Mop Hilda — "À la Mode" Music Video
A collaboration with the band Mop Hilda on the music video for their song “À la Mode.” I did the visual effects.
A Custom Shader Editor
Rather than build the effect shots in a conventional compositing package, I built a custom shader editor for the project — inspired by Shadertoy, but aimed at cutting a music video. It runs in the browser on WebGL2: the footage goes in as a texture, a fluid simulation runs on top of it, and the song’s live FFT/waveform drives the visuals. Write a shader, hear the track, see the result on the actual plate immediately.
The performer is matted out of the plate ahead of time (through a custom background removal pass), then injected into the sim two ways — as a scalar “splash” that pushes the velocity field around, and as colored ink that gets caught in the flow and smeared. Everything downstream of that is parameters: video transform, vignette, FFT response curves, the ring overlay, palette frequencies, and the sim itself (diffusion, dissipation, max speed, springiness).
The other half of the tool is the script. Every look is saved as a preset, and the video is cut by placing preset cues against the song’s beat grid — a marker on the waveform, either a hard cut or an eased transition over a set number of beats. The video edits itself from that list, and I could sit on a single cue, tune it against the music, and move on. Final output is recorded straight out of the canvas at HD.
Looks
I love this track, and I’m grateful Mop Hilda let me throw digital paint all over it.
Song: “À la Mode” by Mop Hilda
Shot & Directed by: Mop Hilda
Visual Effects: Drew Skillman
Stream Mop Hilda: linktr.ee/mop_hilda
Watch: YouTube