Yoghurt Freestyle - KC Hamada
Director’s Note
Being a director makes me feel like a gambler.
Directing to me is a constant exercise of experimenting - and it’s not necessarily experimentation of camera operation or distorted narratives (although those are fun to explore as tools to enhance the final product). Filmmaking is this huge monster of so many minds and departments coming together, and each production has its unique challenges. Thus figuring out a way to make everything work each time requires an ever-changing + evolving workflow, and for you and your team to constantly bet on each other that we’ll do our part, and the final product will be what we imagined it to be.
The original vision had involved a different warehouse, a different setup, and a different concept, but as KC and I fleshed the idea out further, the concept grew and incorporated a lot of elements that required intensive planning. What proceeded was a months-long hunt for locations (which proved ironically difficult in a country filled with abandoned warehouses), endless storyboarding, and a long list of to-dos for the art department. It was particularly challenging because this was all done while I was in Hong Kong and the team was in Dubai/Abu Dhabi (and I was going to direct this remotely), so I have nothing but mountains of praise and respect for our crew, especially our DP @zuhairdp, AD @aarti_trikannad, art director @myriaml.tea, choreographer @carlosalejandro_paez and production manager @issasalem5, who stuck with all the changes. Three days before our original shoot, I knew we needed to buy the crew more time to get everything sorted, so I made the call to postpone. Tears of relief were shed (I won’t say who), because there was now not only the gift of time, but that I could schedule to fly in and direct the shoot.
Yoghurt Freestyle was born out of KC’s and my perspective on his career, and his willingness to step into the villain role within the industry, embodying all the swagger and toxic confidence of a false god. The puppet, the smashed vinyl, and the goo served as facets of commentary on the industry’s expectations of him, and his demonstration that he was able to fit into the mould but also break it completely. The wonderful movers choreographed by the ever-talented @carlosalejandro_paez were mannequins, following this false god blindly just to be completely disregarded.
Given all the unknowns, there were so many opportunities to pull the plug.
But I think KC and I like gambling. We gamble a lot on each other’s careers, and on our crew to routinely pull miracles off. And occasionally, it hits big, like this MV.
