New York Special: Clayton Vomero

After a circuitous career path of sound studio engineer, DJ, party creator and co-founder of a small agency, Clayton Vomero finally realised his dream of being a director. Now signed by Furlined, his breakthrough film was Gang, a lyrical tale about youth that avoids the clichés and was inspired by his home town, New York, a city he describes as equal parts beauty and grime

Many people, when they think of New York, think of opportunity. As a melting pot of people and cultures, and one of the centres of the modern world, New York has been the gateway for countless dreams becoming reality. But for Clayton Vomero, a true New Yorker, raised in Staten Island, the city was more a barrier than a welcoming embrace. As a kid he loved film and wanted to be a director but the life he lived and the contacts he had – or rather, didn’t have – made him feel that it wasn’t ever anything other than a pipe dream. “I grew up always wanting to be a director in some sort of way,” he says, “but it was so far removed from the reality of my life that I had no way of knowing how to become one. So I never explored the idea of going to school for it, never explored the idea of making my own films… it just didn’t feel accessible to me.”

That’s not to say that New York hasn’t had a huge impact on Vomero and his eventual directorial output, more of which later, but he had to leave the city before he was able to realise his ambition. Vomero’s other love was music. He learned the guitar at 12 years old and played in bands as a teenager, but it wasn’t until his brother suggested he take notice of an advert for a school for audio production that his life came into focus. Though not in the way he expected.

The school in question turned out to be on the other side of the country, in Seattle, and at the age of 19, Vomero decided to take a leap of faith and enrolled on the course. “I went to school for a bit,” reveals Vomero, “but I kind of realised it was bullshit. It was kind of like one of those scammy trade school kind of things.” While on the course he also started attending a local recording studio to gain experience and soon dropped out of the school programme to take a full-time role there as an assistant engineer. Eventually Vomero produced an EP for an up-and-coming band who were signed to Epic Records but, he says, “did a total bullshit job” and decided that life as a record producer “wasn’t really working”.

What did work was Vomero’s stint as a DJ, which he took up next. “People were like, ‘if you play in a band, you should also be a DJ because that’s cooler than actually trying to be a DJ’. So I was like, cool, I’ll do that.” And he did, creating an event in Seattle called Sing Sing, which grew from a relatively niche party for 100 people to a mammoth, twice-monthly extravaganza for around 750 revellers. This then led to agencies in Seattle contacting him to consult on projects and brands they had which were aimed at youth culture. “They were like, ‘you’re cool. You do cool things. What do kids like? What type of shit are they into?’” laughs Vomero. “But it opened up this whole other world for me,” he continues. “Doing events through the party and then eventually putting on events myself, then later doing some experiential marketing stuff and just putting things together for companies and brands that were related to music.” That lead to Vomero, with a group of friends who were at another production company, starting a small agency to develop ideas for events. Soon after they were being asked about ideas for commercials. “So we kind of just started writing out ideas and scripts and stuff,” he says. “And that lead to people saying, ‘well, you wrote the script, you should direct if it you want’. And I thought, okay, let’s do that.”

This will change everything...

Under Armour was the first client they worked with, developing music, creative ideas and content pieces for the web, as well as for broadcast. “It kind of just made me think, holy shit, I think I have this chance to do something that I thought I could never do. So I just aggressively went after it and realised, too, that I didn’t want to run a company, that I’d much rather pursue [being a director]. So we agreed to part ways and I just went and did my own thing.”

By now in his late 20s and back in New York, Vomero was finally a director and he freelanced on a number of projects including short films and music videos, throwing himself wholeheartedly into his new career. “Everything was going to be the biggest project I’d ever done,” he remembers. “No matter what it was, no matter if it was a US$4,000 budget, I was like, ‘this is going to fucking change everything’. But it didn’t, of course.” But what has changed everything for him is his short film, Gang. The 16-minute film follows three young friends searching for meaning and identity as they traverse the city of New York. Starring musician Major Lazer’s choreographer, Mela Murder, as well as Infinite, the son of rapper Ghostface Killah, the short is a beautiful, poetic look at youth but, Vomero states, without the usual derivative themes. “Growing up in New York there was always a feeling that if you didn’t have money or opportunity or somebody to give you a hand into some of these worlds – whether it be film or music or a job at a magazine – that those doors just wouldn’t open up for you,” explains Vomero. “And I think, in film, there’s a certain attitude through which those kids get looked at. As if you have to focus on the aesthetics, whether it’s graffiti or dancing, that’s the only way people will be interested in it, and I felt like, being a kid from that world, why can’t we just make a film that talks about the feelings and stuff that everybody has? Something that people can all relate to, that doesn’t just have to be about some kind of weird idea that’s associated with that world.”

It’s easy to tell, when talking to Vomero, that New York is his main inspiration. Despite leaving the city he grew up in for some years, it never really left him and Gang is a manifestation of his experiences in, and thoughts on, his home. “There’s something very respectful and inclusive about New York,” Vomero says. “[New Yorkers] often get a bad rap for being rude or scary or tough but the truth is that our directness derives from a place of mutual respect. We all share a very finite space. ‘Don’t waste my time, and I won’t waste yours’. ‘Cut the bullshit’. ‘Be real’. I think the shedding of all that artifice in my daily life has now become something I look for in every film. If anything, we all grow up here knowing that it’s equal parts beauty and grime, and that’s what makes this city the magical place that it is [and] that truth feeds the idea that everyone has a story worth hearing.”

The beautiful inconsistency of life

Gang was, for Vomero, a labour of love, but one he admits couldn’t have been brought into existence without the help of others. He applauds the actors involved, stating that he wanted “kids who were proud to be exactly who they were”, and Diane McArter, the president of Furlined, the company to which Vomero has signed, garners equal praise. “I’d never been signed to anyone before,” he says. “There was never anyone who inspired me the way Diane did and I genuinely feel that so much of what has been happening is because of her and Furlined.”

Vomero has been screening Gang around the globe at bespoke events – he only arrived back in New York on the morning we chat, after a screening the night before in London – and there are also plans to enter it into a number of festivals. 

Away from Gang, Vomero has also shot successful commercial projects, including one for Facebook called Alison, another human story that follows Alison Chavez, an attorney and triathlete, as she battles cancer. And it is intimate, human stories that Vomero excels at and which he thinks the ad industry is moving more towards. “I find it hugely inspiring how agencies like Wieden, Droga5 and 72andSunny truly embrace [human stories] as it really leads to a much more honest form of advertising,” he says. “They understand that people only empathise with people and not with an endlessly focus-grouped script that has shed all the human detail in order not offend anyone. Communicating the idea of perfection is a falsehood and I think, for brands, that view is truly done. I think as people if we aspire to anything anymore, it’s just to feel good about who we are. We want to see things that embrace our messy tempestuous nature, our contradictions, and the inconsistencies of our lives and show them for what they really are: beautiful.”