Andre Muir's powerful break

Opening with a shot of a man calmly reading a newspaper, surrounded by flames (neatly evoking the 'This Is Fine' meme that so accurately sums up much of modern life), Andre Muir's impactful music video for Mick Jenkins' Smoke Break-Dance states its imagery-rich intent from the outset.

Essentially a montage of arresting images, the SMUGGLER director's promo presents people chasing different 'highs'; the scenarios themselves a comment on current societal issues.

"What inspired my idea was the song title itself: Smoke Break-Dance," explains Muir. "A smoke break. You take them, normally at work. You're taking this break, this distraction from this other thing in your life that you think sucks, a job, school etc. But this little break is probably worse for you than that job could ever be. The song made me think about the different vices or “highs” we use to escape reality. But they can be double-edged swords as well. Sometimes the things we do to avoid and distract from our reality to gain some semblance of control ends up controlling us. 

"I wanted to create a narrative video that showed different characters doing just that, only I wanted to focus these distractions around what I think is the root cause of a lot of vices for men, which is black toxic masculinity. Whether it's drugs, thrill-seeking, partying, performing acts of bravado in front of the camera for followers, they're all just these negative manifestations of our expectations of how a man should conduct himself.

"I came into film more focused on narrative, and the actual visual itself was never something I was too fixated on. With this music video I really wanted it to be an exercise in frame composition and I was really proud to see what myself and my director of photography Brandon Hoeg, were able to do with the type of budget restraints we had.