W+K's Dungate on Directing his Debut Promo

When listing some of the most influential contemporary directors, Quentin Tarantino and Hayao Miyazaki spring to mind for their brilliant and often dark portrayals of reality.

It seems Wieden + Kennedy debut director, Scott Dungate, looked to these Greats when helming his first creation, an epic promo entitled Two Fish and an Elephant for the likes of Texas funk band, Khruangbin.

Luckily, he had familiar faces to support him on his first venture as bassist Laura Lee was a former resident at the agency and W+K was also behind the project.

shots caught up with Dungate to find out why he used these icons as influences, the differences between working as a creative director and a director, and what he's got planned for future. Watch this space!

What particularly inspired and influenced the video’s style?

With this project I wanted to just be inspired purely by the song, rather than walk in with pre-conceived ideas. The narrative very much came from the song structure itself, which starts more melancholy and haunting, builds to something more joyous and uplifting before ending with energetic breakdown.

The journey of the song reminded me of a break up, where you go through different emotional stages. So, we came up with this idea of a final goodbye with one last dance. In terms of execution, we often referred to Japanese animation and Miyazaki films throughout production. This influenced cinematography and art direction as we tried to create distinct rooms and colour palettes for chapters within the story. 

How long was the production process?

I wrote the treatment over Christmas and then caught up with the band in the new year. They were very supportive of the vision and after a few tweaks, we just had to work out how to fund and make the film a reality. Aside from calling in a lot of favours, we funded a good percentage of the film on Kickstarter. Again, it was amazing and humbling to see the support and generosity shown by fans. As soon as we hit our funding target, we were away. 

It was interesting for me, given the early production part is something creatives don't see. Working with different departments and watching that all come together, and at great pace, was exciting and brilliant to watch. Somesuch helped greatly with assembling a strong team of people around me. 

What were the biggest challenges on the job?

The choreography was the most challenging part but thankfully I was able to delegate that to the super talented choreographer Alexandra Green, who worked with our lead dancers to create a last dance that was light and playful to reflect the rising emotion of the song.

How did you find working on a music video compares with working on ad campaigns? And which do you prefer?

Well, I had an awesome client in terms of Khruangbin, and the team around me was brilliant. It was a really fun and enjoyable process throughout. But before I can say what I like better, in terms of creative director vs film director, I might need to get a few more film projects under my belt.