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Joseph Kahn interview with BreathHeavy
Music Video Director Joseph Kahn did an indepth and lengthy interview with BreathHeavy
Amazing interview with Joseph Kahn for BreathHeavy. Joseph Kahn calls Taylor a genius!
snippets
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We live in a Vevo Certified era. What’s your take on videos where the artist is gunning for that most viewed video title versus the artsy independent visuals?
Here’s the reality: I could ******** you and tell you my job isn’t about views… but my job is about views. No one is going to spend all this money to hire me so that I make an artistic statement that only 50 people see. I will have blown a lot of cash and the record company will send hitmen to kill me somewhere [laughs]. The balance for me has always been: how do I make really big pop work that I personally love and draws upon things that I like so that they’re made legitimately… so they’re legitimately great videos, and they’re legitimately pushing new ideas or new types of execution to legitimately entertain people; to make it feel fresh. I don’t think that that means that I’m trying to make pretentious videos, or make unpretentious videos. It just means that I’m trying to make good videos. That’s really the agenda for me.
What do you consider a legitimate video?
[Laughs] I think any video is legit if it reaches its audience. If I’m doing a Taylor Swift video, or a Britney Spears video, the audience has to be much bigger to justify the money they’re going to spend. A legit video for Taylor Swift is… you could possibly do a concert video and 100 million people are going to watch that concert video no matter what she puts out. A legit video in that particular case is… what is a video that can tell a story? That’s what she does with her music. For me, what’s the best story that I’m telling? One that tells the story and gets the message across and presents her side of whatever she’s trying to do in an honest way.
You wouldn’t make a Taylor Swift video unless it was telling a story?
Let me put it this way: there have been videos of Britney in the past where people go in and they try to make artsy videos… I remember they did an animation video for one. I love animation, I love claymation, I love all that stuff, but I just wouldn’t do that with Britney. I think it’s wrong for the audience. It’s not what the audience wants from her. They want to connect with her. They want to know what’s going on in her head, they want to know what’s going on in her heart. As a director, when I do that, I am going to go in and try to figure out what’s the best way to present that particular song, and I have to listen to the song and figure out what the meaning of the song is to do that. I could possibly do the greatest claymation Britney Spears music video ever, and get a lot of props from other directors going, ‘hey, look at that ****ing dope claymation technique you used,’ but I would just be wanking off her money.
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That’s one of the cathartic things about doing ‘Blank Space’ with Taylor Swift. It was using essentially the same tactic that was going on [in Perfume] – deconstruct the artist’s image and use the flaws and celebrate them and make them a positive. So for Taylor to suddenly play a ****ing crazy girl and going off and literally being man crazy… although it was for a different emotional tactic, that was something I really wanted to do with artists for awhile. There’s a certain point where you play that same button over and over, ‘here’s that sexy girl! they’re dancing!’ at a certain point you’re kind of like I’ve done it a million times, what else can I do with superstars?
You’ve truly had a huge year directing Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” “Bad Blood” and “Wildest Dreams” music videos.
Here’s the thing… I’m not just saying this. I swear I’m being completely honest: this stuff would have happened without me. She could have done any number of these videos and it would have just exploded. The music was amazing. It’s an incredible pop album. She’s a genius. She’s literally like a genius. She’s 25-years-old and got her **** together. Super smart, super nice. She’s legitimately a cool person. It would have happened without me. I was lucky that Taylor is one of those smart people that can actually see my editing. One of the things that’s really interesting about working with her is that she’ll watch the edit with me as I shoot (because I edit as I shoot). She’ll see how I place an edit into the shot, and I can see her brain ticking, and seeing the pieces come together the same way I do. Literally as we lay the edits down, she’ll go ‘oh that’s cool’ and then she’ll do that and we’ll re-shoot something together and literally we’re like editing as we’re going along and there’s this weird communication that’s happening. That’s very rare. I honestly haven’t seen any artist really do that. She has that crazy brain. It took me 35 years of studying filmmaking to be able to do that, and she naturally has that. I wonder if it’s cause she’s so young that in her formidable years she watched all those videos. It’s part of her DNA… where she naturally responds to it because that’s her memory of what videos should be like.
Were you surprised by the white-washing claims in Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” music video?
Can I be honest with you? I kind of expected it. I’ve seen artists get to her level, and I’ve worked with a lot of them, and once you hit that beautiful pinnacle of pop popularity, people are going to take shots at you and they will find anything to take you down. It can destroy people. Poor Britney is an example. She cracked a little bit. It’s obvious that she cracked, and the amount of scrutiny that was COMPLETELY unfair, and I was really mad when it was all going down cause my memory of Britney that started out was that awesome 19-year-old girl and the next thing you know… she literally could not do anything right by society’s standards. They would literally attack her for anything she did. I’ve seen that before in various situations, and I could see it coming for Taylor. If it wasn’t this, it was going to be something else. It was going to be anything. The race thing… [the media] was already gunning from that perspective earlier with the Nicki Minaj thing the week before. It was already enflamed.
I do hear the concerns about colonialism in Africa. Colonialism in Africa is a bad thing, absolutely, but let’s be honest about this: this video is not about colonialism. It’s about an old Hollywood movie that may or may not take place in Africa at the end of the day… I always think of all videos as metaphors anyway. The vast majority of the shots isn’t whether you’re shooting Africans or a crew, the vast majority is Taylor and Scott [Eastwood]. It’s a retro beauty video set in old Hollywood glamor. I did have Africans in there. I had to be very careful because I felt like if I purposely shoved in a lot of Africans around, she would have gotten criticized. It was my call and I take full responsibility for it. I think she would have gotten criticized for rewriting history. One of the things that people extract out of it is that it’s a video about two white people overtaking Africa. It’s not about that. It’s about a film crew shooting a movie. They’re not doing anything! One of the biggest concerns we had when we were doing it is… do they look like hunters? We didn’t want to support the idea… it’s like two white people going to Africa and shooting a bunch of lions. I was trying to make sure on a certain level it didn’t look like we were killing anybody, shooting anything… nothing! It’s literally just an ode to Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Ultimately, where do you draw the line?
It appears Taylor Swift is impenetrable.
The problem is that the more she does that the more they go ‘oh, she impenetrable, she’s an ice queen.’ She’s not! She’s just trying to survive as most people would. I think with the Britney situation it got to her. It gets to everybody at a certain point, it does. It’s just how do you handle it. I find that the entire way that people try to tear down your idols. They want to build you up and then tear you down. I just find this entire process disgusting. I hate it. I hate seeing it. And I see it coming every single time. Every single time it happens. Without fail. I don’t know why society doesn’t go ‘oh, wait a minute… here’s the time. It’s like midnight let’s go attack’ and it’s happening. Society does it but they don’t realize they’re doing it and they do it over and over and over again. It’s nuts to me. I don’t get it. That’s why I always said I never want to be famous.
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Worth reading the whole thing. Lots on Britney and Madonna too.
http://www.breatheheavy.com/inside-t...ahn-exclusive/
The interviewer also wrote this on BreathHeavy, about Joseph Kahn praising Taylor during the interview.
Quote:
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We chatted via video on Skype and he genuinely lit up when talking about her. One part I cut from the interview above is him saying she could have been considered a "co-director" for the videos because of her understanding on how to make a video. I'm sure that's a joy as a director.
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http://www.breatheheavy.com/exhale/i...avy-exclusive/
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