A Rougarou's "Trip to the Moon"

Puppetry and folklore are a perfect fit for The Revelers’ new music video

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What happens when you bring an Austin-bred filmmaker, a Cajun band, a puppeteer, and Louisiana folklore all together? How about a rougarou, dancing the night away to swamp pop rhythms on the face of a full moon?

Jillian Hall’s film work often revolves around social issues—as the story producer for dozens of short documentaries for the Mental Health Channel and for the feature length documentary highlighting efforts to provide opportunities to girls in Nepal; the co-producer for the award-winning short film, The Boatman; and director of short films for the Better community media project highlighting violence and the 2016 flooding in Baton Rouge, and more—but a passion for storytelling and a good dose of Cajun folklore inspired her to step outside of her usual niche for a puppet-filled music video for The Revelers’ “Trip to the Moon.” “This project is something that is totally playful and fun for everyone involved,” said Hall. “It’s so silly, but it was so fun. Nothing intense or heavy here.”  

Hall currently serves as the Baton Rouge Programs Director of NOVAC, a media arts nonprofit based in New Orleans that works to provide education, career development, community outreach, independent productions, and special events in its communities. “It’s enabled me to wear lots of different hats,” she said.

Every year, through a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, NOVAC participates in a music video production project working with local bands and musicians around the state. This year the nonprofit decided to also partner with local filmmakers and other media artists for the project.

Hall, at the time, was being drawn irresistibly into Louisiana folklore by a book called Gumbo Yaya (1945). The collection of stories transcribed almost verbatim from locals themselves spoke directly to her imagination. “I imagine this little Cajun lady on her front porch, telling this field reporter these stories that she grew up hearing,” she said. “Not just the typical werewolf story that I had heard before. There were some really amazing details. Like the Rougarou have bats as big as planes that fly them where they want to go. Just hearing these things and being able to visualize them so well because it was so well told, that all kind of coincided.”

Hall reached out to The Revelers, whom she’d met through musical connections in Austin. The Lafayette-based band strives to both carry on and move forward the genres of Cajun French, Zydeco, and Swamp Pop, playing the classics and routinely releasing original music in both English and French. The band’s fiddle player Daniel Coolik said that while their work is based off older Cajun French music, it also incorporates R&B, soul, blues, and other Southern influences.

On the mission of preserving and promoting the unique culture here in South Louisiana, he said, “We always say, ‘Win hearts and minds.’ Part of this whole thing is adding to the canon of Cajun French music. We want to show people that this still exists.”

Hall’s offer to create a music video for the band’s song “Trip to the Moon,” with a rougarou protagonist in a juke joint, couldn’t pair better with the group’s aesthetic or mission.

Amanda Zapp, another friend from Hall’s Austin days and now a member of the Mudlark Puppeteers in New Orleans, came on board as the project’s official puppet expert and co-writer. The two women spent many a night hand-making wire ‘bones,’ little clothes, and even tiny instruments for the story’s characters. Zapp hand-painted each little person’s face. Each band member has its own puppet, and if you look closely, you’ll even see cameos of Zapp and Hall in the final music video.

Zapp believes the pairing of Cajun music, stories, and puppetry is a powerful one. “I do a lot of work with myths and folklore, and I feel like puppetry is an ideal medium for telling these stories that mix elements of the real and fantastic,” she said.

The three-minute music video took twenty-three hours in Hall’s home and a team of ten collaborators and storytellers, working together against a background of swamp pop tunes for two nights straight. “Having just had the shoot a couple of weeks ago, I am so beyond thrilled at how it turned out,” said Hall. “It made all those late nights worth it for sure.”

Zapp said that she hopes people enjoy their little story. “And I hope that it inspires them to go out dancing to live music and to be sweet to rougarous they happen upon,” she added.

The Revelers will play at the Giant Omelette Festival in Abbeville on November 4. View dates for the band's upcoming tour at revelersband.com. Learn more about NOVAC at novacvideo.org.

Crew

Amanda Zapp - cowriter and puppet master

Abe Felix - Director of Photography

Clay Achee - puppeteer

Zack Godshall - puppeteer

Meg Gray - puppeteer

Sarah Stanfield - puppeteer 

Ila Bordelon-Walker - puppeteer

Darcy McKinnon - Executive Producer and ED of NOVAC

Ross Brupbacher - set design

Jillian Hall - co-writer, director, puppeteer, editor, set and prop design