The director and creative director talks about her shortform-first campaign of dramatic episodes for Irish singer and rapper Jessica Smyth - aka Biig Piig - made in partnership with Lowkey Films.

Claryn Chong knows her way around a 360 music campaign. She is a multidisciplinary creative who has been combining the functions of directing, creative directing and photography for a while now for a range of music artists - including Holly Humberstone, Girli, Miso Extra and Baby Queen.

She's experienced in creating a suite of visuals - videos, visualizers and short form content for socials - for those artists' campaigns, and developing an aesthetic look that's suited to their needs across a variety of formats. But working with Biig Piig, the West London-based Irish singer and rapper, on a campaign for her long-awaited debut album, 11:11, to be released in early 2025, brought a new kind of challenge to the Chinese-Indonesian director, who was born in Singapore, raised on the Gold Coast of Australia, and is now based in London. 

Above: Claryn Chong, on set of the Biig Piig '11:11' shoot

Biig Piig, aka Jess Smythe, wanted to explore a dramatic narrative and character study, to accompany music from the album, in a series of episodes released on Instagram. From late September onwards, four episodes were posted on the Biig Piig feed, that were cinematic mini-dramas, each focussed on different characters within the same dramatic world, each featuring a track from 11:11. They were followed up by two videos for the tracks 4am and Decimal, which are expanded versions of the first two Instagram episodes (And Biig Piig has recently released three more episodes, and one more visualizer, in which Chong was not involved).

We talked to Claryn Chong to ask about the background to the innovative Biig Piig visual campaign, from her perspective. 

Coming from a background of music videos, I've spent the past year learning to deliver shortform across my projects.

PROMONEWS: How did the project start and how did it become an episodic narrative?

CLARYN CHONG: It was Jess (Biig Piig)’s idea actually. She reached out to me in the summer, we hopped on a call and she spoke about wanting to promote her upcoming album in a unique and unconventional way.

The idea was to visually tell the story of her music through short stories of fictional characters living in the city, all interlinked with one another. She’d seen my previous narrative work for Lava La Rue and thought I’d be a good fit for the project.

So the concept of the episodical series was already there. But we worked together to make it happen in a way where it would feel more elevated, artistic and intentional, rather than quick shortform promotional content. 

The idea was to visually tell the story of her music through fictional characters, interlinked with one another.

How did you develop the story and the characters, and their interconnections with each other? Was Jess involved?

CC: Absolutely! The process was super collaborative, starting from our first brainstorm over a coffee to endless voice notes and ideas being tossed back and forth.

The story and characters changed a lot from the original brief mainly due to time and budget restrictions, but we were still able to express the same themes and emotions.

We knew what we wanted to convey in each character’s story. So the trickiest part was finding ways to tie the stories together and place them in the same world without it feeling forced. This just took a lot of time and brainstorming.

We worked to make it happen in a way that felt more elevated, artistic and intentional.

Who are your characters? Do you have more of a backstory for each of them, beyond what we see in the film(s)?

CC: The starting point of the idea for each character came from a representation of a place that Jess has found herself in her life growing up in London. Jess brought these characters to me, and I brought them to life.

I wouldn’t say they have more of a detailed backstory beyond what we see in the film, but rather they individually act as representations of an intangible feeling, or a moment in life, that viewers/listeners can understand or relate to.

We have our young boy Aidan, faced with the loneliness and difficulty that comes with adolescence and growing up.

His older brother Liam and his partner Esmé, a representation of love and finding intimacy in someone else, in a big city.

Esmé’s best friend Sarah, struggling with isolation and her mental health. And finally Jess herself, who appears as a character that brings Sarah out of her shell for just a moment - a fleeting portrayal of friendship and womanhood. 

I hadn’t done anything before this that needed to feel realistic, focusing on very natural human emotions. 

Have you done anything like this before, that’s in a film drama world? What were your inspirations and influences in its look and sensibility?

CC: I’ve touched on narrative in a few of my past music videos, but very minimally. Most of the time they’re quite camp or sitting in a surreal/fantastic world (i.e. in their Lovebites music video, Lava La Rue plays Starface who is an alien that crash lands on an Earth’s seaside town and falls in love with a human).

Prior to this I hadn’t done anything that needed to feel realistic and focus on very natural human emotions; where the lens didn’t intend to build a stage but rather was there to capture a raw and intimate portrayal of the characters’ lives.

So when I was coming up with the films’ look and sensibility I was very drawn to the work of Andrea Arnold in all aspects, from her cinematic language to the pacing of her edits. Handheld, shrunk aspect ratio, close-up against our characters as if infiltrating their world and watching portraits of their lives play out. 

I just loved working in the narrative space. Delivering the films at the end felt so much more rewarding. 

Did your prior experience creating content on different platforms for other artists influence your approach here?

I think the climate of the industry right now is shifting quite rapidly in terms of how people consume content. As insane as it is to say, we are beginning to label ‘longform’ as full-length music videos. Coming from a background of music videos, I have spent the past year learning to deliver 'shortform' across my projects, and I guess that has influenced the way I’ve approached this one.

With Youtube recently becoming an increasingly difficult platform to navigate for content for artists - as it has more of an appetite for ‘longform’ formats - the idea was to make these episodes exclusively for short-form platforms (Instagram/Tik Tok) - but still with an elevated and cinematic visual language. 

How did you organise the shoot? What was the key to capturing the worlds of the characters?

It was pretty insane. We shot all four episodes as well as two whole visualisers in the span of two days. I didn’t organise it, my incredible producers did - thank god for them.

I think capturing the individual worlds of the characters really came from collaborating with all the various departments to make sure the stories were believable. Casting was quite a long and tedious process - we went through a lot of self-tapes, and when the stories are supposed to be interconnected in a familial sense (the young boy in episode 1 and his older brother in episode 2 who also needed to be in a real-life relationship with someone) we had to turn to external sources to find people who actually looked like each other.

Set design was detailed and intentional, even if we don’t get to see a lot of it. In terms of cinematography/grade, prior to the shoot I worked with my DOP [Lawrence Hughes] to give colour palettes to each film to separate them, whilst keeping them within the same world. 

What were the biggest challenges making it?

The amount we had to shoot within the very limited amount of time that we had. I think this was particularly hard in the context of having had no rehearsal time with our actors beforehand. Trying to bring out the right performances within the very tight amount of shooting time given per scene and after essentially only just meeting everyone, was pretty tough. But made for a wonderful learning experience! 

What were the most enjoyable things about making it?

I just loved working in the narrative space. Delivering the films at the end felt so much more rewarding I guess because the medium itself requires so much more thought than any other. Every filmmaking decision feels intentional and for the sake of trying to tell a story of delivering an emotion. I think I just really enjoyed the whole process, not to mention the crew was excellent and a joy to work with! 

It has the aesthetic of a short film drama - will it be eventually shown as a complete short film? Or will Episodes 3 & 4 become full videos/visualisers?

Yes, the idea is that all the episodes can be stitched together at the end to form a short film made up of mini stories! 

• Claryn Chong is a frequent collaborator at Lowkey Films; watch more of her work here.

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