Andrew Hooper is a writer and a director based out of Sacramento, California who has done music videos for bands like The Dollyrots, Boss Hog, and Kepi Ghoulie. His short film MK-ULTRA was featured on an episode of Bloody-Disgusting horror anthology show “World of Death”. Now he’s back with two brand new music videos after taking a brief hiatus from working behind the camera.
Q: How did you develop your music videos?
Andrew Hooper: I’ve been doing music videos with Dog Party since 2012. Our first video together was for their song “What do you Know?” off of their first album, and here we are, 7 years later and they have a new album called “Hit & Run” and they hit me up about doing a video for the title track. I was really excited to get to work with them again because it had been a couple years, and Gwen & Lucy are great to work with. I also used Amanda Hawkins for the “story” part of the music video, who I’d never worked with before. I had met her kind of through my job, and a comic convention. I wanted to use her in something because she had such a great look, and when this video came about, she was perfect for it. Dog Party and I are actually going to be doing another video together for this record, and that’ll be our 10th video together. Stay tuned for that one!
Andrew Hooper: This video was originally going to be an entirely different piece, but it’s really hard to imagine it that way now. I originally wanted to do this whole homage to “Phantom of the Paradise” and compose band images like record covers, but scheduling conflicts didn’t allow for what I had wanted to do. Jon’s in New York, and I’m in California, and it was during the holidays, Jon was touring, it was a whole thing. “Beetle Boots” was my favorite track on the album, so I knew I wanted to do something for it, and Jon was totally cool about letting do a video for the track. I wanted to do something really big for this video, for this album, so I really just went for it and made this insane, psychedelic, visual experience. It was essentially edited frame by frame. If you frame by frame it, you’re going to catch little things you might miss in motion.
Q: How was it financed?
Andrew Hooper: Both videos were self-financed. I like to keep budgets low. Until The Rolling Stones hire me…
Q: How long was pre-production?
Andrew Hooper: Ha! Both of these videos had very little pre-production. It was me speeding around places, making phone calls, sending texts like “Hey, I’m making a video tomorrow and we need (blank).” Which is usually how I work anyway. I can’t think of a time when I was like “Oh yeah, I’m doing a video in a month or two, let’s plan this out…” Dog Party’s video was supposed to premiere a little under a week after we shot it, and we had a small window to shoot it because they were right about to go on tour, and right after that, Lucy was going to have to go back to school. We were really lucky to get the location we did. Big thanks to Midway Antique Mall in Sacramento.
“Beetle Boots” was similar because the ideal time to release it would have been when Jon went back on tour and they announced more tour dates, January 11th, and I finally was able to change the idea into what it became, which was a little before Christmas. My favorite crunch-time video was for “Do the Trash Can”, also on Jon’s album. He called me a day or two before they were going to announce the album to see if I could put something together for that. I love that kind of shit. I work best under pressure.
Q: How many days did it take to shoot the music video
Andrew Hooper: “Hit & Run” was shot in the course of a day. A full day. We shot at Midway Antique Mall first, and had the manager there, Greg, supervise us while we were there. He was this really cool guy who used to own his own record store. It took me a couple days to edit. I wanted their performance footage to look like old photographs, and the setups during the bridge to look like old ads from the 50’s.
“Beetle Boots” was similar in days to shoot. Since Jon was across the country, we had Matt Pitkoff shoot his stuff out there and send it to me. Jon’s a natural performer, and Matt captured it perfectly. They gave me amazing stuff to work with. I had showed Jon a few examples of what I needed him to do, and they knocked it out of the park. I was really excited to piece it together. The editing for this one was probably the most intense editing I’ve ever done on a project. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of it is frame by framed, new things constantly coming and going… this took me about a solid business week of editing. I’m talking full 24 hour days. I remember going to bed at night a lot of the times (or maybe it was the morning?) and my eyes would be jittering back and forth for a while because I’d just been staring at a screen for hours, perfecting every little detail I threw in.
Q: Did the tight shooting schedule make it harder or easier? How did it affect performance?
Andrew Hooper: I really like working under pressure, and a lot of the people I work with feel the same way. It’s hard to get a bunch of artists in the same place at the same time for a long period of time, so you gotta do what you can, when you can. So, I feel like it made the performances and everything a lot better because we knew we only got one shot at it. This goes for both videos.
Q: What were the advantages and disadvantages in the way you worked?
Andrew Hooper: The advantages for me are the fact that it really lights a flame under you and gets you working your hardest. You’re working on gut instincts and really trusting yourself. You have to be resourceful and inventive.
The obvious disadvantage is the lack of pre-production, which could potentially benefit in the sense of getting more things, or maybe better things. Sometimes when you have no other choice, you have to settle on things. If you had more time, you’d be able to really perfect things like locations, background actors, effects, and so on. I honestly don’t know what I’d do with so much time. I hear about big Hollywood movies where you need to take breaks and you can’t work beyond so many hours and all these other time constraints… I just want to keep going, I don’t want to lose that momentum.
Q: Where can we check out these videos?
Andrew Hooper: Both videos are available on YouTube now. “Beetle Boots” premiered on Brooklynvegan and “Hit & Run” premiered on LA Record.
Q: What’s next?
Andrew Hooper: I have a few more videos lined up. Working on another Dog Party video, have a rockabilly band I’m currently working with, doing a couple of short films soon as well. One’s actually based off of a rejected music video pitch. I’ve been reaching out to a lot more bands, and a lot more have been contacting me, which has been great. I’m open to all kinds of stuff. I really want to do a hip-hop video sometime.
Q: Who are bands or artists you’d want to work with?
Andrew Hooper: As a rule, I’m really open to anything or anyone. I just like making videos. It’s in me to do that. If I wasn’t making videos, I don’t know what else to do. It’s funny, I actually just recently made a top 10 “bucket list” for 2019 on Instagram of the musicians I’d want to do music videos for. My list was:
- The Rolling Stones
- Nick Cave & the Badseeds
- The Hives
- Valerie June
- Spiritualized
- Vurro
- The Raveonettes
- Method Man
- Flaming Lips
- King Khan
Q: Do you only do music videos and short films?
Andrew Hooper: I mainly do music videos, and do short films here and there. Most of my shorts are usually rejected music video ideas, or videos that didn’t work out with bands. But, I’m kind of a camera-for-hire really and have done commercials, weddings, events, whatever. I just really like being behind the camera, it’s where I belong.
In Conversation with Michael Oblowitz Director of Confidential Informant
Confidential Informant stars Mel Gibson, Dominic Purcell, and Kate Bosworth
