Gen-Z musician Laufey continues her streak of releasing a Christmas record annually and modernising jazz with her brand-new cover of ‘Santa Baby’. I sat down with Jason Lester, the director who has worked with artists such as Conan Gray, Sabrina Carpenter, and Hozier to discuss the creative vision behind her latest video.
Every artist brings something different to the process, but what is so special about working with Laufey? According to Lester, she sets herself apart in an already crowded landscape. “I think she is an interesting artist,” he says. “I think for somebody who’s playing music that is obviously modern, but also heavily influenced by and reverent of classical jazz, it’s cool that she’s broken through in the way she has. She doesn’t really make pop music, but she’s managed to access a pop audience without compromising the sound of her music.”
The video for ‘Santa Baby’, is fresh and funny, all while maintaining a classic feel. “Obviously it’s a traditional and classic Christmas song, but at the same time, it is kind of ridiculous,” explains Lester. “It’s hyper-capitalist; it sort of has that like department store jingle quality. She [Laufey] wanted to do it in a straight way, but feel like there was some degree of playfulness.”
Lester says Laufey’s creative process is very hands-on. “She and Junia, her sister and creative director, have a very well-formed vision when they come in. In this video, they were like, we want to do a Christmas stage show. They wanted it to have an irreverent tone. It’s about sort of listening to the references and unpacking them, thinking how can we expand or modify these… It’s nice to work with that.”
This shines through in the video’s aesthetic choices, such as with the second act which shares a visual resemblance to scenes from The Tales of Hoffman, which Laufey referenced as an inspiration. Lester specified that The Nutcracker and Swan Lake were also influential: “We were looking at opera and ballet and a lot of the wardrobe and set design. The production design photos that I pulled were basically just a bunch of sets from The Nutcracker that I sent to the production designer.”
The connection with the stage is created in more ways than one, as the entire video is shot from a direct front-facing angle. “We wanted to shoot basically just from the front, so it feels like watching a show in a theatre,” Lester explained. “When you’re shooting something flat-on like that, it gives you the ability to do really graphic things with the set. We wanted the sets to feel two-dimensional-ish and colour-blocked. Painted backdrops also help a lot with that effect.
Notably, Bill Murray has a cameo in the video. Despite being intimidated by him at first, Lester found he was “cool” and “easy to work with”. Lester claims the arrangement was very last-minute: “It was something we didn’t even know would come together until literally the day of the shoot. He drove himself to the set in an old car, and showed up randomly with like 20 minutes notice, which was a lot of fun. It was cool to have him.”
Lester is also a filmmaker and is currently in post-production for his own film which he expects to release at some point next year. Also in pre-production for a film that he hopes to shoot in April, he claims that the process of working on such a large project is all-encompassing. “It demands your entire existence, for better or worse, versus a music video which happens very quickly for the most part,” he explains. “Usually you don’t actually have enough time to immerse yourself in a video before you’ve already shot it and it comes out.”
Despite the excitement of working on his own projects, Lester feels he owes a lot to music videos, as they helped him build his portfolio. “I think the fun thing about working in music videos versus other mediums is that you are releasing something to a fan base that’s already excited about it. When you make anything else, you have to go out and find people that are going to be excited by what you’re putting out.”
More of Jason Lester’s work can be found here.
Hi, I’m Neil Singer, Culture Editor and second year student, studying media and journalism, and social policy. In my spare time I play for Strathclyde Lacrosse and watch a lot of films. If your reading this then that probably means you’ve looked at my article, so thankyou! You must be one very cool individual.
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