Q&A: OYLS "Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)"
☆ By SOPHIE GRAGG ☆
RADIATING THAT EDGE OF NOSTALGIA WE ALL ADORE - OYLS’ latest music video for “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” delivers a feel for your eyes and ears. Part one of an upcoming eight part visual series, “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” serves as a terrific introduction into the dreamy world of OLYS. Directed by Nicole Lipp, a previous Luna Sweetheart, the video almost pays homage to the city of angels, with a charming 1990s touch. From the smooth transitions to the bulky phones, the “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” video has it all down.
Though taking a pause on production due to COVID-19, Lipp and OYLS are back on track with the visual series and are ready to get their collaborative project out into the world, starting with “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)”. Transport yourself to LA in the nineties by watching the video and read below to learn more about the making of it all from Lipp and the band.
LUNA: The “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” video is super sick - love it! Can you share a bit about the making of this video altogether?
MICHAEL LIPP: Thank you so much! So first of all Nicole and I are married and David and I refer to each other as “life partners” so we’re about as close as it gets as collaborators. “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” is the first track from our record and was written while we were all coming out of college and moving back in with our parents in LA. Unbeknownst to us, Nicole was secretly putting together a music video pitch deck as David and I were showing her drafts of the album. When we finally finished the album, she presented us with her concept of a full visual record. We loved the idea and we are super lucky that our label, Handwritten-records, was super supportive.
We then took our concept to our friends Joe Samaniego and Grace Morrison who are brilliant creatives and writers and we flushed out the concept for Visa and the visual album on a big white board. We filmed the first 2 videos - “Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)” and “Instagram (You Remind Me I’m Worthy)” - right before Coronavirus hit so they’re the only videos that we got to make as originally intended. We had to pause production during lockdown and rethink the remaining 6 videos to adapt them to our new world of Covid safety/permitting. It’s a pretty crazy experience to look back at the footage that looks like the 90s, was filmed in pre-covid 2019, and edited during lockdown. It feels like a time capsule.
LUNA: Since this is a more personal project, how do your approach for this project differ from other client based projects?
NICOLE LIPP: Directing music videos usually means adopting the artist’s persona/brand and melding it with my own to create a visual that lives in the overlap of our venn diagram. In the pop world, that sometimes means taming my weird ideas and visions to be a little more commercial and mainstream haha! With this project, however, I’ve been collaborating with OYLS from day 1, building this universe together, so every visual aspect of this project feels extremely authentic to my voice and creative vision. Our venn diagram is pretty much just one overlapping circle at this point. Plus, being married to half of the band means Michael and I are living, breathing, obsessing over this project together all the time. We’ll be watching a TV show late at night and one of us will hit pause and be like “OMG that shot is amazing - what if we did something like that for this chorus?” We’ve basically been working on this project 24/7 for the past year, even just in the back of our minds. That said, I didn’t feel entitled to directing this project just because I’m married to Michael lol. I still pitched my idea just as I would to any artist I want to work with. I made a pitch deck and a mood board, and I actually secretly shot and cut together a mini proof of concept to convince them to hire me. The director hustle is real, even when you’re married to your dream client.
LUNA: You had the opportunity to shoot the video on a camera from the 90s - what were some of the benefits of this?
NICOLE LIPP: The camera we shot on is SO easy to use. It’s smaller and lighter than most fancy 2020 cameras, so it made this guerilla style shoot easier because our amazing DP, Christian Klein, could just pick it up and run with it. Literally. It was the top of the line camera when it came out in the 90s - this was the camera my uncle shot the Seal ‘Kiss From a Rose’ music video on! Since it’s analog, it has “built in aesthetic.” That’s the biggest reason I wanted to shoot this visual album on it. It legitimately looks like the 90s, and I love that.
LUNA: On the flip end, what challenges did it bring?
NICOLE LIPP: Since this camera is pretty much as old as I am, I was terrified it wouldn’t work. I was so scared it would randomly break down and we’d be fucked and have to shoot the rest of the video on my iPhone or something haha! Thankfully that did not happen. Other than that neurosis, the biggest challenge was that we couldn’t utilize monitors or playback for me to see how the shots were looking. We had to move quickly to get all our shots in just a few hours so thankfully, I LOVE Christian and trust him 100%. Usually when I’m directing, I like to see every shot in the monitor to make sure it’s matching what I envisioned, but in this case, that wasn’t possible. Watching the footage later on was incredible because Christian absolutely nailed it. His cinematography combined with Marti Hoyos’s editing brought this video to life in the most magical way. Very grateful to collaborate with these amazing creatives :)
LUNA: In addition to directing this video, you had the opportunity to act in it which is so fun! How does your experience behind the camera play into your process when you’re in front of the camera?
NICOLE LIPP: I think my acting experience plays into my directing more than my directing plays into my acting. For me, acting is all about just being present and alive in the character’s given circumstances. Honestly, directing yourself is hard. It’s hard to break out of the moment to talk pragmatics with a DP or producer and then flip the switch to jump right back into acting - it’s a lot easier when you have more time to ease in and out of character. In this case, I was acting and directing while trying to guerilla shoot an entire music video in just a few hours while driving a vintage car and throwing newspapers and towing a satellite dish on a residential street with confused onlookers and other cars honking. Making this video feels like a miracle. It was such a whirlwind. When we wrapped, I was like, welp, I have no idea what just happened. I hope we got everything? It’s a rush. SO. MUCH. FUN. I love this shit.
LUNA: Obviously the video has a smooth and fun feel to it, can you touch a little bit on the story being the track itself?
MICHAEL LIPP: We made “Visa” (and the rest of the record) in David’s parents’ guest bedroom. We decided in 2017, after making a couple of EPs, that we wanted to make a record. (Against growing music industry advice that we should focus on singles) ‘Visa (Paid For My Parking Ticket)’ is the first song from the record and it kind of sets up the backdrop of the album’s narrative: a deeply overwhelmed human starting to become an adult in his hometown of Los Angeles. It’s fiction and has elements of absurdity but it pretty closely follows my own experience.
LUNA: Why is tapping into the visual side of your music important to y’all?
MICHAEL LIPP: We actually often struggle with music videos. As a listener, I form such a personal relationship with the songs that I love. And sometimes hearing an artist’s interpretation of the song or seeing a music video that attempts to visually translate the song’s meaning interferes with my personal connection. Nicole is super sensitive to that concern and helped us create videos that are feeling driven. I love being able to give listeners/viewers another way to experience the song that hopefully compliments their relationship to the music.
LUNA: This video is one of eight more visualizers to come, what can we expect from these upcoming videos?
MICHAEL LIPP: Ooohh. A lot. More 90s product placements. Some subliminal OYLS advertising. Danny Trejo. Light Pyrotechnics. Choreography. New characters get introduced. Things get weirder.
LUNA: As the year winds down, what do you hope these upcoming months bring y’all?
MICHAEL LIPP: Hopefully lots of creativity. David has plans to spend some time living in Israel. We’re going to be releasing the music videos over the next few months and we’ll be working on new music. And who knows, maybe live shows will even come back sooner than later :)
CONNECT WITH OYLS
SPOTIFY
-
From Pavietra 🕊️ https://t.co/BXVgWlZud8 -
slowthai by Rosie Matheson 🤩 https://t.co/z7SDfFQ5iF
-
RT @i_D: Ian Kenneth Bird photographs young punks on Polaroid: https://t.co/MKT0tMUqO9 https://t.co/a0tTl12ML5
-
RT @AnOtherMagazine: #DreamHome – this isolated idyll in the mountains of Lanzarote 🌵 📸 via Nowness, photography by Clemence Blr 🔁 https://t.co/GUusdxD0cg
