After the success of her debut album in 2015, Melanie Martinez was poised for an impressive full-length follow up. This did not come about quickly. Though the star had written all the songs for her sophomore effort, "K-12," by the time "Cry Baby" had its first birthday, the tracks didn't see the light of day until 2019. Why? The star abandoned the traditional one to two-year album cycle to bring her meticulous vision to life. This time, it involved more than visuals to match each of the album's tracks. It involved an entire full-length film, which she wrote, directed, and starred in.
In an interview with Idolator, Martinez revealed that she first recorded the "K-12" album in its entirety before writing the film. She then spent months revising the script, only to graduate into an "intense" pre-production. "It was like, 'Go to the pre-production office at 9:00 AM, come back at 10:00 PM, work all night,'" she said. "I wouldn't even sleep. I was literally working all night on all the answers that I had to give people the next day."
All in all, Martinez revealed that pre-production was a three-month process. They ended up shooting the film in Budapest over the course of 31 days, and eventually, it premiered in 2019. Though it admittedly reads a bit like a Wes Anderson-inspired fever dream, it has a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so the effort wasn't wasted.
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