A small crew, a kit full of battery-powered Astera lights, and a shared vision. Here’s how cinematographer Sevdije Kastrati-Dill, ASC together with director Jennifer Reeder and ctress-musician Jena Malone created a nostalgia-strewn music video.
There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from working with a small, close-knit crew. No sprawling truck packed with gear, no army of technicians, no mountains of paperwork–just a cohesive circle of collaborators, a kit full of battery-powered lights, and a shared conviction that the shot is worth chasing. That was the energy when cinematographer Sevdije Kastrati-Dill, ASC, joined director Jennifer Reeder and actress-musician Jena Malone for a two-day music video shoot: a crew of a dozen, split between a Santa Clarita motel at magic hour and an interior set lit in saturated greens and moody reds. One Sony FX3. A Lucid Dream FX diffusion filter. Astera lights. Together the combination made the song’s surreal, nostalgia-strewn visual concept possible.
Director Jennifer Reeder reached out to Kastrati-Dill with the kind of pitch that doesn’t come with much lead time or budget but offered something more valuable: trust. The two had worked together before on Reeder’s feature film Perpetrator and knew each other’s shorthand well. Reeder was collaborating with Jena Malone on a video for the single “Barstow” from Malone’s forthcoming album. Could Sev shoot it before she left for Kosovo on her next feature film project? The cinematographer was in.
The video follows a woman traveling alone to a neon-lit motel as she repeatedly encounters another version of herself, not as a threat, but as a quiet companion, an echo of memory. Actor Robin Tunney appears alongside Malone as her older self and the two women give a literally layered performance, realized through shifting double exposure effects in the edit.
The piece is vividly colored, especially in the motel location, which embraces a hard neon-noir clash of colors. The palette expands naturally from the location itself, particularly the red and green motel vacancy sign. “I always need the lighting to be motivated and have a reason why these colors are being used,” Kastrati-Dill explains. “The neon sign was a big inspiration for me. I loved its contrast.” The result is highly saturated: warm amber foregrounds bleeding into sharp green backlights, scenes bathed in deep red with dashes of cyan, a phone booth glowing against a twilight sky, and an eye-popping red convertible with a saturated edge light. “This is some of the most colorful stuff I’ve shot,” she says.
Working at this scale, every piece of gear must earn its place twice over. Kastrati-Dill came to the shoot with Astera Titan Tubes–fixtures she’s used for years and considers essential–plus, for the first time, two of Astera’s new adjustable spotlight Fresnels: QuikPunch and QuikSpot.
Quickly, Kastrati-Dill was able to turn the QuikPunch into a workhorse for the production. On the first day it served as the saturated green source (a proxy for the sign light) outside the motel. During the phone booth sequence, a single QuikPunch provided a powerful green backlight while a Titan Tube handled the warm fill from the other side, gracefully wrapping Malone in color. “It was amazing using the QuikPunch with a very small crew. Since it is battery powered we didn’t have to run cables or worry about power,” she says. “We shot for several hours, and they lasted the whole time with no issues. Plus, the output is quite strong.”
The QuikFamily and Astera Tubes both utilize Titan LED Color Science, making the fixtures instantly compatible. Gaffer Sika Stanton used the Astera ART7 app to control color and brightness in real time. “You can find the exact color and saturation you want and just make it happen when you’re there,” she says.
The Titan Tubes were used across multiple other setups: as a backlight to create a pink bedroom wash, a TV flicker effect, and rigged in pairs to light Malone from inside the phone booth. “Upon their release, Astera tubes quickly became the industry standard,” the cinematographer recalls. “You can fit them into all kinds of places, they’re naturally diffused, you can add more diffusion on top and control them remotely. I don’t remember ever running into issues with battery life. They are just very, very easy to work with.”
The Asteras were an optimal tool for a team already so concretely on the same page. Malone, according to Kastrati-Dill, completely trusted the crew, meanwhile Reeder and Kastrati-Dill operated with a fluency approaching to telepathy. “We don’t have to discuss things a lot on set,” says the DP. “We just make it happen.” That shorthand allowed for the kind of on-the-fly discovery that fuels the best music video. A close-up of Malone performing in front of a pink background became, in the moment, an opportunity to add a soft pink fill that pulled her further into the color world they’d built. Nobody called a meeting. Kastrati-Dill simply reached for the Astera Tube. “You can just play,” she says. “Using colors that way was really satisfying.”
Jena Malone’s new album releases this May. The “Barstow” music video is available to watch now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLmGC-Qilnc
