San Diego, based multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Elise Trouw (https://elisetrouw.com) recently released the music video for her latest single, All You Need Is Lust. The song is the lead track from her upcoming satirical concept album “The Diary of Elon Lust,” and introduces her alter ago, who serves as the center of the album’s 14 tracks.
Elon Lust, she shares, is the personification of lust, and the album’s songs are presented from his perspective. All You Need Is Lust was designed to introduce him and his world, which is fueled by sex and objectification.
In addition to appearing in the video as the Elon Lust character, Trouw also served as the project’s director, editor and colorist. The video was shot over two days at the Orpheum Theater in Wichita, KS, close to where her label, Midtopia, is based. The space allowed her to shoot a number of different scenes all under one roof, including its performance stage and theater, lobby, elevators and staircase.
The video combines in-camera performances and choreography with unusual costumes and production design, all coming together to create a world very different than her past work. The project was ambitious, she notes, considering most of her prior videos were produced by herself, with only minimal budget in her own studio space.
“I had such a specific vision in my mind of how I wanted it to look, that (it) just made sense,” she says of her directing duties. “Within my work, I try to be as involved in every part of it as possible - from the recording to the engineering. I mixed a couple of the songs on the album, and then I've always been passionate about video. I've shot some of my own videos - more low budget - just in my studio/DIY-type of things, experimenting with green screen, and I've always had a passion for experimenting with video.”
The project was shot primarily with a Red camera. The first day was spent getting familiar with the location, lighting and setups, as well as capturing footage of Elon that would be projected behind the dancers as the perform on the second day's shoot.
Elise edited the video herself using Apple's Final Cut Pro. She also used the software to perform the color grade.
"I put the song below and then I start putting clips where they belong," she explains. "I kind of had a sense of where each (would go). We had it pretty mapped out. Some of these videos, you kind of just shoot a bunch of stuff and randomly put it in. But this, we had a lot of specific scenes that were specific to parts of the song - lyrically. I just go in, look at maybe the three or four different takes of each section that we have, pull in my favorite one, and just kind of like loosely put it there. Then I start kind of narrowing it down, doing finer edits."
After directing a project with so many moving parts, Elise says she came away with a much better sense of how many people need to be involved in a shoot and what their roles are.
"I learned a lot," she shares. “There were definitely some things that I overlooked leading up to the video. I'm really lucky that my label, they just really have my back and they know people in Wichita, and they helped kind of fill in the gaps the day of the shoot."
“The Diary of Elon Lust” will be released digitally on February 13, 2026 via Midtopia.