“Pillow Talk” was one of three music videos we created for Idle Heirs’ debut album, and it holds a special place for me. Josh Barber, one of the founding members, is a dear friend whose creative instincts I’ve long admired. He and the band have an incredible sense of visual identity — they care deeply about how their music is represented on screen, and that kind of trust and clarity made this process especially rewarding.
With limited resources from the label, we had to get scrappy and inventive to give each video its own unique aesthetic while maintaining a consistent level of quality. For this one, after talking with Josh and Sean about the song’s emotional core, I imagined it as a sort of faded memory — intimate, raw, like something captured on Super 8. While shooting on real film wasn't possible logistically, we embraced that analog spirit in post, leaning into color, texture, and subtle gate weave to bring out a nostalgic, handmade feel.
At its core, this is a performance piece — but with an undercurrent of memory and emotion that echoes the song’s vulnerability. We wanted to walk the line between flashing moments from the past and the present energy of the band. There’s something special about chasing a band around with a camera, catching them in their element, syncing to their rhythm. Watching it come together, it became one of my favorite videos I’ve made to date.
We shot inside a vintage dome house in Kansas City, a space that felt like it was already living in a different decade — it gave us the perfect backdrop for the atmosphere we were chasing. To complement that, we used vintage lenses to introduce softness and personality to the image, and lit the space using 4K HMIs to shape a natural, moody light that could still feel cinematic and lived-in.
