Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes

Songstress Kristin Andreassen's "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes," which won the John Lennon Songwriting Award for Best Children's Song 2007 and has been featured on "A Prairie Home Companion" has finally been immortalized as a music video — featuring the hot break-dancing moves of a bunch of adorable second graders.

The video (below) was shot by NY filmmaker Ballard C. Boyd, who chatted with me about the process, the kids, and how it all came about. The interview follows the video.

Tonic: How did you get involved with the Crayola thing?

Boyd: I've been friends with Kristin Andreassen, since I met her bluegrass band "Uncle Earl" and toured with them briefly to Bonnaroo in 2007, and heard "Crayola" about the same time. This past year I directed an electronic press kit for one of Kristin's other bands "Sometymes Why" for their new album Your Heart Is A Glorious Machine, and while we were editing, she mentioned still wanting to do a video for "Crayola," since she'd been getting more exposure by playing on "A Prairie Home Companion" last fall and performing it live in all of her other bands shows.  So I jumped at the opportunity.

Tonic: So, whose idea was the video? Whose vision is it?

Boyd: The idea really came together when Kristin told me that she was in talks with a charter school in Brighton, Mass., through a friend, to work with their kids and shoot in the school. The Conservatory Lab Charter School has an emphasis on music and performance, so we knew immediately that if we could convince them that we were serious and not just some people in off the street, they'd probably be great to work with — and it turns out they were, they were so accommodating for us to come in and work with one of their second grade classes for about a day and a half. Kristin really brought the frame of shooting in a school with a whole body of different kids, and from there I worked to come up with ways to weave her performance through kind of a school day, and how we would shoot all of the kids, the drawings, the break dancing — which they serendipitously had just taught weeks before we showed up — and the animations.

Tonic: What did you like about making the video?

Boyd: The broad answer to that is just how enthusiastic the kids were to play, interact with Kristin, and also perform when we specifically had the cameras aimed at them. It was a challenge to wrangle 23 second graders for a day and a half, all over a school, but we had the help of their two teachers. The two best specific parts were hands-down: One: Shooting the kids break dancing, while riding on a dolly with my cinematographer Will Beckley. While we played back Kristin's song for most of the shooting, for that scene we played back Public Enemy's "Fight The Power," and there was something incredibly satisfying about forcing 7-year-olds to break dance to "Fight The Power" in a gym while flying back and forth on a dolly. Also, all the slo-mo dancing looked wonderful. And two: Seeing the kids actual drawings come to life through the animation by my friend Weston Malgren was a really special touch that added a lot for me.

Tonic: What sucked?

Boyd: The strangest challenge for us to overcome was that for a song about eye color, over three-quarters of the class was African-American, Hispanic, or Asian, so we actually had to bring in a few white girls from the first grade with blue eyes, so we could round out the colors, which I never would have anticipated before we started shooting.

Tonic: What's next for you and  Kristin?

Boyd: Coming up, Kristin is producing a new record of original children's songs addressing mental health with Dr. Kari Groff-Denis, and Chris Eldridge of The Punch Brothers — and it's really wonderful by the way. I've got a new music video for comedian and ukulele performer Jen Kwok coming out later this month, and I'm in development for two webseries: one for kids, and one comedy involving a public access talk show.

Those second graders have some seriously good moves!