| Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Official release poster | |
| Directed by | |
| Based on | Happier Than Ever byBillie Eilish |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | Billie Eilish |
| Cinematography | Pablo Berron |
| Edited by | John Paul Guerrera Horstmann (sup.) |
| Animation by | Patrick Osborne |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Disney+ |
Release date |
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Running time | 65 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles is a 2021 Americanconcert film directed byRobert Rodriguez andPatrick Osborne, starring singer-songwriterBillie Eilish. It features performances of all 16 tracks from Eilish's second studio album,Happier Than Ever (2021), at theHollywood Bowl amphitheater. She is accompanied by other musicians, including her brotherFinneas O'Connell and theLos Angeles Philharmonic. Inspired by films such asWho Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) andCool World (1992),A Love Letter to Los Angelesblends live action and animation.
Besides directing, Osborne worked on the animation in collaboration withNexus Studios,Zoic Studios, and Digital Frontier FX, mixingmotion capture footage withrotoscoping techniques. Filming took place for one week in Los Angeles, mostly at the Hollywood Bowl, without a live audience due to theCOVID-19 pandemic. The crew aimed to avoid making the performances feel too similar, so they produced distinct color palettes and lighting effects for every song. They often recorded Eilish from close distances, wanting to create a sense of intimacy between her and the viewers.
A Love Letter to Los Angeles was released exclusively toDisney+ on September 3, 2021. Critics praised its performances—which they felt were of similar or better quality compared to the songs' studio versions—as well as its animation, cinematography, and setting. It received nominations for Best Austin Film at the2021 Austin Film Critics Association Awards,Best Music Film at the64th Annual Grammy Awards, andBest Longform Video at the2022 MTV Video Music Awards.
The film begins by showing atwo-dimensional, animated version of American singer-songwriterBillie Eilish in a recording studio. Picking up a microphone, she leaves the place and drives aPorsche to visit landmarks around Los Angeles. Meanwhile, herlive-action self performs the tracks from her second studio album,Happier Than Ever (2021), at theHollywood Bowl.
Eilish starts with the song "Getting Older", covered in blue lighting as the camera spins around her. The lights switch to a red-orange color for "I Didn't Change My Number". A symphonyorchestra accompanies her during the next two performances, the first of which is "Billie Bossa Nova". While Eilish sings the next song, "My Future", awide shot depicts her animated counterpart on the rooftop of theRoosevelt Hotel, looking across the Los Angeles skyline and contemplating. The animated version returns to her Porsche to drive around the city at high speed.
Back at the Hollywood Bowl, the live-action Eilish prepares for a performance of "Oxytocin". As she sings the song, red lights pulsate in the background; the screen turns toblack and white during two verses, and she belts some of the closing lines. Nighttime passes, and the next morning, the animated Eilish awakes to find herself among the clouds, about to sprout angel wings. For "Goldwing", a children's chorus performs its first verse, an excerpt from a religious hymn. They act as backing vocals for Eilish during the rest of the number, and the orchestra reappears to provide accompaniment to go with electronic music. The choir and orchestra are gone once the next song, "Lost Cause", begins. Eilish's performance is interspersed with shots of the Porsche as it travels through Los Angeles at night.
During "Halley's Comet", Eilish returns with the orchestra for another number, and she looks up to see theeponymous comet pass through the sky. Her animated version, sitting in an empty restaurant, also notices the comet. Eilish delivers aspoken-word interlude with "Not My Responsibility" and monologues about the public's obsession with her physical appearance. Shown as a silhouette against a black and red background, her animated self slowly takes her clothes off, is picked apart into bifurcated clones, and submerges herself in water. She rises from the water then levitates, after which the camera transitions back to her live-action self, about to perform "Overheated" with red lights and smoke around her. With "Everybody Dies", the animated Eilish visits a cemetery, and the orchestra helps with the instrumentals.
For "Your Power", Eilish duets with her brotherFinneas O'Connell, who plays theacoustic guitar. Her animated counterpart arrives at thePalladium theater, after which paparazzi gather around the entrance to take pictures. Close-up shots of Eilish's face repeatedly flash on the screen as she sings "NDA" withdistorted vocals, and the orchestra appears one final time for "Therefore I Am". During the performance ofthe title track, the animated Eilish enters the Hollywood Bowl while a spotlight follows her every move. She notices her live-action counterpart, who sees her and smiles at her, and takes a seat at the front row to watch the performance. The live-action Eilishheadbangs and thrashes around the stage once theelectric guitar appears in the song. She closes the film with the stripped-back "Male Fantasy"; as the song ends, flowers appear all over the Hollywood Bowl. The animated Eilish, still watching, disappears from sight, a smile on her face.
Eilish was born and spent her formative years in Los Angeles, developing an intense emotional attachment to the city. As she explained onGood Morning America, "I don't think I'd have any of the same anything if it wasn't for my hometown. I owed Los Angeles some love."[7] She came up withHappier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles as a way to pay tribute to the city, intending it to be about self-reflection and growth.[8][9] With regard to its visual style, she envisioned it to combinelive action and animation, a "dimension that [she had] never experimented in", and felt thatDisney would help her with the goal.[10]
Eilish contactedRobert Rodriguez, who she thought was the best candidate for directing,[10] in April or May 2021.[11] He agreed to be involved in the project with his daughter, who was willing to help plan how Eilish's animated counterpart would look. They met with Eilish to discuss ideas for the film and listen to her second studio album,Happier Than Ever, before its release.[11] Rodriguez noticed many of the songs contain explicit lyrics or discuss mature themes, and he wondered how Disney would react including them in the film. For instance, the wordfuck appears in the title track, and one verse in "Male Fantasy" mentions using pornography to distract oneself.[12] Disney opted to censorfuck, but not other swear words likeshit,damn, orbitches,[13] nor the songs' themes.[12]
Eilish also enlisted the help ofPatrick Osborne, an animator for several Disney films, to co-direct and work on the animation and visual design.[14][15] For the film's setting, she instructed him to create a romanticized depiction ofHollywood, aiming for a vintagenoir look. When conceptualizing the aesthetic forA Love Letter to Los Angeles, she drew inspiration from 1980s films.[11][16][15] Osborne learned that Eilish was a fan of films likeWho Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) andCool World (1992), which blended live action with animation, so he used them as a benchmark for the visual design.[15][17] Eilish also told him that she wanted her animated counterpart to feel like an idealized version of herself,[15] and he decided on afemme fatale look for the character to reinforce the film's inspirations.[15]
Work onA Love Letter to Los Angeles began by late June 2021,[11] whenDisney+ contactedNexus Studios about the project.[16] Darkroom andInterscope, Eilish's record labels, handled production for the film in association with Nexus Studios and Aron Levine Productions.[16][18]
Filming for the concert sequences took place at the Hollywood Bowl, without a live audience due to theCOVID-19 pandemic. Kerry Asmussen directed and choreographed the corresponding scenes.[11][14] Other musicians who appeared include Finneas O'Connell, drummer Andrew Marshall, guitaristRomero Lubambo, conductorGustavo Dudamel, and theLos Angeles Philharmonic andChildren's Chorus.[3][5] They performed all 16 songs from the album in the order that they appear on its track list.[11][19] To avoid accidentallyleaking the album to passersby, everyone on set listened to the performances via headphones.[11]
Principal photography was completed within the first week of July.[11][15][20] According to Osborne, the crew'sshooting schedule at the Hollywood Bowl was from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m.[15] SinceA Love Letter to Los Angeles was filmed without a live audience, the crew could move their cameras freely, able to get angles that would be impossible to attain if there were people in the venue.[11][14] At least 10 cameras were used for acquiring footage, alongsidesteadicams,cranes, and largeAlta-X drones.[11][20] Scenes that involved the Los Angeles Philharmonic had to be filmed together in one night for production considerations.[14][20]
For the animated vignettes, the crew recorded in several locations around Los Angeles, using the footage to create the animated character's journey across the city.[16] They placed most of the scenes between each song performance. During filming, they also constructed areflecting pool, a former feature of the Hollywood Bowl that separated performers from audience members, and built it in place of some of the venue seats. It reflected back to itself, making the Hollywood Bowl look like a full circle instead of a semicircle.[11][14] In Osborne's view, thecaustic motifs reflected by the pool onto the Hollywood Bowl provided visual effects reminiscent of the filmBlade Runner (1982).[15]
Pablo Berron served as thecinematographer forA Love Letter to Los Angeles.[16] He collaborated with aerial director of photography Sam O'Melia,[20]digital imaging technician Dan Skinner,chief lighting technician Konrad Sigurdsson, and Eilish's tourlighting designer Tony Caporale.[21] Once Berron learned everything he needed to know about the project, he was surprised; he compared the shooting schedule to filming four music videos per night. After some consideration, he decided to shoot the film with theSony Venice camera—due to its higherfilm speed and better connection—in 6K resolution at a1.78:1 aspect ratio. Using a3D lookup table byCompany 3 from a past project, the visuals to him felt close to those produced byfilm stock. Sphericaloptical instruments were designed byPanavision to, as intended by Berron, create ananamorphic look.[20] He was relieved that there would be no crowd during filming because it meant that all the lights would focus on Eilish instead. In an interview withCineD, Berron explained that this approach allowed him to film her at a very close range, and he "really wanted" to do it because it would create a sense of intimacy between her and the viewers.[20][21]
The crew aimed to avoid making the performances feel too similar to one another.[11][14] During aSony Cine interview, Berron said that they initially planned a vintage, "classic Hollywood old-school" look for every concert scene. After gradually getting to know Eilish's personality, which Berron called "high energy", they decided that sticking to one visual atmosphere throughout the film was not appropriate. Hence, during certain songs, the crew usedsmoke machines andlasers or went "crazy" with operating the handheld cameras. Caporale also assigned each performance its own color palette and lighting effects, and Berron and his crew listened closely to every song to determine when to adjust the lights. They employed onlybacklighting techniques during close-up shots of Eilish, set upfill lights to tweak thecontrast when necessary, and occasionally put "old movie lights" below her askey lighting, to highlight the theatrical elements for some scenes.[20][21]
Osborne worked on the film's animated sequences with Nexus Studios, with assistance from visual effects companiesZoic Studios and Digital Frontier FX.[16][15] Sallyanne Massimini served as the studios' visual effects supervisor.[15] According to Osborne, Nexus was responsible for animating the "most magical, more surreal parts of the story", while the other studios worked on the more "grounded stuff".[16] He added that around five or six people based in Los Angeles, London, and Sydney worked on the animation.[15][22]
Animating Eilish provided a "real challenge" for Osborne, who had 12 weeks to do the job. He had little time to capture her physical disposition for the "old-school" version of therotoscope process, which he had to do before she embarked on the concert sequences. His solution was to put her in amotion capture suit, havingprevisualized how the scenes for the corresponding shoot would look, and render the resulting animation.[16][15] To maintain the 1980s look, Osborne did rotoscoping on top of the motion capture animation.[16]
Osborne used theBlender program to edit the motion capture, of which there were around 90 minutes of footage. He and his team made simplestoryboards for the animated sequences, around one drawing for each shot. They created about 12 minutes of animated footage, finishing the editing process by the week of August 20, 2021.[15]
Eilish announcedA Love Letter to Los Angeles on July 22, 2021, eight days before the release ofHappier Than Ever. A teaser trailer was revealed alongside the announcement.[23][24][25] Another teaser trailer premiered on August 4,[26] and an official trailer premiered 20 days later.[2][27] The first clip offered a small glimpse of the film's animation; the other two put more focus on that element.[28]
After the trailers were revealed, many journalists immediately compared Eilish's animated character to aDisney Princess,[17] includingMTV News's Athena Serrano andBillboard's Gill Kaufman.[19][29] Ben Pearson of/Film likened her to a less-sexualized version of the character Holli Would fromCool World.[30] Three days before the film screening, Eilish shared a video of the "Oxytocin" performance on social media.[31][32][33] Released as a Disney+ exclusive,[34][35]A Love Letter to Los Angeles premiered worldwide on September 3, 2021. Disney+ made the film available to watch withDolby Vision andDolby Atmos.[36]
Larisha Paul, a writer forthe Recording Academy, cited freedom from fame as a recurring theme ofA Love Letter to Los Angeles. In the film, Eilish's animated counterpart drives through theHighland Park neighborhood, where she used to live before she moved away due to security concerns such as experiences withstalkers.[22] She references similar privacy-breaching encounters in the lyrics to "Getting Older", "Billie Bossa Nova", and "NDA".[37] According to Paul, the animated counterpart, by travelling around several locations in Los Angeles, demonstrates freedom that the live-action Eilish does not possess, reminding viewers of the life she had before the massive success of her debut studio album,When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019). As she drives, she sees many billboards used to promoteHappier Than Ever by the roads of the city. In Paul's view, this reinforces "the ironclad inescapability of fame" and the conversations that result, such as the ones referenced in the "Not My Responsibility" interlude.[22]
In a review forBillboard, Sydney Urbanek analyzed how Los Angeles might connect to the film's plot. Her argument was that the city functions as a setting for the stories told through the album's lyrics—she interpreted the plot as Eilish's attempt to fix her estranged relationship with Los Angeles, caused by certain traumatic experiences discussed in the songs she performs. To back this up, she cited the album's exploration of Eilish's past relationships and lack of privacy. Urbanek also pointed to one line in the penultimate song, the title track, which reads "I'd never treat me this shitty / You made me hate this city." She called its performance the film's culminating moment,[37] a sentiment Paul shared. Discussing Eilish's encounter with her animated counterpart during the scene, Paul said: "[her] ongoing theme of solitude, and the autonomy found within that [...] speaks to the one consistency between where Eilish has been and where she's headed: herself."[22]
Some critics deemedA Love Letter to Los Angeles a film that Eilish's fans would enjoy. Johnny Loftus recommended watching it in a review for the websiteDecider, certain that it would "make her thriving fan base swoon",[38] and Jennifer Green, an author forCommon Sense Media, wrote that Eilish's followers would "enjoy parsing her lyrics for biographical details and references" while viewing the film.[13] Urbanek considered its release as a way to satisfy fans with live performances before they got to see Eilish duringthe world tour in support of the album. However, she warned against reducing it to a "mere gift" to them: "there's simply too much at work conceptually to dismiss it as [such]."[37]
The Hollywood Bowl setting was a point of commentary for two critics, who praised it for effectively bolstering the film's tribute premise.The New York Times's Teo Bugbee, who called the choice of location as the "best tribute" to Los Angeles, noted how the concert venue was empty for the whole runtime, arguing that this highlighted the city's "star-struck hauntedness" well.[39]Uproxx contributor Rachel Brodsky agreed and found the choice appropriate because of the Hollywood Bowl's significance to Los Angeles's music and film scenes.[40]
The film received some praise for its animation and cinematography. Urbanek lauded the way thatA Love Letter to Los Angeles mixed animation with live action footage, and she found the variety in camerawork appropriate for an album that is varied in themes and tones.[37] Loftus focused on its use of lighting, as well as the aesthetic and color schemes employed for the animated sequences; he believed that the sequences succeeded in establishing the mood for the performances despite looking substantially different from the live footage.[38] In contrast to Urbanek and Loftus, Green wrote the scenes of the animated Eilish were unnecessary. For her, the music and the live-action character do enough to convey the right emotions and the stories told by the songs.[13]
The concert numbers were another aspect of the film that critics praised. They thought that the songs' live renditions sounded as good as or better than their studio versions, often attributing the quality to the Los Angeles Philharmonic's involvement.[37][40][41] Loftus was impressed by Eilish's voice, which he called "striking"—he sensed improvement in her vocals and saw the film as an opportunity for her to prove her ability to sing live. He concluded that the performances inA Love Letter to Los Angeles rightly emphasized Eilish's artistry, music, and nuanced character in spite of all the media narratives about her.[38]
Callie Ahlgrim ofInsider selected the live renditions of some of her favorite tracks from the album—"Oxytocin", "Halley's Comet", and the title track—as the film's highlights.[41] Urbanek thought the title track performance lost some impact as a result of Disney's censorship of the wordfuck in the lyrics, but she wrote that the song's cathartic nature was still preserved in the film.[37] The "Goldwing" performance was singled out for praise in several reviews; it was regarded as more beautiful than the song's studio version thanks to the presence of the Children's Chorus, of which Eilish used to be a member. The reviewers found their reunion through the film sentimental.[38][37][40][41]
On a more critical note, Ahgrim was not impressed with the film as a whole, finding that without any memorable conceptual risks or a "palpable buzz" from a live audience,A Love Letter to Los Angeles felt underwhelming like the album itself.[41] Meanwhile, Brodsky wrote the absence of an audience made the viewing experience more heartwarming. For Brodsky, criticisms were instead directed towards the performances' monochrome color schemes and Eilish's vocals, which she thought came across as pre-recorded and not live.[40]
A Love Letter to Los Angeles was shortlisted for Best Austin Film at the2021 Austin Film Critics Association Awards, held on January 11, 2022. Other contenders included the 2020 releasesThe Carnivores,The Get Together, andQueens of Pain, as well as the winnerWithout Getting Killed or Caught (2021).[42][43] On November 23, 2021, the Recording Academy announced the64th Annual Grammy Awards nominees, which includedA Love Letter to Los Angeles forBest Music Film.[44] The ceremony was held on April 3, 2022, and the documentarySummer of Soul (2021) won the award.[45]A Love Letter to Los Angeles was also nominated forBest Longform Video at the2022 MTV Video Music Awards.[46]
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