Pablo Rochat on turning suburban Atlanta into a medieval fantasy for Phoebe Bridgers’ new music video

On the outskirts of Atlanta, an elf queen stands on the roof of a car, her hair is white, long and very Targaryen, with a sparkly crown sitting above her pointed ears. Around her, in a scrapyard full of gutted vehicles, a squad of knights clash swords in a battle straight out of a fantasy epic, if it weren’t for the very ordinary junkyard doing the honours as the backdrop. This is the opening sequence of Lost Boys, Phoebe Bridgers’ new music video, directed by Lance Oppenheim and Pablo Rochat.

A combination of Westeros, Lord of the Rings, old school RuneScape, medieval inspired typography and Renaissance fair nostalgia, the four minute video follows Phoebe as she moves through American suburbia in places like petrol stations, scrapyards, a grill firing up steaks – while a troupe of real Renaissance performers, the Knights of DeBracey Productions, duel around her. Cast alongside Phoebe is Skyler Gisondo, who plays a gas station clerk destined to become a knight himself. The pair previously starred together in Lance’s A24 film Primetime, Phoebe’s feature acting debut, and the rest of the video was shot with a crew stitched together from both directors. Lance is fresh off directing Ren Faire, a three-part HBO docu-series described as a medieval version of Succession, which Atlanta-based director Pablo had worked on a marketing campaign for alongside photographer Chris Maggio, who also happened to shoot some amazing BTS shots for the Lost Boys video too.

The idea to collaborate had been brewing for a while. “Lance and I have always wanted to make something together because our creative instincts have always felt really aligned,” Pablo tells It’s Nice That. “We’ve always been intrigued by the suburban sprawl around Atlanta, where I live,” Pablo explains, adding that the city happens to be home to the Georgia Renaissance Festival, an interactive 16th-century English village that hosts jousting and live action performances every spring. Lance and cinematographer Nate Hurtsellers had already spent years steeped in that world while shooting Ren Faire, and Bridgers, as it turns out, had long been drawn to “the concept of a fantasy world hidden inside modern life”.

With the fair as a key influence, the directors wanted to represent the event with honesty and appreciation. “Ever since Lance made Ren Faire, we’ve all been intrigued by the community of people that create the Ren faire,” says Pablo. “These are people who dedicate huge parts of their lives to their imagination, performance and each other. There’s a sincerity to it, and a real sense of camaraderie that you can’t fake. We wanted to honour that.” Rather than treating the knights as characters in costume, the film leans into the idea of real-world fantasy that’s happening today, right now, in everyday places around America. “We loved the idea that these characters aren’t just playing make believe,” Pablo continues. “Their magic is real, and they carry it with them wherever they go.” Having originally hoped to shoot at the Texas Renaissance Festival – where Lance made Ren Faire – the team pivoted to Atlanta instead, opting for places that felt authentic rather than obviously on-the-nose magical. “Watching a group of knights casually exist inside a gas station, a scrapyard or along the side of a highway creates this tension between fantasy and reality,” says Pablo.

Another way of bringing alive this sense of magical realism was to infuse the video with footage inspired by a fantasy game, which the team landed on by accident. While filming Skyler at a petrol station, Steadicam operator Jarrett Morgan pulled up RuneScape on a nearby computer – and Lance, who’d been obsessed with the game growing up, clocked its potential for the music video. “It felt like one of those childhood fantasy worlds that quietly shaped how you imagined adventure,” Pablo says. “The second they saw it, they knew it belonged in the film. It inspired us to rethink the structure almost on the spot. The game became this perfect bridge between digital imagination and real life. It’s one of those spontaneous discoveries that only happens because everyone on set is contributing ideas.” The sequence has also been turned into an actual game that fans can play.

What comes through most for Pablo is how much of the shoot ran on reunion energy between the team – Lance’s Ren Faire crew meeting Pablo’s regular collaborators, the real jousting troupe from DeBracey Productions bringing years of battle-worn chemistry to set, and Phoebe being her usual fabulous self. “By the end it genuinely felt less like two directors dividing responsibilities and more like one creative brain shared across a really talented group of people,” Pablo says. “Most importantly, Phoebe was amazing to work with. Her and her music are incredible and it inspired us throughout the entire process. We love her sensibility and her trust in us to make this happen.”