Matt Sklar has directed a haunting and moving video for Royal Jelly by the legendary 70s actress and singer Karen Black. 

The song is from a newly released compilation of original songs by the late, great actor (who appeared in Easy Rider, Nashville, and Five Easy Pieces, for which she was nominated for an Oscar), collected by singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, with whom Black collaborated in the years before her death in 2013.

During the height of the pandemic, McCombs asked Matt Sklar to create a video for Royal Jelly, a 2012 collaboration sung by Black and featuring music and lyrics by McCombs. Sklar has created the visual from a treasure-trove of footage unearthed by McCombs and Black's husband Stephen Eckelberry, projecting this material onto different surfaces then filming the film. 

“The footage was in so many different formats and looks, I wanted to unify it to aesthetically evoke the sense of Karen performing for us, like she is singing without singing,” explains Sklar, who worked with cinematographer Jack Caswell, on the project. 

“Driving around northeast LA during quarantine, I kept looking around the neighborhood at different worn and tattered walls, rocky walls of hills, old mattresses, metal junk, plywood and other trash... and thinking, ‘Oh, I could project onto that.’” 

Some of the shots having a moving texture, an effect achieved by mounting the projector to the camera and shooting out a car door at the walls passing by. Other textures include Sklar’s own shower, a kiddie pool, and a pile of lacy dresses he found at a charity shop. Sklar then shot footage of McCombs playing the guitar part, projecting footage of bees all over him to make it feel like he is immersed in the energy of warm honey alongside his dear friend Karen Black.

The director has delivered a visual that both intensifies and exalts the source material, like an eerie lament from out of this time.