Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom
on AdoramaTV I'm Ruth Medjber and
joining me on the show today we have
music video director Brendan Canty.
Brendan thank you so much for joining me
today. Thank you for having me.
You're welcome, so maybe can you give us
a little bit of an insight into what it
is you do.
Okay well firstly I'm a video director,
that's my main thing and I work
under the name Feel Good Lost but I also have
a company under that name and we make
videos sometimes and we are kind of involved
in the music industry we have a little
label so we release kind of acts that
make music videos a lot so we know a lot
of acts and we find new acts and
sometimes we like songs enough that we
release them, do videos for them and the stuff and
we also have a management company and I
say we it's me and Barry, Barry O’Donoghue
and we manage an act called Talos.
Wow, so you're managing and then
releasing music and doing the videos as
well. Kind of doing art working and
photography as well all thrown in.
Sure why not!
So would you,
because you're photography's is great,
it's on par with your videography and
would you consider yourself a photographer
turned videographer/director or? No I
definitely consider myself a director
that's turned into a photographer I
think. I wouldn’t, even
though I have shot some stuff myself I wouldn't
say I’m a cinematographer.
How did you start out then? I started out
making sketches in like transition year
or like a short film I got involved with in
transition year in school and I just
had such a laugh doing it and the friends I
made from that are still like really good
friends, it was just such a buzz.
So I continued making sketches and
continue wanting that buzz and just
being on set it's just a lot of fun.
So I kept making videos and then through, with
a class in college called experimental
video and we have to as part of that we had
to make an experimental music video
to an instrumental track of our
choice and I picked a track from a band
called Broken Social Scene off their album
Feel Good Lost, it my first-ever music video
I made and it just worked out really well
and then I took that name. Wow. In college I did
multimedia in CIT and so it was
kind of, it was alright. It’s defiantly multimedia.
It's definitely multimedia yes, it was very
helpful like I hated web design in the
course and I thought I was at it crap but
when I came out of it i was able to
design my website and stuff like that so.
Everyone needs that you know. Yes,
I have kind of a basic knowledge in
lots of stuff to be able to get away
with. Would you or did
you start off doing a lot of the editing
and things like that yourself? Always, yeah.
Because I mean I'm even thinking
back to the Cert1 video where there is like doodles
and stuff I loved that. Thats old school. It's
great, it's like where there's like
drawing and there animated in the video and
things. Would you've been doing that?
No that would have been taken from like friends
stuff or just stop motion stuff that we
put together. So we have taken like a lot
of photos of graffiti around the city
or like graffiti in books and stuff like
that and just like like frame-by-frame
cutting between them all.
We projected that in the Pav in Cork on
the back wall and have them standing in
front of it and he was kind of silhouetted
or we used his shadow.
Yeah, throwing it back there.
I’ve done my research. You have, wow. Tell us when,
so obviously you would have made
the leap then from you on your own as
under the name Feel Good Lost into this
massive company right, I mean it's got to
be more than just you these days?
Yeah, well it was me and a guy called Conal
for a while and we did everything
together.
He was kind of like my one-man production
team and we kind of went around and did
stuff together. So Barry came on board
then and built as a business properly and put
structure behind everything. It was like, it was
like a dream. If that didn't happen I don’t know
what, we would have to figure out, I would have had to
grown-up you know. Yeah I need a Barry in
my life. Everyone needs a Barry.
He's been amazing and he's
also not just like a business dude he's
like an A&R for Sony and he runs his
own record labels. So someone that you could
trust and you can hand more control too. I don't
think there's anyone else in Ireland who
could have done what he did. So it was kind
of a right person right time sort of thing.
Wow, and then tell me a bit then about,
say when a band comes to you and they're
looking to book a video shoot, I
mean where do you even start? Do you
pick up every band that has a
budget and work with them or? No it’s,
there's no, there’s no real answer to this it just
changes every single time.
So sometimes I might get sent a track
by the band and I might love it and I want to
do the video and I could, like I’m making
a video at the weekend for my friend and
there's like, the budget is just what she
can afford. Just a few hundred quid you know
but I'm happy to do it because it's
amazing and I believe in her and her
music and stuff like that. It will be good
for me as well but then there's
sometimes you get, I get pitched on a
Zara Larsson video and that was like
150 grand budget then. I know and
that maybe like, ah the song is pretty good
but if the budget was smaller I wouldn't
have done it, you know what I mean. So it’s
just the commercial budgets, but the
song was good enough as well like you
know. So you are kind of going with your own
discretion, your own taste. But normally
like I turn down a serious amount of work. It’s
probably, I probably frustrate my
production companies a lot, but I’m constantly like
no, no, no. Really?
Yeah I'm very picky. Well it is that just
to maintain a certain kind of quality
level?
Yeah I think so I also think I find it
hard to get inspired if I don’t like
the song or something like that as well
and but it's always being, I think being
selective about what you do and what you make is
super important if you want to be a
certain type of director. As in like
every director aspires to do a certain
type of video and I like 100%
believe the only way to get there is by
just trying as hard as you can to do the
work that you just want to do or
else are going to compromise yourself
and directing is all about
reputation.
So you just constantly have to be turning out
good work and work that just is you all
over like, you know what I mean, and
developing or else ad I said you're just
going to be compromised. I mean
you do pick up, like everyone else, you do
pick up the odd ad in commercial
work and that kind of stuff, and I love
doing that. Again I turn down ads as well
like that
I just have no, I just don't get the
idea but there's some ads which like
the ads I’ve done have been, I've been
super lucky like. I did the budweiser
ad with Conor McGregor and there's just
a lot of fun and it was stressful but it
was brilliant and it was brilliant meeting
him and stuff like that and then I did a
sky sports ad and they were just good ads.
They're just great ads to do and they
obviously pay, you know I
mean. They properly pay you I can
go away and I can do
three Talos videos this year, which is
kind of costs me money
but they allow me to do that you know.
So with the Talos videos or with
your friend at the weekend you
have full creative control to try
out things that you that you want to do,
and then in the ads, not that you can't
do that but you still put your own style
on your ads. I mean particularly the Conor McGregor one.
You can and you've pitched
on it and you've pitch to do it in your way.
Now that does become, that can become
compromised along the way because a lot
there is a lot of people involved in the
process like people from the ad agency, the
clients, you know there's a lot of voices
in there so like with ads it's kind of
like it's a challenge to, it's like a
constant battle to keep your idea on
track or just make sure it comes out
good you know. There is a lot of politics as well.
I enjoy it, it can be very
frustrating but it's kind of
enjoyable, it's totally different.
It’s challenging I'm sure but that’s why you
probably love it as well. It’s a lot of peace keeping and
just playing a game.
Business skills you got it, business skills yeah.
Then ok flip side then you're
working with a band you’ve got full creative control,
where do you start?
Where's does the ideas and the narratives
and everything from?Cchanges all the
time, it normally, it always starts from
the song and always starts from listening to the song and
seeing what inspires you.
Sometimes bands will give like a brief
or be like, or a label will give a brief
being like we want the video and
sometimes it's quite specific or sometimes
it's what we want but sometimes it's
quite loose. It's normally loose enough like like we
want a narrative, want the artists
featured, we don't want the artist featured.
Whatever we think they might give
reference videos, we like this James
Blake video, we like that or we like this
and normally they've picked you for your work
anyway so you can kind of stick with your
style. Then you just
listen to the track and might sometimes
the best ones comes to you in like a few
minutes. Sometimes it takes days or you
might come up with half an idea and it
takes days to figure it out or whatever,
but it changes every
single time.
So would you, would be a lot of
back-and-forth between you and the band
or the label then in terms of you
providing shotlist, would they have any
kind of creative control into it?
You don't necessarily need to go into that
much detail in music videos. If you did it
would be for yourself, I would think. Now
with every music video when it comes to a
label anyway you need to submit a
treatment but that’s normally to win
the job and then you need, that's normally
quite loose though. Well sometimes you can
be more specific in it.
This is your pitch to win it.
When you've got the job then they will
come back with a lot of questions, how are
you going to do this and that, so you
need to give them answers but I
classically don't like storyboarding
it’s never been my style, it probably should be
my style more but I’m quite loose stuff
like that. When it comes to commercials
then, you have to storyboard because you have
to walk the clients through what they're
paying for and stuff like that so even
if you are going to do a bit more loose
you kind of have to do that to
calm everyone. You want to set
their mind at ease then. Ok
storyboards for the win for
commercials. Cool and then so if
you're shooting a music video like how
long is the whole process? Even from like
the start till the very end when it
hits YouTube. I'd come up with an
idea that could take me maybe a week to
come through things and then you start planning
the production and you get your crew set,
you pick a date you find a location. That
could take another week so maybe two
weeks and then an extra week to edit,
that's three and then the fourth week
week it goes up on YouTube. I mean that's kind
of how you can do it. I’ve done it in shorter
times and I've done longer in times normally
with labels they will be like, we need the
music video by this date and there's no
leeway and then you deliver the video to
them and you mightn't hear from them in like
two weeks, and you’re like what was all that panic about?
You were their stressing. Because that's
still a really quick turnaround time.
Is that you working full-time for four
weeks on this project?
No I mean pretty much but you'd definitely
be doing other things.
Well I would anyway. You'd have to be, right?
Considering what I do,
yeah all the time. Which is kind of, I
love doing it but sometimes I wonder
does it hold me back a small bit from
just developing as just a director but I
wouldn't trade it for anything.
Well that’s all we have for this episode but
subscribe to Adorama YouTube channel
because I'm going to be chatting to
Brendan some more next time. If you'd
like to brush up on your own photography
skills check out the Adorama Learning
Center, thanks and I'll see you again soon.