album Manhattan Beach, Swept By Ocean Breezes drops in February.
