Creations of Ryan Staake Vol. 1 : Consuming Music Vids vs. Creating Them

Consumption versus production. I think about this duality in relation to everything, and as far a everything goes, for the most part, I'm a consumer. I've grown way less food than I've eaten, I've bought almost a hundred percent more clothes than I've assembled, and I've watched way more music videos than I've made. I'm examining this imbalance in myself and seeking inspiration from a properly producing contemporary, the talented fave music vid director, producer, editor, and conceptal creator Ryan Staake.

I've tried making several music videos. Some got haltered at various stages of production and some I've released to not too much notice, and few the musicians have stated they've enjoyed. On the other hand, a man who tried his hand at the music vid making around the same time as me has at this current date directed close to 40 fave music vids, won many awards, become an entrepreneur and produced many more fave music vids with his production company, Pomp&Clout, and gets paid to travel the world creating with his fave music artists and use the top-of-the-line technologies to recreate whatever wild ass concept he dreams up, and wins awards for it.

Ryan Staake and I would come into contact not because we're both professional music video makers but because I'm a professional music video watcher. After my first music video making efforts had me feeling like I had wasted an embarrassing amount of time and money on a video that few saw and even less enjoyed. I went back to loving music videos the way I knew best; vaporizing a thimble amount of cannabis plant and venturing down a music-video-rabbit-hole.

Music-video-rabbit-holes are easy to locate. You start with a music video you enjoy, from there you can watch the other music vids of that music artists and/or do what I do first and watch the other music vids of that vid's director. Either way the other musician's vids will lead you to other directors, and directors will lead you to other musicians, you've got yourself what Alice of Wonderland fame would call a rabbit hole.

Every now and then these rabbit hole's reveal a music video treasure chest in the form of a production company that serves as home to many talented music video making directors. I found a sweet treasure that night. A production company from Spain called Canada. As I witnessed their amazing array of music video a vision for an ultimate music video party struck me.

The party would consist of projection screens surrounding the audience on all sides, fronts, backs and sometimes ceilings and floors. Basically projecting on to as many surfaces as our available resources and available surfaces would allow. Hopefully allowing party goers the feeling of being in the vid.

I'd send out invites to directors, producers, and/or musicians of my fave music vids, to get involved in the party by sending me the digital music video files. I'd use my video editing software to seamlessly transition the videos endings with the next videos beginnings, much like DJ's do with songs, so the party vibe has a non-stop flow. I'd keep in mind careful curation and order of appearance so the many music videos come together to feel like they equal a larger abstract story. This would be achieved in grouping videos with shared themes, genres (of video and music), and similar vibe. For some videos we'd recruit performers to lip sync and/or dance, mimicing what is happening on screen. For some videos we'd recruit the actual musician to play their song live along with their video, creating an interactive, sensory stimulating, music video momma-freaking party!!!

Usually, not much becomes of wild-ass, stoned ideas that come to you at ridiculous o’clock at night, but that was not the case this time. This event came to fruition. It became known as Visual/Sound/Walls, an event I curated and coordinated annually at the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, North Carolina, for 7 years with my talented technical stuff buddy A.C. and master projector rigger Matt Hedt, and a team of talented individuals that grew in size each year we embarked on this tremendous endeavor.

The first year featured 30 or so bad ass music vids from around the globe, one of them was the first music vid from Ryan Staake, a creation for Boys Noize, called “Jeffer".

Boys Noize - "Jeffer"

Dir: Ryan Staake

The video mostly consists of colorful static lines that seem to dance along to the glitchy beat of the track. Analog images of satellites, switchboard operators, and other visual representations of communication devices appear just long enough to accompany the sporadic, moaning vocals of the song, only to repeatedly disappear back into the static. As the song builds towards its beat drop climax and the video subtly, slowly zooms into the dancing static, the at-capacity Visual/Sound/Walls crowd bounce-dances as if they were connected to the fuzzy cellular signal cast by the staticky satellite images on all the surrounding screens.

It was at this party I first met Ryan Staake in non-email, physical form. We got to talking music vids and I found out the Directors Label Series inspired him also. His fave being Gondry’s clip for “Star Guitar” by The Chemical Brothers. Staake talked of being blown away by both the concept and the audacity it took to create a video which was simply the view out of a window of a moving train. He said, “I was in Graphic Design school at the time, and I think the strong adherence to a single core concept really resonated with how I was beginning to think as a designer and filmmaker.” Staake uses this single core concept quite well with his Boys Noize vid. Prior to this, the weird, extra curricular videos he was making started to gain some attention, and he landed a gig creating the tour visuals for Diplo side project Major Lazer. He was so excited about creating videos for music he loves, he quit his job creating human interfaces for Apple iProducts, and started Pomp&Clout in Brooklyn. Much like Canada, Pomp&Clout would become a music video treasure, perhaps even more so, their Vimeo Page.

Staake was back in the Visual/Sound/Walls the very next year again with a video for Diplo’s “Set It Off.”

Diplo - "Set It Off"

Dir: Ryan Staake

The video’s style was a surprising departure from his last, though satellites are still involved. It consisted of a dozen or so sexy pole-dancing women doing sexy pole-dance maneuvers all on the same gigantic pole, in space. I felt a bit jealous. Not just because he got paid to work with sexy pole-dancing women, but because I had just spent a month preparing an elaborately detailed treatment (FYI, a treatment is a written description of what a music video will be like) for my good buddy's good band, Sensual Harassment, but they didn’t want to do it.

Staake showed me the treatment he created for “Set It Off.” It's two sentences long.

I asked him how long it took for this idea to pop into his brain. He mentioned a quote from graphic designer Paula Scher: “It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me thirty-four years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.” “What’s meant by this,” Staake said, “is that the actual discovery of an idea can happen in an instant, but it’s the sum of all your experiences—education, instincts, books you’ve read, films you’ve seen, arguments you’ve had, trips you’ve taken, people you’ve known, et cetera, et cetera.”

That well of experience runs deep with Staake, especially on the technical side of things. “My father, who’s an illustrator, got me into Photoshop at a very young age,” Staake said. “I remember using Photoshop 3.0 to try to recreate my interpretations of the cinematic worlds in the early 90s CD-ROM game MYST. From that point forward, I’ve always been hooked on computers as a tool of creation.”

Indeed, the advancements of technology and Staake’s ability to follow and understand them have helped shape many of his music video concepts, like his use of drones. Many people know them as the unmanned, remotely controlled flying vessels the CIA uses to murder, but Staake attached seven Go Pro cameras to the bottom of one and flew it over various landscapes to create the video for Booka Shade’s “Crossing Borders.”

Booka Shade - "Crossing Borders"

Dir: Ryan Staake

There are two versions of this video. The 2-D version (posted above), makes each shot of landscape look like it is the entirety of our planet and the land is one rotating ball floating in a space of blue sky. There’s also an interactive version that works with virtual reality headsets, allowing viewers to look any direction as they’re flying through air.

Another of Staake’s concepts heavily under the influence of technology is “My Love” by Route 94 (featuring Jess Glynne) shot entirely with a FLIR Thermal Imaging Camera, which makes everything look like Predator’s vision, only instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers creeping around the jungle with machine guns, we’re looking at a young couple ripping each other’s clothes off during passionate foreplay. You get to see the thermal color of their bodies grow as hot as this Route 94 beat.

Route 94 ft. Jess Glynne - "My Love" (dir. cut)

Dir: Ryan Staake

This video surpassed fifty million views on YouTube, making it a lot easier to get future videos green lit. Staake put out eight videos in 2014.

Meanwhile I pitched a video concept to a local band, Astro Cowboy, a band made up of a couple of not yet high school graduates, but yet they already had their PHD’s in how to rock. The video for their song “Suntan” was set to star the band and two talented actor/model ladies, slinging sunscreen all over each other. The night before our early morning beach shoot the weather man said a big storm was coming. My buddy who had volunteered to shoot with his Red Camera, didn’t wanna risk his expensive camera getting wet. So I called off the shoot before the beautiful beach sunrise proved the weather man a fear monger. But as the old saying goes whenever you point the finger of blame you’ve got 3 fingers pointing back at you, and I did. I was to blame for cancelling instead of shooting what we could and figuring what we could do with it in post production. This is what Staake did when Young Thug didn’t show up to the music video shoot for “Wycleff Jean”.

Young Thug - "Wycleff Jean"

Dir: Ryan Staake

Staake still shot a video, and then cleverly crafted the post shoot concept to tell the story of the music video's disastrous making. The video became quite probably astronomically more successful than if Young Thug would have showed, and because Staake turned a crisis into an opportunity, he became a hero, especially to those that put $100,000 for the videos budget.

Alas, I grow wary of discussing Staake’s successes. I'm ready to hear about Staake’s failures so I can feel better about myself. I ask him if he’s ever spent much time coming up with a concept only for it to get turned down, and turns out he did get turned down for his treatment for the song ironically titled “Turn Down For What” by DJ Snake and Lil’ Jon.

DJ Snake / Lil' Jon - "Turn Down For What"

Dir: Daniels

Turns out Staake pondered "Turn Down..." for a couple of weeks, going on long runs with it playing on repeat. “Finally, I had this first person perspective film idea,” he said. “I wanted to send cameramen all around the world with Go Pros strapped to their heads and see how many fights they could get into. In a sense, it was kind of like the sequence in Fight Club when the newly enlisted fighters have to get in a fight, but in first person point of view.” After his elaborate pitch to the label that included speaking at length about trying to recreate the anger of the works of Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei and showing a lot of high res photos of people sticking their middle fingers in other peoples’ faces, he was feeling really good about the possibility of getting the gig, but of course, all those that have viewed the now infamous, close to a billion times viewed video featuring uncontrolled, involuntary, destructive dancing from unexpected parts of the body like boobs and boners, knows that Staake didn’t get the job. The legendary music video, now feature film directing duo, now multiple Oscar winners, Daniels did. “Once I saw it, I was so glad I hadn’t won the pitch. They hit that video so fucking far out of the park, it would’ve been a shame for that never to have been created.”

Staake's positive attitude is starting to inspire the shit out of me. I was beginning to realize what my music video making problems are. First, I’m spending too much time on too few treatments, second, I’m not all that organized as far as businessy-budgets and contracts go, third, I’m not all that good at storyboarding and scheduling, and fourth I’m technically retarded (meaning I’m bad with technology). Shit, I'm starting to uninspire the shit out of myself. I thought back to that Paula Scher quote about your ability to create equaling the ideas and talents that you’ve developed throughout your whole life. Staake is getting opportunities to create music videos because, whether directly or indirectly, that’s what he’s been training for his whole life. While he was mastering Photoshop at nine years of age, I was getting aroused by Winger music vids on MTV. We all have our place in this world. Somebody’s got to make the music videos and somebody has gotta watch them, and somebody has got to make a reality show about Ryan Staake and I striving toward our music video making dreams and showing the wildly different outcomes. That's a reality show pitch to MTV. These days it's probably, ironically a more reliable way to get on MTV than making a cool music video.

In the reality show that is my life, its my desire to create an arch for my character. To go from mainly music vid watcher to mainly music vid maker. For the upcoming semester of MusicVideo/MixTapes we'll discuss the music videos I've personally created; examining the process, the outcomes, and what was learned along the way.

See you next semister.