Playlist: Director X

Recently signing to m ss ng p eces, Director X is the man behind videos for artists like Drake, Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, Usher, John Mayer, Korn, Fifth Harmony, Usher, Kendrick Lamar and more.

With a carrer that has seen him awarded the 2016 MTV Music Video Award, Best Hip-Hop Video, 2016 BET Award, Director of the Year and 2016 iHeart MMVA, the director discusses his influneces and what's on his Playlist.

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

I like the 30 Seconds To Mars Up In The Air [below] music video. Visually, it’s really impacting, it moves really interesting, there’s scale to it.

I’m going to give an honourable mention to Gesaffelstein’s Hate or Glory [below] and Pursuit. Two really interesting music videos with really interesting visuals. Captivating and strange. You watch it and think, “How much did they spend?” You just wonder how it’s possible to get that done in today’s music industry climate.

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

A-ha Take On Me [below]. It was an amazing video. Still is. That was back in the days of hand drawn animation. That ain’t no easy thing to do.

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

My all-time favourite music video is George Michael’s Freedom by David Fincher [below].

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

I think David Fincher is amazing, Spike Jonze, that generation is really great. When they were doing music videos and commercials they were being really innovative.

It was an interesting moment where everything was being pushed forward and you could really see the type of stuff they were doing back then, was actually when commercials and music videos were having a much bigger influence on cinema than the other way around.

What are you listening to at the moment?

Right now I’ve been listening to music for work so I’ve been listening to a Wiz Kid record featuring Drake on repeat for the past three days non-stop. It’s an amazing record.

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

Skype. I Skype with editors and it’s been amazing, I can edit across the world. I’ve done sessions where I was editing a TV show in Vancouver and on the other line I was editing a music video in London at the same time while I was in Toronto.

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

Beyoncé [below]. She has really embraced the creative side of herself. She’s really doing artful, interesting things with the music and the visuals. She’s really progressed into an amazing artist.

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

The budgets have changed, but we all know that. I think it’s interesting with the internet and the doors it opens because now it’s not making commercials that people have to watch while waiting for their show to come back on. Now, you can skip through commercials and people have online ad blockers.

Now, the onus is to really entertain. We’ve entered this non-traditional space where we’ve really got to entertain people while somehow fitting your message in without pushing people away. When I think of that I think of companies like Beats by Dre and the things that they do and all the factors they come up with to get people to engage.

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

Music videos are going to be where they’ve always been - as long as we’ve got hot songs, people want to see visuals, and artists want to express themselves. When you really push limits like the way Beyoncé did with Lemonade, it really changes the way the project is perceived.

I did Hotline Bling [below] and that became a major piece of popular culture with the audience’s interaction. There’s no one feeding you music videos anymore, that’s what I miss. I hope it comes back in the future - there would be a website or a channel where they do some curation for you and you could discover new music.

When music videos where on television there were things you found that you wouldn’t have necessarily discovered yourself. Especially then the importance of doing good visuals would lead people to saying “I didn’t like that song until I saw the video.”

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

I’m a big Scifi nerd guy. I did an installation art piece for the city of Toronto. It was a 55ft

projection sculpture of the sun dying. You could have taken a science class to that sculpture and taught a class. That’s pretty good for my nerd credentials.