Los Angeles based film director Paul Minor has done music videos for Queens of the Stone Age, Glasvegas, Editors and Muse among others, and recently he teamed up with designers The Battalion and S.S. Halajian to shoot a film for Ben Trovato. Possession is shot on 35mm film, and Paul’s DP Matthias Koenigswieser convinced the wonderful people at Panavision to lend out a camera and some amazing vintage lenses. Scarlett Kapella (Elite), who stars in the film, was Paul’s first choice when planning the project: “- She has been a friend of mine for a little while. She had the perfect vibe for this, and I thought of her immediately. I saw some of the great styling work she had been doing recently, and I figured she should just style the shoot as well.” Another friend of Paul’s, Katie Malia, was Scarlett’s choreographer for the shoot. The male actor is Aaron Behr, and the hair and make up of the shoot was done by Raquel Castaneda.
Paul says this about the film: “- Conceptually, it is really all in the title, Possession, which obviously has a double meaning. I wanted to play with multiple planes of overlapping action, and it all kind of comes back to this idea of twos and binary opposition throughout the piece. I’m sure there is a dash of Voodoo in there too. Maybe I’ve seen The Serpent And The Rainbow on cable one to many times.”
Feeling that music videos has become somewhat restrictive, Paul was eager to explore fashion: “- I like the idea of fashion film, because it is so open and unsoiled at this point, and that is exciting. I really wanted to do something that was free from the structure that an existing track of music might dictate. Something completely divorced from a band or a song, something that could utilize more of a sound design / textural approach. ”
Ben Trovato is extremely eager to present to you, the world premiere of our first ever exclusive fashion film, Possession by Paul Minor, for Ben Trovato (full credits at the end of the film)
Check out Paul’s portfolio here.
