Augustavo Bears His Souls For New Promo Series

SKUNK London director Jonathan ‘JJ’ Augustavo has directed a four-video series for Souls’ new project by music producer David Gledhill (formerly of Skint & Demoralised).

The tracks and films are inspired by hidden vocals in the Alan Lomax 1920/30s collection of American Voices that Gledhill discovered, restored and set to music, producing a nostalgic, evocative sound.

Augustavo, his producer and DP travelled America filming hours of footage for four films to suit the tracks. Along their journey they met hundreds of people, heard their stories and captured their portraits; never forcing situations, just respecting the nature of each community with each telling a different story but still feeling very much part of a cohesive whole.

The first track and video, called Bad Girls [top] was released at the start of October with the second, Satisfied [below], released last week and the third, I Go On, released yesterday. The last of the four promos, I Wait For You, comes out on October 27.

Below Augustavo discussed the project with us, explaining why he took it on and what he learned along the way.

Can you tell us how the Souls project came about please?

Sometime over the summer I received the brief from my reps through Skunk London over at OB and the words on the page immediately stood out to me. I was definitely in a place creatively where I was looking to make something trying, that asked more from me personally and the timing of this came in the right moment for that.

What was it that attracted you to the project and did you have any reservations about taking it on?

I didn’t have a single reservation, in fact, the excitement was immediate. David’s [Gledhill] journey into making this album is something to behold. His version of dealing with love and loss was beautiful and then what he wanted visually to match that fell perfectly in line with the things I love to make. Visuals that are human, real, emotional. From the moment I heard the music i was inspired to make something that spoke about my country and about how the music made me feel.

Once you’d agreed to take it on, did you immediately know what you wanted to do, and that, essentially, a documentarian approach was how you wanted to proceed?

For the most part yes. The ideas of what I wanted to create were there very quickly. However the approach of how to successfully create this was something else. Of course I wanted to do the documentary style, but that can mean so many different things; documentary can be real, fly on the wall-type or a more controlled curated version… and it took actually going out into the field to really find my wings creatively and mechanically on this. 

What was the main inspiration behind the idea?

Of course, the incredible music was the driving force, but really what pushed this idea for me is my experience not only as a filmmaker but also as a mixed [race] person growing up in the US. 

While I couldn’t be more proud to be American, it is also a very complicated place to grow up when you are not strictly white or black. Where I fit in has always been a question and I’ve spent my entire life trying to rectify this feeling. I believe these films have a romantic sense of what it is to be American from an outsider’s POV, despite me being an insider. 

How much did the individual tracks themselves inspire the accompanying videos, or was the overall feel of the album the pervading influence?

There was definitely an overall ambience created by the album as a whole and when you watch the videos together I know they feel cohesive, like a family, however I looked at each song's individual personality when thinking about where and what I wanted to capture.

For example Satisfied has a very uplifting, call-and-response cadence to it, and for me spoke to a place and people trying to build and break from a cycle. What I thought fit this was Detroit, Michigan.

But then there’s I Wait For You, which is much darker, moodier, more spiritual and probably my favorite song, by the way. I chose Los Angeles, because it’s the place I call home and In my time here I’ve never fully been able to put my finger on the identity of this city. And in the song I heard someone asking questions, yearning, wanting, begging… that to me felt like Los Angeles.

You shot a huge amount of footage; how hard was the editing job?

You know, editing was an absolute joy. I could say it was crazy and we had so much footage but I was there for all of it. I knew all the amazing moments we had all the faces, it was like a visual journal of our experience.

When your crew is just a DP, producer and director you better know every moment. So when it came to the edit, I told Jorge (who did the first pass) exactly the things that we had and what needed to make the cuts. 

Had you worked in this way before?

I haven’t worked in this, bare-bones style in a long time. Not since my initial flirtations with directing. I’ve said before it helped me find a new love, to become enamored with filmmaking again and it really did. The struggle, the doubt, the confusion, the successes, it all fed my romantic idea of what it means to be a filmmaker.

What was the most difficult part of putting this project together?

Just getting out there and doing it. There are tons of insane versions of hard times we had during this shoot. It was not glamorous and a lot of people would have balked at this project. But I am lucky to have such strong support in Adam Leeman (producer), Edward Tran (DP) and Kate Taylor (EP at Skunk London).

Lack of sleep, long drives, trespassing, hoping we had enough footage, getting releases, not eating, roach motels, flying southwest, not knowing really what we had - it all drove me to the point of exhaustion and self doubt… more than anything I’ve done in a long time, but it was all worth it.

And the most rewarding?

The people. Starting with getting to know David over the span of the project and finally meeting him at his album premiere in London.. to each and every stranger we met in each city.

We were required to approach strangers every single day, to go outside of our comfortable shells and really talk to people. You know the feeling when you wanted to ask someone on a date back in high school… well it felt like that, but hundreds of times over and in the most random places. The nervousness, the confusion the unsafe feelings… they were all there, but when you were given a 'yes' and people welcomed you in, then they sent you to meet their friend and it kept going it felt like something beyond.

What are you working on next?

I am in development on my first feature film project. It’s been a long, arduous process but I can’t wait to make a story over a longer amount of time. And while that is ongoing I’m planning to do another short film about substance abuse.