Playlist: Austin Peters

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

My friend Patrick recently showed me this video by this artist Orville Peck for his song Dead of Night. He’s a phantom of the opera-style masked iPhone wielding cowboy doing a Roy Orbison-esque torch song about being in love with a travelling hustler. The promo is so simple it looks like it’s shot on iPhone with a vhs filter and nothing really happens; he’s in a field, he’s in front a Reba McEntire mural, he’s texting on his phone, that’s it. He’s wearing this weird mask and I am a sucker for a good mask. Despite the simplicity the whole piece is incredibly effective.  It’s haunting and so American feeling in a way that I just love. I feel like this promo is one of those possessed videos you see in horror movies that after you watch you are haunted.

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

Mo money mo problems by Puff Daddy and Ma$e directed by Hype Williams made such a huge impression on me when I first saw it. I was probably ten years old and I would watch MTV waiting for it to come on. I just thought the guys were so cool. All the huge sets and the matching different colored shiny suits they were wearing for each corresponding set-up were amazing. It’s pure maximalism. There is an intro and multiple interludes/sketches that are so long and completely interrupt the music. It was just such a different time for music videos. In two of the sketches Diddy is a golfer and Ma$e is a reporter at a golf tournament and the other one is this really sad clip of Notorious BIG looking like he’s being interviewed in bed. The video was filmed after his death and they use stock clips of him for his verse. Even though it feels so celebratory there also is this kind of undercurrent of sadness that is really interesting. It’s all connected by this vague theme of how having more money creates more problems which is crazy for a video that looks like it cost a fortune and has actual shots of giant explosions of burning money.  

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

This is an almost impossible question to answer. I feel like the Director’s Label DVDs really did a nice job to capture so many of these great videos and I watched all of these over and over again when I was in high school. However rather than give you a list it does feel very hard to not answer with Mark Romanek’s Hurt video for Jonny Cash no matter how many times its already been said. In terms of the song, the artist and the visuals all coming together in this one specific moment in time it feels like the perfect storm. It was also shot by the late Jean-Yves Escoffier who shot some of my all-time favorite movies and whom I really wish was still around shooting more of them for me to watch.

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

Lately, Alan Clarke, the artist Mark Leckey (below) and the first lady of the French new wave Agnes Varda!

What are you listening to at the moment? 

DJDS, Maleek Berry and David Bowie.

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

Anything that allows me to sign paperwork easily without having to print and scan.

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

Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Tame Impala and Bjork.  I love all of their music and I love that they all have their own strong aesthetic that a director can do their own thing with. It’s the ideal way to collaborate with an artist.

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

I’m not sure really, I entered the business long after the time of massive budgets so I never really knew what that was like. 

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

I think it’s so hard to say what will happen and where the industry will go but I think what a video is and can be is constantly evolving. As time goes on I think we will see more and more artists push and pull against what a video should and can be. I think that as long as there is a music industry, music videos will always exist. They are too important to breaking and letting an audience understand an artist. If there was anyway that the record industry could go on without them they would have got rid of them a long time ago but they can’t. They are too important. 

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

When I was 8 years old I acted in the super hero movie The Phantom. I played the Boy Phantom and am in the first five minutes of the movie as the explanation of the origin of the character.