As much as I love music videos with big set pieces, impressive visual effects and extensive choreography, I have a soft spot for smaller, more minimal videos. I love music videos that are built around a trust in color, a trust in visual concepts and a trust in the performer and their connection to the work. As fun and creative as spectacular, big-budget projects can be, music videos never needed to be crazy elaborate or expensive to be captivating, and such big-budget projects are becoming increasingly rare anyway.
Dani Okon’s music videos are beautiful examples of how interesting, captivating and lingering images can be found by doing less rather than more. She lets the artist’s presence direct the energy, finds creative ways to imbue lyric videos with personality, and uses minimal animation for maximal results. I keep coming back to the animated video for ‘NIGHT DRIVE’ by Golden Aquarians, which feels like a road movie stripped down to its core. It’s so perfectly simple.
I discovered your work through your collaboration with Torres, and I always have a soft spot for simple or minimal music videos that stick to one strong visual idea, like the ones you made together. Do you sometimes have to resist the temptation to keep adding more? And on the other hand, how do you keep things simple without them becoming boring?
I like to make sure the world we’re creating is crystal clear in my head before we start crafting it. Then I transfer it all to a storyboard. I definitely stay open to new ideas that might arise while we’re shooting or during editing, but I feel best prepared when the artist and I are fully aligned on a complete vision.
For ‘Collect’, you worked together with Troy Ogilvie for the movement direction. What did that collaboration look like? How much of the movement was directed, and how much of it was just letting Torres do their thing?
I actually never met or worked with Troy – Mackenzie (Torres) met with them separately and brought those moves she learned to our shoot day. We did takes where Mackenzie performed Troy’s choreography and we did takes where she freestyled her own movements.
In your music videos in general, there’s a real focus on the performer. Do you have any methods for getting them to switch on and perform for the camera? Does that happen naturally?
I love working with musicians because the passion for the material is already there. I’m just entering their world and helping them figure out what they want their sound to look like.
There’s such a vibrant use of color in your work. How do you approach the use of color in your videos?
I’ve never given much thought to my approach to color, it just feels like an intuitive choice. Maybe I lean towards brighter and wider color palettes because they reflect a playful energy that’s present in a lot of my work.
Where do you think this energy comes from? Are there any artists who inspired or instilled this energy?
I think the playfulness comes from a place of not wanting things to feel overpolished. Sometimes it’s easier to connect with content that feels less produced and more personal.
You’ve made two lyric videos for Sarah Jaffe: ‘Small Talk’ and ‘It Can Only Get Better’. I love the concepts of these videos, and I always love it when a lyric video gets more creative with how the lyrics are presented. How did you and Sarah come up with these concepts, and what was the production process like?
Sarah and I worked very collaboratively on those videos. We came up with the creative together and shot everything just the two of us. It was very DIY and a great opportunity to explore animation/mixed media. She was open to me experimenting with new things in the edit which I was grateful for.
What kind of things did you experiment with?
I was able to experiment with new animation techniques I hadn’t tried before, like rotoscope animation for the music video ‘Important’ and 8-bit animation for ‘High Enough’.
A lot of your music videos, including the animated ones and the lyric videos, have this lo-fi or retro feel to them. What draws you to this aesthetic?
Working with limited budgets has pushed me to think outside the box and get creative with post production/experimental editing.
I’ve made several music videos where we had the artist in front of a green screen and then created the world in post. It’s been interesting to approach the same type of green screen footage in different ways, sometimes rendering the talent with digital effects like the music videos I did for Torres, or placing them into pre-built 3D worlds like the video for Nolo Grace’s ‘Winter Blue’.
Like many directors, you combine making music videos with more commercial projects. Are there any lessons that you learned working on commercials, for instance, that you apply to directing music videos?
Working on commercial projects has taught me to think about the story and audience in a very disciplined way, which has helped me with the crafting and planning of more creative projects.
In commercial work, there’s not always time for an empathetic approach. On a practical level, it means every cut needs to serve a specific purpose that communicates a message quickly and clearly.
Speaking of commercials: I don’t usually focus on them, but I’m curious if there’s a (recent) commercial that you thought was really good. Could you explain what was so remarkable about it?
I’m a huge fan of what my friends Annika and Carl over at Clam Studios are doing. Their recent video for Skuzland & Shygirl was incredible, and also their recent campaign for Under Armour. They are creative geniuses and if you’re reading this you’ve probably seen their work, if not on a billboard then definitely on a mood board.
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