Befriending Beetles for a Missing Bug Mystery Music Video
A beetle scuttles into a detective’s office; an adorable mystery – with a dark climax – ensues.
Welcome to the bizarrely brilliant world of Nick Leng’s ‘Beetlebugs’ music video, directed by Riff Raff’s Sondock. Viewers see it through both human and insect eyes, as a young beetle enlists the services of a private investigator to look for her missing partner, Blu Bug. In their search, the mismatched pair leave no rock unturned and no animal unquestioned – from the humble hamster right up to an uncooperative emu. A quick taco break unleashes a psychedelic twist.
The kooky adventure is matched only by that of its making: think a chaotic cast of animals, an endoscopy camera, 20,000 drinking straws, a hand-drawn animated metamorphosis, a full year in post, and a wild launch stunt.
It’s a story best told by the director himself, so without further ado, here’s the behind the scenes scoop from Sondock, interviewed by LBB’s Zara Naseer.
LBB> It’s a very unique video and concept – what can you tell us about how this idea came about? Were there any other artists or creative works that you took inspiration from?
Sondock> The main concept of the video (with Nick as an Ace Ventura-style ‘creature’ detective) was something that came from the working title of the track, which eventually became the actual title of the track. When he showed the song to me, he said that the song felt like a beetle waddling along and stopping on the beat. When I was a kid, I actually dreamed of being an entomologist, and so the idea of making a video with a real live beetle as the protagonist brought out a part of me that I had largely forgotten about (but was very surprised to realise was still there in full force).
Probably my biggest inspirations for this video were the videos of Aube Perrie and David Wilson, both directors who I really pay attention to (and who I’ve had the great fortune of producing for).
From Aube, I think I borrowed the world-building and the taking of a ridiculous idea very seriously. Aube does an incredible job of creating characters and narratives that straddle the line between archetypal and completely bizarre.
From David Wilson, I inherited a bit of the structure and of course the idea to have this animated climactic moment. David’s Tame Impala videos are near perfect examples of storytelling and execution in music videos, and I have always loved the way that they provide emotional, narrative AND visual reasons to keep watching from start to finish. More on the animation later...
LBB> You’ve previously collaborated with Nick Leng on his highly technical, one-shot video for ‘Morning / Midnight’ – what’s that working relationship like?
Sondock> ‘Morning / Midnight’ was commissioned like a traditional music video – I put together a treatment with a couple one-page ideas and sent it along with fingers crossed. The final video ended up keeping largely to the aesthetic and narrative of the treatment (though the technique evolved a LOT in prep and became much much more technical).
By the time ‘Beetlebugs’ came around, Nick and I had formed a very solid friendship and it became clear that Nick had a lot of trust in me. He would often share new, unrefined music and I would share video ideas – for ‘Beetlebugs’, I went straight to a shitty pre-vis, skipping the treatment process altogether.
I actually think that this was a much more productive and inspiring way to work, even though it took more time and patience. Instead of having to guess what the right visuals would be for the song and for Nick, we were able to refer to an edited (albeit rough) video treatment. Most of all, this helped us refine the tone of the video: we wanted it to be comical but not laughable, dramatic but not overly serious, playful but still cool. I really appreciate that Nick and I have a similar sense of humour and that we can be honest with one another.
LBB> The beetle does a superb job in the starring role, but the video also features an emu, zebra, cow, horse, and more. What was it like working with all these animals? How did you get the best performances from them?
Sondock> The beetles were not easy to work with. I owe mostly all of the beetle wrangling to our 1st AD, Josh Montes, who somehow figured out the best ways to get the bugs to move in a path/with a speed that we needed. It involved holding them on a long, tube-shaped stick which he then guided them down to set them off on the right path (...this only worked like a tenth of the time).
We shot on film, so you can imagine how tedious and frustrating (and expensive) each take was, not to mention that we had a costume for our beetle (the small red dot was a sticker we could apply and then remove when done). When I first conceived of this video, my plan was to try to get an animatronic beetle, but I couldn’t afford it and, perhaps more importantly, couldn’t find anyone who could make one that was small enough to be believable as a real beetle. For the other animals, we really just let them do their own thing and listened to our animal handlers for the best ways to keep them calm and in character. The emu was by far the most chaotic.
LBB> Where was the video shot and what did the location scouting process entail? Were there any non-negotiables?
Sondock> We shot this all over California but mainly Northern California, specifically Point Reyes, Petaluma and Sonoma (and a couple other outlier places like the church and the oil field). Amy [Teboul], our producer, and I, drove all around for about a week to essentially craft the story out of our locations.
The main intention of the locations was to find places that seemed like they could’ve been out of a BBC nature doc, but that also felt touched/impacted by humans in a strange way. Though I thought that I needed Nick’s office to be a set build out of a storage facility. When we went to scout a facility I had googled, and found that no one was there to let us in/show us around, we accidentally met a local real-estate broker named Robert Cardwell who offered up his office at no cost. We sat with him and he told us about his daughter and his dog, about his plans for retirement. For me, the only non-negotiable was that I wanted ample time to scout, as I knew it would inform the look, feel, and perhaps even the story of the video – I’m really glad I took the time I did.
LBB> How did you create the effect of seeing through the beetle’s eyes? Why was this perspective important?
Sondock> My DP, Gus Bendinelli, and I, talked a bunch about making sure the rules of the POV were thought-out and evocative. We chose to shoot 16mm film when we wanted to show the ‘objective perspective’ of the human world, we shot digitally on a probe lens when we wanted to show the ‘objective perspective’ of the bug world, and when we wanted to show the ‘subjective perspective’ of our protagonist bug, we filmed on a $20 endoscopy camera – basically a Chinese-language iPhone app-operated small articulating tube with a 2MP camera and a light at the end of it. The quality was so bad and it compressed the files so much that we thought it felt truthful to the relative fidelity of a bug’s visual perception. It also would allow us to position and move the camera in ways that were appropriate and empathetic.
THEN, after filming everything, I decided the image looked too digital, too artificial and not from the natural world – so I bought 20,000 small drinking straws and made a camera filter out of them to create a kind of practical pixelation. I then filmed the footage by placing this filter over my laptop screen and pointing my Blackmagic camera at it. All in all, I’m so glad I did this – the effect is both jarring and adorable. I think it gets us a tiny bit closer to knowing what it’s like to be a bug.
LBB> Can you talk about the post process for this video? You’ve previously mentioned it took a year!
Sondock> A year was definitely not necessary for the post process. It was both a privilege and a curse to not have a label demanding a delivery date. Nick and I got to make sure every single frame was as we wanted it to be… I even got to go back to LA many months later to shoot an additional scene (the very final scene) which I’m so glad I did. Otherwise, one of the more interesting and time consuming post aspects was the animation, for which I had an incredible opportunity to work with Kohana Wilson on. This was my first time directing animation, and so there were a couple instances where I felt like the animation wasn’t conveying exactly the narrative beats I felt were important – Kohana did all of the heavy lifting for this process, but hand-drawn animation takes a long time as you might imagine.
LBB> The video turns to animation when the beetle gets eaten – why was a shift to this medium the right choice, and what inspired the style?
Sondock> Once again, this was heavily inspired by some of my favourite directors’ music video work. I wanted the video to enter a kind of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Freaky Friday’ moment that I knew was best shown as a psychedelic, 2D animation. Kohana and I worked to make sure that the animation was accessible and narrative, but also a bit gross and messy – it’s the climax of the song, so I felt that I needed to push the already kooky live-action world into sixth gear.
LBB> What was the biggest challenge you faced during the entire process, and how did you overcome it?
Sondock> The biggest challenge was less in the making and more in actually releasing the damn thing. I can sometimes get quite in my head about the work I make and why I make it. It’s hard to fully reckon with the limits to the impact a music video can have – especially one that you’ve put a year of your life into. Inevitably, Nick and I felt this waiting was overwhelming, and so we set a date, came up with a wild PR stunt for the release (we posted hundreds and hundreds of fliers around NYC, LA and London reporting missing creatures with a *real* Nick Leng hotline phone number on them), and out the video came...
LBB> What are you proudest of in the making of this music video?
Sondock> This video feels like me starting to come into my own as a music video director – it’s not trying to be cool, it’s not pandering, it’s fun, it’s visually interesting, it’s experimental in certain ways, it’s extremely homemade, and it was made with love by people I respect and look up to. Staff Pick aside, it kept me going through ups and downs of the past year – and the response has been fantastic.
LBB> Lastly, what’s something about this project that we might be surprised to learn?
Sondock> We filmed the video last August, so it’s been almost one year since we wrapped. However, when the shoot was over, I simply couldn’t get myself to dispose of the beetles… so I’ve kept them alive in my apartment for over a year. My dad has named them Brooke and Lynne (very corny), and together they enjoy fresh strawberries, apple slices and watching old episodes of ‘Courage the Cowardly Dog’. Also notable is that we filmed in Northern California and I live in NYC, so I actually flew cross country with them in a Dasani water bottle in my backpack TWICE (once for the shoot and once again for a reshoot where we used the same exact beetle).
