Jamie-James Medina Deconstructs the Promo Process for Rudimental

Ever wondered how a music video gets made? Well, the new promo for Rudimental's Scared Of Love, featuring Ray BLK and Stefflon Don gives you an idea - and it's fair to say it's a frenetic and fast-paced process. Luckily, there's a creative solution to everything... even when the lead artist can't make the shoot.

Below, we caught up with the director, Forever's Jamie-James Medina, to find out more about making a meta-deconstructed masterpiece. 

What made you want to approach the video in this way?

I love process and I wanted to explore that. That was my first thought and I knew that I couldn’t make a standard pop music video. Like everyone, I watch music videos on the internet - on my laptop or phone. But I was staying with my mother last year, who has a television that strangely still carries music television and I just had the idea of creating a desktop experience on a television. And then I got interested in screens or windows, how they communicate, and live editing them as platforms. And then it became about using those windows - all the screen we follow - to tell an authentic process story.

Did the band immediately like the idea you pitched?

My pitch was basically, “The video is the video". But I don’t think anyone knew what we were making until we delivered a early proof of concept, but the overall concept was that the concept would keep changing. But they were open - they had very few notes.

The video has a frenetic pace to it, especially at the start; is that is fair representation of how many music videos are put together?

I think so. I find ideas come very quickly or not at all. I’ve definitely sat with a song for too long and nothing good ever comes from that. But we had a lot of story to fit into the video, so we just keep adding layers and layers of story and it started to come to life.

In a life imitating art way, the lead vocalist actually couldn't make the shoot; what did you think when that happened and was it something that actually ended up fitting neatly into the concept?

Yeah, I didn’t even blink. My first thought was, “They know that's going in the video, right?” But that's also the best part of the video. And for the band, the label - Stefflon Don, in particular - to sign off on it, is all part of the challenge.

What was the most challenging part of putting the project together?

Just going into the project without a plan - writing the treatment in real-time - it put my editor and post production team in a precarious position. We didn’t know if we’d be able to make the deadline, because we didn’t really know big the build was until we were finished building. And in the edit, without Stefflon Don on set, we had to rely on all of the rehearsal footage, I realised I would have to feature in the video, so I had to think about that. 

How important do you think music videos currently are in promoting a track/artist?

I think, for an artist like Rosalía, very important, because her music videos are so great. She seems to take them very seriously and her music videos have become important to her fans. But for many others, music videos are just elaborate YouTube placeholders, so why not just focus on trying to innovate that format?

What's your favourite music video?

Maybe, Jazz Lee Alston’s Love…Never That, which was directed by Melodie McDaniel. I pay a lot of attention to photographers that transition to film - that's definitely been my journey - and she is just so brilliant at translating her stills photography into motion. She is perfect. I love how intimate and pure this video is - it pulls you inside that record. And Jazz Lee is such a mystery, she lives forever in this video.
 
And more recently, FUN! by Vince Staples, which was directed by Calmatic. Just smart and brilliant storytelling.

What are you working on next?

Right now, I’m working on a film about magic - a feature.