Director

Ryan Staake

A motion-capture performer strays too far from the axis of reality, in this visceral mind-bender for Ed Sheehan by Ryan Staake.Dancer Courtney Scarr treats us to a show-stopping routine in a MoCap studio, and on screen, her movements carry through to a shimmering, shifting CG universe. Travelling between these fantasies and the reality of the studio, Scarr assumes different identities -&nbsp;including 3D avatars of Ed Sheeran and Chance the Rapper. But when it’s time for her to hang up her bodysuit and call it a day, she finds it hard to leave this oscillating fantasy behind…The video is a remarkable achievement for Moving Picture Company, who were tasked with turning round the entire project in just three and a half weeks. MPC is obviously a global leader in VFX, but this required all kinds of&nbsp;ingenious improvisation to make it happen. For example, when Sheeran was not available for a photogrammetry, Dominic Alderson created&nbsp;his 3D avatar from his Madame Tussauds waxwork. More of this iintricate process is revealed in a <a href="https://vimeo.com/344754319">Behind the Scenes</a> video.&nbsp;While this is a masterclass in visual effects, a mention should go&nbsp;to Scarr and her choreographer&nbsp;Erin Murray. The confident swagger of their dance routine anchors this video in&nbsp;reality, and holds the audience's hand through the rapid&nbsp;shifts and glitches&nbsp;of this digital fantasia.[imgtoken data:1]

United Kingdom

Tom Knight

Riff Raff Films

Natalie Arnett

Kristian Zuniga

Sam Bould

Cut+Run

Duncan Russell

Courtney Scarr

Dan Curwin

Atlantic Records

Erin S Murray

Michael Klein

Hip-Hop

Indie, singer-songwriter

Ed Sheeran ft Chance The Rapper 'Cross Me' by Ryan Staake

Ed Sheeran ft. Chance the Rapper & PnB Rock - Cross Me

Ryan Staake and Charli XCX recreate 1999, putting Charli and Troye Sivan into famous and not-so-famous cultural signposts of the time via Deepkae AI faceplanting technology.&nbsp;Although, to be fair,&nbsp;Spice Girls&#39; Say You&#39;ll Be There, was well old by 1999....

United States

Charli XCX

Pomp &amp; Clout

Rich Salamone

Santiago Gonzalez

Miles Ford Mullin

Rebecca Grice

Charli XCX & Troye Sivan '1999' by Ryan Staake and Charli XCX

Charli XCX & Troye Sivan - 1999 [Official Video]

By now, it&rsquo;s very likely that you&rsquo;ve seen Ryan Staake&#39;s brilliant video for Young Thug&rsquo;s Wyclef Jean. If not, take a second to watch it. It is without doubt&nbsp;a tour de force, with Staake&#39;s ingenious meta approach salvaging what was a disastrous shoot. He has effectively made a silk purse from a sow&#39;s backside.[vidtoken data:0]It&rsquo;s a video that answers a lot of questions as it goes on &ndash; a hilarious, horrifying and refreshingly candid blow-by-blow account of just how rapidly a music video shoot can fall apart, and how much of a nightmare it can be to salvage something from the wreckage. But despite its transparency, and subsequent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cfp7OkOPnw" target="_blank">Vice BTS</a> video, it still raises some questions.So we asked Ryan Staake a few follow-ups about his experience making this incredible spectacle. And although he&#39;s been swamped with all sorts of media interest as the video has gone viral, Ryan has been good enough to&nbsp;answer our questions.Promonews: What was the moment on set when you finally accepted that the shoot was an almost complete write-off?Ryan Staake: When I heard they were having difficulty getting [Young Thug]&nbsp;out of the car due to the Instagram hack.What was the process behind turning what you&rsquo;d shot into the video that you delivered? How long did it take for you to embrace the disaster?After discussion of a reshoot failed, I thought this could be a viable backup solution. I mocked up some still frames and really liked the tone of it. A lot of people thought I was insane for even thinking it was a possibility, but I know the power of &ldquo;the label doesn&rsquo;t really have any other options&rdquo; and decided to give it a shot. At best, they&rsquo;d go for it... at worst they might fire me from a video that was already a complete disaster and I&rsquo;d lose the post budget. I had nothing to lose.[imgtoken data:1]<blockquote>&quot;It is 100% real. I lived it. I have the grey hairs and the 4.5 month-long email thread and multiple treatments to prove it.&quot; - Ryan Staake</blockquote>Did you think the label/management people would go for your idea? Did you feel like you almost had some leverage over them after they&rsquo;d effectively blown $100k to do whatever you wanted?I thought there was a 50/50 chance. And yes, I was totally empowered by the fact that they were looking at a few options:A. Flushing a good chunk of money down the toilet and starting over from scratch. B. Cobbling something together with my footage and maybe adding their own reshoot footage (this terrified me the most). C. Crossing their fingers and trusting that my idea might actually work.You don&rsquo;t get many opportunities for that level of psychological intrigue in music video land... I ate it up. And obviously they chose option C.What was the initial reaction from the label/management? Did you have to tone down any sarcasm?This is very close to the initial cut. They made me remove direct references to Jennifer Connelly and Requiem for a Dream, so I came back with that snarky line asking the commenters to say what I legally couldn&rsquo;t. I also spliced in a single frame from a porn flick, but they caught that&hellip; just kidding, but I should&rsquo;ve tried.[imgtoken data:2]This might be a tough one, but what do you think was the single biggest waste of money on this shoot?The incredible mansion in the Hills. We filmed so little of it because of the way I had to re-block around his absence. It turned into a $10k+ bathroom and crafty table.Have many other directors spoken to you about it? What has their reaction been?A lot of directors have reached out. Most have been supportive. Some have expressed doubt that this was truly a concept that I had to devise after a shitty shoot, and believe it to be a complex marketing stunt. All I can say that it is 100% real. I lived it. I have the grey hairs and the 4.5 month-long email thread and multiple treatments to prove it.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Ryan Staake on his Young Thug meta-masterpiece: "I'd nothing to lose"   

Young Thug - Wyclef Jean [Official Video]

You know how we often have notes from the director about how they made the video, under this bit? Well, Ryan Staake had a better idea: putting his Director&#39;s Notes actually in the video itself.&nbsp;It wasn&#39;t quite what he had planned originally&nbsp;for the video for Young Thug&#39;s Wyclef Jean. But why explain further when Ryan does so in the video itself?Suffice to say, there have been meta-videos before, and they tend to be fun things. But this may well be the best ever. And as Young Thug doesn&#39;t come out of it in the best light, somewhat miraculous&nbsp;that it was released at all.

Young Thug

Pomp&Clout

freenjoy

Ryen Bartlett

Nathan Scherrer

Jeff Kopchia

Kevin Staake

Trevor Wineman

Eric Degliomini

Erik Mateo

Mike Misslin

David Torcivia

Pele Kudren

Young Thug 'Wyclef Jean' by Ryan Staake

Ryan Staake&#39;s video for Schoolboy Q follows the humble marijuana plant in its life cycle from harvest, to buyer and the many channels, deals and deaths that have to go along with that.It&#39;s an interesting POV video that makes the object in question the main character in the narrative - carrying on an aesthetic that <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2016/07/27/schoolboy-q-john-muir-aplus">APLUS started with their John Muir video</a>&nbsp;a few months back.

Ryan Huffman

David Ledwith

Mario Mascetti

Chris Gould

Clayton Beisner (la)

Zebah Pinkman (ny)

Jessica Galvan (ny)

Cherokee Neas (la)

Ryosuke Tanzawa

Aaron Vinton

Dave Free

Mark Bridges

Top Dawg Entertainment

Interscope

Schoolboy Q ft. E-40 'Dope Dealer' by Ryan Staake 

Schoolboy-Q-Ft.-E-40-'Dope-Dealer'-by-Ryan-Staake-

Ryan Staake turns his attention to the tricky business of Time Slice for Clams Casino, and bringing together mulitple images captured in the same spot in Long Beach,&nbsp;at different times of day. The result is a&nbsp;visually unique piece to echo the track and performance of All Nite by Vince Staples and Clams.

Allison Acevedo

Bryan Younce

Columbia Records

Hip Hop

Clams Casino ft Vince Staples 'All Nite' by Ryan Staake

Clams Casino - All Nite ft. Vince Staples

Whitney are a band who take&nbsp;a bunch of old influences, like&nbsp;Sixties and Seventies country rock, to make their music.&nbsp;But Alan Del Rio Ortiz&#39;s video for No Matter Where We Go, keys into the important&nbsp;fact it all comes from youthful enthuiasm,&nbsp;energy and optimism. His video&nbsp;is about young love in Chicago, among several&nbsp;real couples - some of whom have to put up with the band playing in their living rooms - and has real joie de vivre.It&#39;s a very loveable video for what will hopefully be soon a much-loved band.&nbsp;

Alan Del Rio Ortiz

Danielle Alston

Mike Simpson

Joe Bosch

Luke Morrison

The Mill

Secretly Canadian

Whitney 'No Matter Where We Go' by Alan Del Rio Ortiz 

Whitney--'No-Matter-Where-We-Go'-by-Alan-Del-Rio-Ortiz-

John Merizalde captures the world of New York newcomers Lewis Del Mar, from street football to partying with their crew,&nbsp;with the deftness that marks him out as a standout rising talent in music videos. The guy is going to go far. And the band aren&#39;t bad either.

John Merizalde

Andrew Litten

Las Bandas Be Brave

Saul Levitz

Columbia

OB Management

Indie Rock, Alternative

Lewis Del Mar 'Loud(y)' by John Merizalde

Lewis-Del-Mar-'Loud(y)'-by-John-Merizalde

Alan Del Rio Ortiz has directed this tragic love story between Diplo (aka&nbsp;Major Lazer)&nbsp;and Wild Belle, for Be Together.The video cuts between two main scenes, one being a&nbsp;funeral procession led by the singer and the other, with her&nbsp;straddling the back of&nbsp;Diplo&#39;s motorcycle in loving bliss,&nbsp;going down route 66. But by the end, it becomes clear who the funeral is for, as the first scene ends with a motorcycle crash...

JJ Englert

Eric Zaragoza

Fawn Bowen

Ani Panditt

Irvin K. Liu

Gabe Figueroa

Samahra Little

Thomas Campbell

Will Elder

Chase DuBose

Mario Colli

Nate Robinson

Ely Gonzalez

Kenneth Bauer

Harrison Hudson

Major Lazer ft. Wild Belle 'Be Together' by Alan Del Rio Ortiz

Major Lazer ft. Wild Belle - Be Together

Ryan Staake has created&nbsp;the sleek, stately and, as it turns out,&nbsp;fittingly sombre promo for the vinyl release of Blackstar, David Bowie&#39;s final album.&nbsp;Staake&#39;s film reveals the detail of the black-on-black&nbsp;design of the&nbsp;Blackstar album cover - the only one of Bowie&#39;s albums not to feature his own image. An&nbsp;object&nbsp;of minimalist&nbsp;beauty that contains David Bowie&#39;s&nbsp;parting gift.

Pomp&Clout 

Kevin Staake 

Andrew Pulaski

Aaron Vinton 

Greg Wilson

Brendan Bellomo

Brandon Taylor

David Bowie's 'Blackstar' ad by Ryan Staake

David Bowie - Blackstar Promo (Director's Cut)

Atlanta-based Ethereal&#39;s trippy song&nbsp;Bump has been paired with this spookily realistic yet sporadically abstract and nightmarish video&nbsp;by Aaron Vinton and&nbsp;Pete Puskas, with 3D scanned characters that defy the rules of physics.With unsettling twitches, jolts and momentary disfigurements, the characters inhabit a smokey house that&#39;s been trashed with the classic remnants of the American house party: those infamous&nbsp;red plastic cups.&nbsp;We asked Aaron and Pete reveal some of their tricks to create this uncanny&nbsp;performance video.&bull; Presumably you scanned the real performers and their environment? If so, how did you do this?Yes, exactly. We went to Atlanta and scanned the Awful Records crew on location at The Barrio (their recording studio and&nbsp;hangout). The scans of the artists and The Barrio were done using a Structure Sensor fitted onto an iPad, which simultaneously records depth and color data. Higher resolution facial scans were made using a Microsoft Kinect and then UV mapped with photos. The Kinect was also used for motion capture of&nbsp;Ethereal&nbsp;and Lord Narf performing the song. Once we had that motion data, we could rig the scanned models puppet-style to animate the artists throughout the video.&bull; Were you using any new scanning techniques?The Structure Sensor has been around a couple years and people have been exploiting the Kinect&rsquo;s technology for uses beyond its Xbox implementation since it came out in 2010. We really think this is the final days of having to hack together solutions for 3D capture. More and more options are coming up that promise to make 3D, and soon even 4D scanning (the addition of capturing 3D models sequentially over time), accessible to everyday users.[imgtoken data:1]&bull; How did the concept for the video come about, and did the artist need much convincing that this would work for them?We&rsquo;d initially reached out to Awful Records hoping to find something to work on together. The idea of using 3D scans as the backbone of a video had been on our minds, and sonically Bump&nbsp;was just a good fit. The raw quality of the scans and the track&rsquo;s glitched out synth pads just felt like a natural pairing.&nbsp;Ethereal&nbsp;loved the idea &mdash; his album is called Final Fantasy&nbsp;after all.We ended up spending a long weekend in Atlanta and doing three videos with them. The other two videos born of this collaboration were directed by Ryan Staake, and were similarly unconventional and consciously unpolished. Father&rsquo;s Who&rsquo;s Gonna Get Fucked First&nbsp;was shot completely with an oral endoscope camera, while Keith Charles Spacebar&rsquo;s Always 1 was an off-the-cuff 360 video made with a 10-camera GoPro rig tethered to their living room ceiling.&bull; How much control did you have over the results of the scanning, in particular the abstract elements? Were they controlled or unexpected?We really wanted to embrace a run-and-gun approach to the whole thing. Awful Records themselves are incredibly prolific and their SoundCloud accounts are updated nearly daily. We wanted to emulate their unencumbered production methods and be true to the DIY spirit of the label, which meant letting the seams show and allowing the gritty artifacts of an imperfect scan or an awkward hiccup in a motion capture to play a starring role. The abstract landscapes with errant polygons, for instance, are actually the underside on a floor scan.&bull; How long did the production take? Was it as time-consuming as it looks?Even with our quick and dirty approach, doing a fully 3D rendered video is indeed an involved process. From the day we took the scans to release was three months, though with a good many interruptions. &nbsp;

Pete Puskas

Ethereal feat. Lord Narf 'Bump' by Aaron Vinton & Pete Puskas

Ethereal ft. Lord Narf - Bump

Playing off the lyrics of the song, Anthony Sylvester&nbsp;has used a simple yet effective method to interpret&nbsp;Shamir's Darker. With a performance in beautiful&nbsp;desert landscape, apparently at night, the sudden transformation to daylight reveals that 'darkness' came courtesy of&nbsp;a dark blue filter.&nbsp;&nbsp;A dramatic and succinct way to alternate between night and day. And the filter is a shade of ultramarine blue which creates quite a mesmerising and resonant aesthetic effect.

Anthony Sylvester

T.S. Pfeffer

Robert McHugh

Phil Lee

Alexis Celic

Drone Town

Mark Rubbo

Pete Puskas & Aaron Vinton

Josh Bohoskey

Natalie Westerlink

XL Recordings

Alt-Pop

Shamir 'Darker' by Anthony Sylvester

Shamir - Darker

There&#39;s no mistaking the subject of J. Cole&#39;s Wet Dreamz. It&#39;s an autobiographical tale, both charming and explicit, about his (and his first girlfriend&#39;s)&nbsp;first sexual experience.&nbsp;Like many excellent storytelling songs, the words fire the listener&#39;s imagination - which adds to the challenge of anyone making the video.&nbsp;But&nbsp;Ryan Staake has come up with something for the Wet Dreamz video that&#39;s surprising, funny, very cute - and&nbsp;in its way also quite literal.&nbsp;The song is all about puppy love, and so is Ryan&#39;s video. It&#39;s just that he&#39;s used actual puppies. Just as in the song, these puppies&nbsp;fall for each other and&nbsp;navigate their &#39;first time&#39; - and even that is a lot less explicit than the song.Promo spoke to Ryan about the making of the video. We&#39;re just a bit concerned about what happened at the casting...PromoNews:&nbsp;Where you surprised that J. Cole approved your idea of representing his story from a canine perspective?Ryan Staake:&nbsp;Yes. I knew this would be a tough sell right off the bat, but I felt it was the only direction I wanted to take it. It&rsquo;s quite a challenge to make a literal video for a track based on adolescent sex/loss of virginity&hellip; if you cast kids who come off appropriately young, as the lyrics communicate, it&rsquo;s going to quickly get into this slightly taboo area of sexuality and youth. It also just felt so obvious to go that route, so I actually wrote the treatment in a way that began with a cover image of an embracing young couple, and all of these beautiful cinematic images of couples at sunset, flirting with each other, etc, and then had a page that basically said &ldquo;fuck that, let&rsquo;s use puppies&rdquo;.After I delivered the treatment, I hopped on a call with Bryan Younce, the commissioner, to verbalize some of the intricacies of the video, and quickly address any questions regarding why I wanted to use puppies in a hip-hop video. Cole&rsquo;s camp came back with very positive notes, and had some very constructive ideas which ended up in the final video. He flew into Miami for a couple hours on our first day to film his first two shots, and was so kind and appreciative of the idea, my different take on his lyrics, and spent most of his time playing with the boy dog, Glade.<blockquote>&quot;I wrote the treatment that began with a cover image of an embracing young couple... and then had a page that said &#39;f**k that, let&rsquo;s use puppies&#39;.&quot;</blockquote>How long did it take to find your ideal couple?It took a little over a week. I was shown countless photos of puppies from our trainer, and requested iPhone videos of my selects. Then I had an inbox of adorable videos of excited puppies to deal with, all of these adorable dogs begging me to pick them. I was casting primarily for a strong feminine and masculine traits in the dogs, and then secondarily looking for dogs which seemed to respond well to commands from the trainers, but still had alot of energy and charisma.We ended up casting Lola (the girl) and Glade (the boy) who were perfect for the roles, and the rejected dogs were promptly sent to a dog food processing facility.Was the video hard to pull off?Yes &ndash; working with puppies was like herding cats. From the start we planned the project in a way which would give us a fighting chance of getting the coverage needed to tell the story. We filmed at 96fps to ensure each second of usable reality turned into four seconds of usable footage in post, framed tight to allow the trainers to be very close to the dogs &ndash; and allowed the pups to take frequent naps in between takes to recharge their batteries.We also filmed the &ldquo;bedroom scene&rdquo; with the dogs first, because they hadn&rsquo;t met yet, so that we were able to capture all of their curiosity about each other&hellip; the licking, the smelling, the rolling over. &nbsp;We shot for three days in Miami, and arrived back in NYC for the edit with hours and hours of footage to dig through to find the right moments. My editor Alan Capriles and I spent about a week finding all of the tiny moments (the glances, the winks, the head turns) that we needed to tell our story.Do you think hip-hop videos are generally&nbsp;becoming more flexible and supportive of&nbsp;unusual ideas?I think hip-hop artists have always been into unusual ideas. Look at Spike Jonze&rsquo;s Pharcyde &#39;Drop&#39;&nbsp;video. There are overused visual tropes and canned approaches in all genres of music and videos, and I think it&rsquo;s just about finding the artists that are not only open to different ideas, but proactively seek them out from directors.&nbsp;

Mat Hollis

Joycelyn Bejar

Shawn Thomas

Anthony Cappello

Justin Marks

Alan Capriles & Ryan Staake

Pete Puskas & Ryan Staake

Mikey Rossiter

Natalie Westerfield

Jerry Blohm

Karina Delbel

Chiara Solla

Christina Beaulieu

J. Cole 'Wet Dreamz' by Ryan Staake

J. Cole - Wet Dreamz

Ryan Staake marks the long-awaited return of Caribou with this stark yet ambitious promo shot in the West of Ireland for Our Love.Set amongst the grounds of a grand estate,&nbsp;Ryan&#39;s&nbsp;Havisham-esque protagonist takes us on a trip into her past.&nbsp;The track offsets the creepy tone of the visuals quite interestingly - and a Stannah stairlift has never looked so cool.

Audrey Davenport

Sarah Boardman

Luca Ciuti

Mars O Reilly

Yvonne Cronin

Arlene Keating

Clout

Pomp

Ryan Staake, Pete Puskas, Aaron Vinton

Angelina Ryle, Sally Duggan, Ciaran Joyce

Joceline Gabriel

Severin Most

City Slang

Caribou 'Our Love' by Ryan Staake

Caribou-'Our-Love'-by-Ryan-Staake

Geoff Morgan

Carl Burke

Eddie Hecht

Joseph Crone

Holly Silius

Henning Dietz

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour 'My Club' by Ryan Staake

The-Asteroids-Galaxy-Tour-'My-Club'-by-Ryan-Staake

Rob McHugh

TS Pfeffer

John Moule

Eosm

Bookashade 'Crossing Borders' by Ryan Staake

Bookashade-'Crossing-Borders'-by-Ryan-Staake

Matthew Fone

Laure Salgon

Adam Donald

Rinse FM

Route 94 ft. Jess Glynne 'My Love' by Ryan Staake

Route-94-Feat.-Jess-Glynne-'My-Love'-by-Ryan-Staake

New York-based Ryan Staake from Pomp&amp;Clout transforms all-girl Japanese rock band The Suzan into vampy mini-satans, targeting a lonely innocent girl fan, in Devils.It&#39;s Ryan&#39;s second Suzan video following Home, and Rachel Dainer-Best&#39;s she-devil costumes set the garage-punk tone. &quot;I then worked to give a believable aged film look to the whole piece, which I think ties it all together nicely in a consciously campy way,&quot; says Ryan.

Sebastian Gutierrez

Pomp&Clout LLC

Rachel Dainer

Aaron Vinton, Stella Liberman & Leslie Ruckman

Trunk Animation

The Suzan 'Devils' by Pomp & Clout

The-Suzan-'Devils'-by-Pomp-&-Clout

Dev from Lightspeed Champion has hooked up once again with the multi-talented Ferry Gouw to make the new video for Marlene. It's as intriguingly off-centre as their epic collaboration for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=3rMwc10uNOg&amp;feature=player_embedded#" target="_blank">Midnight Surprise</a> two years ago - and even more disorientating. 
This one - shot at the Death Valley National Park and surrounding area over the course of three days - starts like No Country For Old Men turns into something far trippier.
"The video focuses on paranoia and how it attacks and takes hold, never letting things be as they should," says producer David Beazley. "It's a cinematic ode to David Lynch, 60's Bond movies and in debt to photography by Stephen Shore."

Ferry Gouw

Lightspeed Champion’s Marlene by Ferry Gouw

Ryan Staake

Director

Interviews featuring Ryan Staake

Videos featuring Ryan Staake

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2018 (1)

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2016 (6)

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