Rich Pickings with Rich Lee

Native Content's Rich Lee is a seasoned veteran when it comes to creating ads and music promos. Case in point - his latest efforts for Lana Del Rey and Maroon 5 have notched up over 70 million views combined in just a few weeks...

These figures are nothing compared to the billions of views his vast catalogue of music videos have reached online over the years. We guarantee you have seen at least one of Rich’s music videos at some point in your life, as he has collaborated with some of the biggest acts on the planet, including Alicia Keys, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, Mumm-Ra, Fergie, Michael Bublé, Will.i.am, Pussycat Dolls, The All-American Rejects and Michael Jackson, to name a few.

He is also a skilled ad director, helming a slew of spots from brands such as Honda, Fiat, Hyundai, Beats by Dre, Monster, Samsung, Nissan and Sony Ericsson.

Coming from a background in Broadway set production (building sets for Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Titanic the Musical) enabled Rich to get a fabrication gig at Disney Imagineering, build an impressive CG portfolio, a ‘previsualization’ gig for Minority Report and, eventually, catching the directing bug.

We caught up with Rich to fill us in on the rest of his story, chat about his latest vids, his impressive body of promo work and a few of his favourite ads.

We love... ‘Love’ your epic new Lana Del Rey video. What is the concept behind the video?

Thank you. It’s a kind of youthful journey through the cosmos.

The video feels very cinematic, what were your visual influences for this project?

The only visual reference we used were 60’s and 70’s live musical performances. We wanted the video to have a quasi-retro sci-fi feel that also felt modern in a way. We used the old school performance settings to set things up and we slowly built on that.

I never actually thought about this, but I didn’t have specific references for the space scenes. The look of those just kinda came to me based off what I imagined when I heard Lana’s brief. Before meeting Lana for the first time I created a little sizzle reel of sorts. I hunkered down for a few days and made a handful of CG shots of cars floating in space, by the sun, planets and moons, and then cut them to the track. Some of them actually made it into the final film.

Are you pleased with how it turned out?

I think it’s one of my favorite videos that I’ve done. I love the song and have been a fan of Lana and her visuals since she first appeared. This video was definitely a labor of love. I took on a lot of the work myself. I did the edit and most of the VFX along with my wife, Louise, through my VFX house Drive Effects.

You also crafted the recently released video for ‘Cold’ from Maroon 5 ft. Future, which juxtaposes numerous visual effects.  Was there a brief for the project?

Adam Levine had an idea where he gets drugged at a party and then goes on a trippy, drug fuelled adventure. I ran with that and conjured up a journey for him.

How much post production was involved in the video?  And how hands on are you with this process?

There was a lot of VFX work that we did at Drive Effects, which is the post house I own with my producing partner Justin Diener. I have a bit of a VFX background and I still get my hands dirty with some of it. I made the weed smoking teddy bear shot and some of the weird tentacle pole dancer shots. 

We really enjoyed the last Maroon 5 video you created in 2013 for ‘Love Somebody’. How did that concept come about? Was this video born out of an experiment, or a new technique you wanted to try?

OK, this is a long story and I’ll try to keep it short. I was a sculptor way back. We would use a lot of plasticine clay, and that sort of clay was reusable. We would use it to make figures, faces, creatures, etc. I always thought it was interesting to visualize how things could be conjured up from a mass of raw material, exist for a moment in time, and then go back to being a mass of material.

Anyway, one day I was sculpting a figure for a musical, I was young, maybe 18, and I was taking way too long and I remember overhearing one of my bosses say something like, “He’s falling in love with that damn thing.” I thought there was something interesting about a sculptor falling in love with a creation.

Cut to 2012 and I get this Maroon 5 track… for whatever reason it made me think of that time, working with clay, creating, falling in love with a figure.  By that point I had seen many different ways to key people and color in post, and thought there was something interesting in combining VFX and sculpture to illustrate this fleeting moment of a being conjuring itself into existence, then creating another being only to erase/deconstruct it all.

How did you get your start in the business? What were you doing before you were making music videos?

I started in the entertainment industry pretty young. At 16 I was a Sculptor and fabricator in New York. I created pieces and sets for Broadway musicals. I had always wanted to work in Hollywood, so I moved to LA and got a job at Walt Disney Imagineering. They offered a Softimage 3D course that opened up a whole new world for me. I picked it up pretty fast and was hooked. I managed to get myself laid off at Disney, collected unemployment, bought a computer, holed up in my tiny studio apartment and built up a reel.

My first real CG gig was at a place called Pixel Liberation Front, they were the forerunners to the whole previsualization movement that is now very common in the industry. I ended up supervising all kinds of features, Pirates of the Caribbean 1,2,3, The Fountain, Constantine, and I Am Legend. I met Francis Lawrence while working on Constantine and he inspired me to make a music video. I spent $5k of my own money, which was my entire savings, on the production, showed a work in progress to Francis, and he thought it was great and sent it off to his production company. It took a couple of years but I eventually left pre-vis and started directing full time.

Over the years you have had many collaborations with The Black Eyed Peas, Will.i.am and Fergie. How did this partnership originate? How much collaboration is there with an artist like Will.i.am? He must have a very specific vision in mind for his videos?

Time and Pressure... I wrote a lot of treatments for BEP before I got my first project. I think that partnership was born both from relationships my reps had with the label and from persistence. The first video I did for them was 'Imma Be / Rock That Body', which was two songs combined into one. I think Will's brief was that he wanted to do a futuristic Wizard of Oz type thing. I came up with this whole AI, man against machine idea that Will loved. One of the great things about Will is his enthusiasm and his incredible openness for creativity and ideas.  We’ve had a lot of fun together coming up with crazy ideas.

Your body of work with Eminem is also top notch. In 'The Monster' ft. Rihanna from 2013 you revisit previous Eminem videos for key scenes, what was it like re-shooting/altering classic music video scenes?

It was pretty awesome. It was fun digging around his previous videos and trying to figure out how they shot them and how we could best recreate them. Also, Marshall has an incredible memory. He has very specific movements for each era of his career and to see him bring them back or to listen to him recollect how a certain set looked or how he wore his clothes was really fun. I think I remember him saying that he was getting some PTSD/Flashbacks from some of the scenes.

Side note, here’s a cool little BTS of that video, incredibly narrated by Paul Rosenberg, Marshall’s legendary manager. I wish he would do this for all of my treatments.

Eminem’s 2013 video for ‘Rap God’ is an incredible visual experience riddled with great pop culture references. Are you happy with the video and the reception it received?

Sure, I mean, I see things now that I’d like to change or wish I had done a little differently, but that video was pretty fun and the song is amazing.

'Phenomenal' from 2015 is another action packed Eminem video filled with insane stunts and great special effects. Talk us through the process of planning and shooting a video of that nature, and what was the turnaround on that project?

I wish I had some deep insight, but the process for this was to get it done as quickly as possible. I think we had 4 or 5 days to prep, 4 days to shoot and maybe 10 days of post. It was pretty insane. We had to get it done in time for the roll out of Apple Music. This is the sort of project where everyone had to be on point or else it would collapse. My producer, DP, AD and production designer and I had all been through some challenging projects before, but we still talk about how hard this one was. There was just a lot to do with very little time. Our Hong Kong street day was especially challenging, we were of course behind and I was just ticking off scenes and shots that we were not going to be able to shoot and then I go and hang out with John Malkovich in his trailer. We had a very calming and zen like conversation about Marshall, clothing and our kids. It was peaceful.

You have also helmed many ads over the years, which have been your favourite to direct and why?

There are a few that I like for different reasons. Beats By Dre “Colors” is still a fun one. I think that was Beats’ first commercial that they funded on their own. It was one of those ideas and sets where every take we looked at was just incredible to watch.

Hyundai “The Road Less Traveled” was an incredible adventure. We shot all over New Zealand with amazing creatives, crew and talent. Everything just seemed to line up and everyone had a blast going from one incredible location to the next. And, I got to work with Bruce Spence, the gyro pilot from Mad Max, which was fantastic.

Which artists/brands would you love to collaborate with next?

Honestly, anything with meaty creative. The thing that's so fun about this industry is that you never know where good creative is going to come from. There is an ebb and flow to it all. Look at Adobe -- the work they have done recently is amazing, and I don’t think I ever noticed a spot from them until recently. I’d love to sink my teeth into some gaming brands or any brand that has the opportunity to build worlds. Music-wise, I think it’s working with any artist that wants to experiment or take some chances. If there is something that I miss about the old school music videos is that they were a more wild playground for creativity.

What is next?

We are finishing some spots and another Lana Del Rey video. We also have a little Target campaign coming out soon as well and a bunch of projects at Drive.