“Julie Drinks” was directed by Renee Faia and produced by Sheri Hellard. This iPhone 5 video showcases the founders of Cheap Lullaby Records Eric Holden and Randy Wooten in their new band, Willodean. Here, they’re joined  by singer Dan Barrett from the Austin roots band Porterdavis.

Renee is a musician as well as a director. You can see her performing her own music in Summer Wine, which we featured in July.  In the following interview, Renee shares some of the techniques she uses to achieve astonishing production values.

MMM: Lighting plays a big part in this video. Can you tell you tell us anything about the challenges you faced in lighting “Julie Drinks”?

Renee:  There was really good existing light, so I took advantage of that for many of the shots.  An Ice Light light stick was also used in other shots where there was little light-some of the shots of the band and also the shots in the mirror of our Julie, (played by Kelleia Sheerin).  Also, on Filmic Pro, which was the app that I used, there is a setting for light that I did not lock, which allowed for various spontaneous light shifts.

MMM: How did you get such smooth shots, for example, in the tracking move at about 1:25?

Renee: I used a Tiffen Steadicam Smoothee for the entire shoot.

MMM:  Did the glass effects—in middle of the video and at the end—present any problems?

Renee: Those are some of my favorite shots. The glass was part of a door at the location. I was pretty caught up in filming it, the light was beautiful. It wasn’t until I started editing that I realized I could see myself reflected back in some of the shots.  I was able to tweak the contrast a bit and eliminate it pretty easily.

MMM: The video is visual rich. How many set-ups were involved?

Renee: Four set-ups. We did do a lot of takes, about 70 total.

MMM: Did you develop the concept yourself or was it a collaboration with the band?

Renee: The band sent me a few songs to take a listen to. I responded to this one and had visuals in mind right away.  I wrote a treatment and also put together still images to convey my idea.  They were great about letting me run with it.