Turning Mayhem to Magic with Ryan Staake

Last week saw the release of Young Thug's latest video, Wyclef Jean. Directed by Ryan Staake, the video documents what can only be described as a comedic series of disasters combined with enough stress to push even the most hardened director to the edge.

However, none of this seemed to faze Staake who managed to create a wildly entertaining promo. To find out more about the shoot and what happened behind the scenes, shots caught up with Staake to discover how the promo came together.

How did you originally get involved with shooting this promo?

Atlantic Records and 300 Entertainment asked me to write a treatment, and I responded with a treatment where he lights the actual budget on fire (as shown later on in the video) they liked it a lot but asked me to instead respond to the audio Thug recorded, with the idea being that I’d co-direct it. I thought the audio was incredible, and pitched that we should use it in the video itself.

In the video, you mention that you received a recording of Young Thug explaining his concept for the promo; shooting in Beverly Hills, using “kiddie cars” and starring “bad bitches.” What were your original plans for realising his vision?

The plan was to play the audio and visually build what he was describing. We planned a Motion control shot, and intended for him to pop in when he says “and I want to be in one of them” but he wasn’t there in time and we had to move on, so I figured I’d just tweak the edit to fix this—maybe cut to him in a kiddie car driving when he says “and I want to be in one of them”. I had no idea he would never even set foot on the set.

On shoot day, how quickly did you realise that things weren’t going as planned; how did you respond; and did you actually think Young Thug was going to turn up throughout?

I knew it was going to be a rough shoot when we sent the call sheet a couple days before and they said his call time had to shift from 9am to 6pm… I can’t remember how we talked them down, but we were able to get closer to 9am. Midway through the day I realized we were in danger of never having him show up. It just got more and more dire from that point on. I responded by bottling up a cold seething anger, and hoped I’d find some creative output for it down the line.

How stressful was the shoot and were there any points where you thought about giving up?

It was the most stressful shoot I’ve ever been on, but I’ve never given up and hope I can always find some way to dig myself out of a hole. Closers only.

It seemed pretty chaotic. Tell us how big was the crew; how did you manage to stay out of trouble with the police; and how did you keep morale up etc?

We had a cast and crew of maybe 60+ people, it was a big music video set. We tried to keep it lighthearted with jokes and stuff early on, then that faded into confusion and general sadness. It wasn’t until we realised he wasn’t getting out of the car that the jokes and comedy of the situation came rushing back.

The video is brilliant because it provides insight into the BTS process combined with live action footage and what Young Thug supplied. What was the editing process like and at what stage did you decide that a text narrative would be the best approach stylistically?

I decided a text narrative approach was best when I realised the label didn’t want to pay a realistic amount for a reshoot.

Editing and writing the text went hand in hand—I worked with Pomp&Clout’s creative director Aaron Vinton to arrive at an appropriate typeface. We tried a dozen or so faces, and arrived at GT Sectra from the Swiss foundry Grilli Type. It’s a beautiful and highly legible serif, and had just enough character to evoke the tone I wanted. We tested various sizes for the type, looking at scale on various devices (15” laptop, iPhone 6 plus, and iPhone6) to determine a happy middle ground that wasn’t too big on a laptop, but still legible on mobile.