Playlist: Ninian Doff

Ninian Doff, the man behind promos for artists including Run The Jewels, Chemical Brothers, Kasabian, Royal Blood and the brilliant Ghegis Khan and My Trigger for Miike Snow, steps up for this week's Playlist.

What’s the best promo you’ve seen recently and why?

I completely love De Staat’s Witchdoctor by Studio Smack which came out of nowhere for me as it’s made by a team not massively known for music videos.

It’s like if Fight Club was a Pagan ceremony in a GTA level! Overtly CG humans are normally used for comedic reasons so it’s exciting to see it here working as very gripping and unsettling tension. The weight and power of the choreography totally works even though they’re not hiding the fact it’s CG.

It still feels sweaty and dangerous. The whole music video is like an evil spell you get caught up in as you watch it.

What’s the first promo you remember being impressed by?

Well the first has to be Michael Jackson’s Black or White! I had it on VHS recorded off the TV and so it ended early as there was this mythical final sequence that was apparently so shocking and dangerous it had to be banned. I used to daydream about what it could be (years later YouTube revealed a 5-minute sequence of Michael shuffling and grunting whilst smashing some windows up - not quite what I’d built it up to).

It’s really fun to re-watch now as it’s just bonkers. So much 1990s music video excess, all the cultural appropriation that’s so unacceptable now and Macaulay Culkin dressed up as a rapper on a fake ghetto stoop. Amazingly the face merge sequence still really holds up 15 years on - it’s really clever how they make the haircuts naturally grow into each other.

And what’s your all-time favourite music video?

A [Michel] Gondry video seems obvious but I’d be lying to not say he set my mind on fire all those years ago. All his work with The White Stripes felt like a perfect collaboration but Denial Twist is my favourite: using little people and seven-foot-tall men to fix aspect ratio mistakes in real time feels like the zenith of all his innovative in camera ideas. 

Less obviously I find myself re-watching Joe Vanhoutteghem’s The Frog for The Hickey Underworld a lot.

Something about the gross art direction and styling, the weird walks, the twisted humour, the fun of seeing how the loop changes with each cast member. I guess not my all-time favourite but I just keep coming back to it and loving it more with each re-watch.

What other directors/artists do you look to for inspirational?

I find Ben Wheatley very inspirational for his approach to filmmaking: very prolific, energetic, surprising and constantly changing genre but still keeping it as a body of work. I guess I look at him as a shining example of the power of being proactive and ambitious in the right way.

I get very inspired by listening to interviews with Grant Morrison. Don’t care as much about his comics, but love hearing his out there interviews and talks! If you’re not careful he’ll make you believe all kind of things about magic and reality.

I’ve also been re-watching all of Arrested Development recently which is very inspirational for how insanely clever you can be in a big comedy show. When re-watching you realise they literally set up jokes two or three seasons before the punchline delivers or becomes apparent. The scope and patience in its approach to storytelling structure is pretty jaw dropping when you dig into it.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I’ve been writing a lot the last year so it made my music tastes pretty odd as I couldn’t listen to lyrics! Run The Jewels have an instrumental album which is just EL-P’s production which I had on loop as I wrote. It’s just the right level of madness. Also Jon Hopkins Immunity is a very good writing album as it’s not too intrusive but has constant driving beats that make you get in a good flow. I’ve finished the script now so can hopefully start listening to people singing and rapping again!

What’s your favourite bit of tech, whether for professional or personal use?

If you want to make some money out of me tell me you’ve invented some new ridiculous gadget that produces the perfect coffee and I’ll buy it. It’s my weak spot, I must have about 10 different devices in my kitchen which is daft as I don’t use any of them.

The Aeropress however is a design masterpiece  of our time and should go down in history! Two solid bits of plastic that are nearly impossible to break that incredibly produce a really good espresso just through you pushing them. (Nerd bonus fact: the inventor Alan Adler also invented the Aerobie which was the ultimate frisbee we all lost up tree when we were kids, so that makes him a bona fide genius right?)

What artist(s) would you most like to work with and why?

I like to learn how to do brilliant 3D modelling just so I could go and be an unpaid intern for David O’Reilly.

How do you feel the promo industry has changed since you started in it?

In terms of promos I think it’s just getting better and better. We all love to immediately complain about budgets and time but end of the day the fact is that promos are the most proactive, creative commissioning environment in any art form at the moment. It takes so long to raise a few grand for a short film or art piece, compared to music videos where it always needs to be delivered  right now so you can charge ahead.

The openness and willingness to see people make interesting work means you can truly develop as a filmmaker that totally overrides the traditional “short films in festivals” model. In Hiro Murai, Vincent Haycock, The Daniels and many others we’re seeing people truly become recognised filmmakers based solely off the body of work from promos alone. That’s a very exciting thing.

Music videos have had a resurgence of late; where do you see the industry being in five years’ time?

We’re going to have a lot of bumping around in the dark with VR concepts for the next while. There’s a huge pot of money in it and no one has quite worked out how to use it yet. Does that mean in five years all videos will be VR? Hell no, great storytelling will always overrule everything else regardless  of the format it's shot on. In that regard I hope my answer to the previous question just keeps blooming and promos becoming an even stronger and recognised art form.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know…

I have a library of over 100 books on close up magic yet don’t in any way perform close up magic! ha ha!

I just love reading about the techniques and the thought process. It’s such an interesting area in that truly genius level of thinking is going on but it’s a secret! The magician Dai Vernon is as important as any other significant artist/thinker of the 20th century but ironically no one will ever know as it’s all kept secret.