DANNY SANGRA x CLUB KURU

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 FRAME . FLASH . MEMORY

Director: Danny Sangra

Club Kuru has become an instant favourite over here at word is cheap, moody grumblings have never looked and sounded sweeter. We have Danny Sangra to thank for the visuals and thus for pushing Club Kuru in our direction. He has managed to match the song beat for beat, shot for shot, perfectly encapsulating the tone and feeling. Edit, location and styling dominate. A continental paradise implodes as the climax builds distorting now muddled memories.

Possibly our favourite video of the year so far, at least top three!, we had to get in touch with Danny to find out; how best to shoot on a budget, what the importance of the edit was and just who is Club Kuru?

wic: The track demands (perhaps post seeing the promo) a cinematic love engagement as moody vocals meet minor chords. How did the project with Club Kuru come about and did you instantly know what you wanted to do when hearing the track?

DC: It was a mutual friend (Jess Jobst) who told me about Club Kuru. She thought it would be perfect to make a video for and told me to listen to his stuff. I hadn’t made a music promo in a while, however  as soon as I heard the tracks I was in. It immediately felt cinematic. The problem was (typically) how to do cinematic on a budget. Jess had a styling in mind and so I knew we had to find a location that we didn’t need to build.

Where was the promo shot? There are a tonne of perfectly framed shots, how long did they take to find?

We filmed in Trieste, Italy. Laurie Erksine (Club Kuru) knew the area well. We had some specific ideas for scenes. I knew the key elements of story I wanted to shoot. Then we just drove around and found places that looked interesting. As I was shooting it myself. It meant the minute I saw something we could stop and film. Then move on. I shot as much as I possibly could. I didn’t have any lights so I used natural light for pretty much for all of it. Did the best I could with what was available.

I recently read an article about what is in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Of course we want to know, what’s written on those documents?

Haha it’s better if Laurie told you that. Those are his words and wouldn’t sound as good coming from me.

The cast and clothes really round off the look of the promo, subtle glamour, was this the aim?

Yes that was the aim. Jess Jobst and Kat Hawker worked out the styling and Sarianne Plaisant dressed the sets to make sure everything felt part of the same world. We wanted a slightly Talented Mr Ripley vibe mixed with late sixties cinema styling. Jess and I would pass back and forth films and trailers. The area already felt like it could be a Godard film setting (e.g Le Mépris shot in Capri) so it was down to the styling of everything to emphasize this.

The editing adds to the emotion throughout helping set the tone, especially at the end, was this always the plan?

From the beginning we knew that the film wasn’t going to be a straight forward narrative. This video was all about the edit for me. The video wasn’t about the narrative making sense it didn’t have to. The idea was to show the destruction of memory loss. The track builds up and so the edit matched the rythmn. As I cut the video I pushed the edit into two extremes. The uncomfortably long to the crescendo of single frame flashes.

Who is Club Kuru? Was there a chance of him/her/them making an appearance?

He’s the guy in the video!

BEN DICKINSON x VIC MENSA

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CLUB . ON . REPEAT

Director: Ben Dickinson

Original Feature in: Promo News

Ben Dickinson’s video for Vic Mensa’s Down On My Luck takes on that familiar Groundhog Day keeping it completely refreshing with a very entertaining new spin.

This time, it takes place in a club. We’ve all been there, those great nights you never want to end – and the terrible ones you wish never happened. It is this familiarity that makes the promo so accessible and enjoyable. It’s a social critique on a good night out, or a bad night turned good.

So we asked Ben Dickinson where the idea came from, how Vic handled the concept and to hear about Ben’s exciting upcoming feature, Creative Control…

wic: The track fits the visuals perfectly, how did you come up with the idea for the promo?

BD: The idea came to me quickly, maybe after listening to the song twice. It’s a great song, very complex, and I was inspired by the innovative structure, the repeating phrase “down on my luck” seemed to function as a RESET button, and Vic develops the idea further and further each time he begins anew. It’s like a stream of consciousness that keeps getting interrupted, and every time it gets interrupted it changes. It reminded me of the painful process of learning from experience.

How many takes did you go through to take your concept from an idea into reality?

I think for some of those longer shots we were doing 15 or 16 takes. Honestly Vic nailed it every single time, but there was a lot of other moving pieces. If we’d had unlimited time I would have gone Kubrick and done 50 takes. But you don’t get that kind of time in music videos. Fortunately the looseness serves the video well.

How did Vic and everyone else for that matter handle the, what I imagine was an, incredibly monotonous process? 

I don’t remember it being monotonous, although maybe Vic remembers it differently! Honestly there were so many things to remember in each set up for Vic, for the steadicam operator (big ups to Dave Ellis), for the extras, that it was pretty engrossing. It was like playing a video game, and getting a little better each time. It was exciting.

The manipulation of speed is key. Was this achieved in-camera or in post?

We shot the entire video at 60 fps while Vic rapped at 24 fps, knowing that we would speed most of it up to 300% but dip back down to slo mo for key details. Easy trick.

The dance routine provides a nice shift in focus. Was that the plan?

It was inspired by the song! There’s a breakdown there and Vic says “get down!”, so you know, you wanna see some folks get down. The dancers are the DANCE CARTEL, recent frequent collaborators of mine.

What else have you been up to recently? Plans for the future?

I’m finishing my second feature. Its called Creative Control and it takes place in the near future when Augmented Reality is becoming ubiquitous. Check it out!