Director of Photography, Luis Perez, speaks about bringing Chromakopia to life visually.
Whispered rap layered with beautiful vocals and stomping beats greets the listener upon pressing play on Tyler, the Creator’s newest studio album Chromakopia. Generating lots of buzz in the music world, the album was met with critical acclaim and fan discourse surrounding features on the album, its personal subject matter and a semi-surprise release. Some of the most striking aspects of Tyler’s latest project, however, lie in its visual aesthetics and storytelling. Mission spoke with Director of Photography on the project, Luis Perez, to gain insight on the visual aspects of the album.
The album is deeply personal and candid — touching on themes of personal growth, adulthood anxieties and general feelings of uncertainty. In the lead single, “Noid”, Tyler sings about the effects of fame on his psyche which lead him to extreme paranoia. In the promotional single and lead track, “St. Chroma”, listeners are introduced to Tyler’s masked alter-ego who remains a constant throughout the project. The alter-ego of St. Chroma seemingly represents a vulnerable side of Tyler that he is hiding with a mask. In the 9th track on the album, “Take Your Mask Off”, Tyler appears to be making a call to action to literally take your mask off in order to portray oneself authentically.
“It all started with Tyler and some photos he shared with me that he felt captured a tone he was looking for. They were old Hollywood studio test photos of actors for Hitchcock films.”
The masked character St. Chroma is a focal point of the visual aspect of the project. Naturally, he is front and center on the album cover. Perez shared insights into how the album cover was captured. “It all started with Tyler and some photos he shared with me that he felt captured a tone he was looking for. They were old Hollywood studio test photos of actors for Hitchcock films” says Perez. The Hitchcock influences are apparent from the black-and-white shot to Tyler’s dramatic and commanding pose with an outstretched hand. Perez also mentioned how they contemplated shooting the cover on film but ultimately decided to shoot digitally due to tight turnaround times for the project. As influenced by the old Hollywood test photos, Perez explains that they “shot with a combination of continuous light and strobe to allow for some sharpness in parts of the image.”
In addition to the album cover, Perez was the Director of Photography for all three music videos released for the album. The music videos for “St. Chroma”, “Noid” and “Thought I Was Dead” feel like movies as they draw from cinematic influences. According to Perez, “Hitchcock served as a tonal blueprint for our approach. We utilized forced perspectives and other techniques to create tension in scenes. At times, allowing the action to unfold in one frame without moving the camera was crucial, as it made the viewer feel like a witness to the events”. In scenes at the end of “Noid”, for example, the camera does not move from its birds-eye view which forces viewers to confront a masked Tyler dealing with emotions of paranoia in an empty parking lot.
“At times, allowing the action to unfold in one frame without moving the camera was crucial, as it made the viewer feel like a witness to the events.”
The visual story of the project has an overall unsettling and surreal feeling which builds on the emotions that Tyler describes in his lyrics. Crazed facial expressions, uncanny dance movements and the mask Tyler is wearing throughout are just some of the unsettling aspects found throughout the visual project. These aspects help “to create a base emotional connection that makes you pay attention to all the nuances in the images. Tyler’s dealing with anxieties, unsettled emotions, and fear are all there for the viewer to feel with him” Perez tells Mission.
Color, or lack thereof, is another defining attribute of the visual aesthetic. When asked about the importance of black-and-white shots throughout the project, Perez tells us that “black and white allows you to see shapes, and the interplay of light and shadow can add drama to a tense situation”. However, color emerges from the black-and-white world at the end of the music videos. In order to utilize color while still maintaining the film noir aesthetic of the music videos, Perez “drew inspiration from Conrad Hall for our lighting approach. His work on Road to Perdition was instrumental in achieving a noir style while ensuring that the colors remained vibrant when going to color in the edit” he explains.
Perez has worked on countless projects with Tyler. For more than ten years, it has been the two of them along with film producer, Tara Razavi, creating a lot of Tyler’s visual projects. The small team that Tyler keeps speaks to how involved each person is in the creative process. This creativity and cohesive vision flourishes throughout Chromakopia, and everyone should watch the visual story that further brings the music to life.
