Folkert Verdoorn & Simon Becks: directors with drive

When did you realise you wanted to become directors? What were your first steps towards making it a reality?

Simon Becks: We both kinda fell into it. I was very young when I got into art school - very Bauhaus, very “you teach yourself what you need to know.” The teachers were just there to repeatedly challenge you with a “Why?” By the end I realised my hands weren’t meant to create, just mess things up. But I’ve got a good eye. And brain... and mouth. So after a detour into curating, directing suddenly made sense. 

Folkert Verdoorn: I took a bit of a detour, just like Simon, I guess - I come from music, DJ-ing and stuff. But I felt like I couldn’t really go anywhere from there, you know? So I just started doing the thing. And that was that.

SB: I liked the Ocean’s 11-ness of it — coming up with a plan, getting the right people involved to contribute to the perfect heist. Honestly, if this hadn’t worked out, I might have seriously considered the heist business.

FV: I feel we would be excellent criminals.

SB: Cue the snipers.

Driving Round Looking for Unknown feels deeply rooted in themes of alienation and belonging. Where did the first spark of the idea come from?

SB: Listening to the track, we knew quite early on that alienation had to be the thing. And what is more alienated than a monster? It’s a thing that never truly belongs where it is.

We each have our own specific tastes and obsessions, but we felt that mixing genres and making it anachronistic would be cool.

FV: Yeah. A monster that doesn’t even fit within the genre of the world it’s in, or something.

SB: So the monster was a yes. We had a lot of no’s pass by. We each have our own specific tastes and obsessions, but we felt that mixing genres and making it anachronistic would be cool - making all these things fit, but belong.

FV: So, a monster dragged through the streets by a carriage...

SB: ...with drones. Felt like a solid base to start.

Were there any non-musical influences - literature, photography or art - that shaped the conceptual tone?

FV: Loads. We just swapped references back and forth for months.

SB: From freakshow images, to old-timey street photography, an art film called A Solid House, but also fashion shoots. Our DOP Douwe Hennink, together with grader Joppo [de Grot], came up with this idea of re-colourised historical footage, which we looked at a lot. 

We swapped references back and forth for months.

I’m sure we’re forgetting most. Ah yeah - church paintings, social realist murals...

FV: In short: loads.

How closely did you collaborate with [the song's artist] Cero Ismael during development?

FV: He gave us free rein. As it should be!

SB: Yeah, Folkert had worked with him before. I’ll plug his music video here - it’s called WY - which turned out pretty good for him, right Folk?

FV: [rolls his eyes dramatically]

SB: So there was a lot of trust. It was also great of him to say, “I’ll release the song when the clip is finished” - which is quite unique but very helpful.

The film has a distinctive sense of space and isolation. What informed your approach to framing and movement?

SB: I think we just had fun with it. Seeing how frames can either capture or enclose a thing - or let it drown.

FV: Yeah, I’d say it came fairly intuitively. Whatever supported the shot, the narrative.

The production design and make-up effects are clearly key. What did you have to nail?

SB: Production design was a hassle/hustle. The world had to feel coherent, yet new. That’s quite a thing to do. Usually, you just look at what fits within a time-frame like 1800 - we didn’t have any of that. And you don’t want it to go too LARP-y.

FV: Yeah, too little and it becomes a boring period piece. Too wild, and we don’t know what we’re looking at. I feel we both really liked coming up with a world that felt weird but right.

We both really liked coming up with a world that felt weird but right.

SB: For the monster, we really wanted something that still gave the artist room to perform and emote. And it couldn’t be a cliché. We had long chats about what bump should go where, what type of hair should grow out of which crevice. We really got into this Frankenstein-LARP of cooking up a man/monster. Laura Vreede, just out of film school, really did the thing.

Were there moments you knew had to make it in from the start?

FV: The artist being dragged through town, and how everyone would respond differently to it - that felt like a solid core.

SB: And the peeing. We were weirdly protective of that.

There’s a tension between absurdity and sincerity. How do you keep emotional weight?

SB: Haha. That’s smart and interesting. But I don’t feel they’re mutually exclusive.

FV: But you can’t throw too much spaghetti at the wall. Too many ideas and the thing becomes no good.

SB: We banked on the wake-up moment in the music video to counterbalance any frivolity. (Spoken like a true Protestant boy.) That’s where the weight sits. That’s where you feel there’s a deeper thing going on.

What was the biggest challenge?

SB: Getting it all done.

FV: Two days, micro-budget, big dreams.

SB: It’s wild to see how many people just jumped on board to help us out - just for the sake of it. That felt nice.

And the biggest learning curve?

SB: I feel that co-directing meant we had a lot of moments where one would go, “That’s seriously the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard” — but then we’d try it, and sometimes it actually got a lot better. So it’s kinda nice to see things work out that you would never have tried alone. It becomes much richer, I guess.

FV: We’re the goodest of friends. So most of our communication can be quite rough for outsiders, but that’s just how we talk to and challenge each other. And at the same time, we just have a good time. It’s simply more fun to do certain things together.

FV: Haha. Very cute, this. But if I may - Simon, what was the most annoying thing about our collaboration?

SB: Folkert is ruthless about making things work on screen. He has this instinct where a shot suddenly becomes really precise and impressive. It’s like he can smell when something will work. Which is brilliant, but also annoying — because once he smells it, he won’t let go, even if I want to break it open.

Most of our communication can be quite rough for outsiders, but that’s just how we talk to and challenge each other.

FV: Simon has the talent and drive to think through an idea or shot until it becomes new, unique, strange. He can take something ordinary and twist it into a shape you’ve never quite seen before. Which I love… up until it’s two o’clock at night and we’ve ended up staring at something so weird we’re not sure if anyone else but us will follow. That’s when I have to ground it, make sure it still lands.

SB: You refuse to settle for ‘good’, which kinda forces me to make sure the weirdness has weight, and doesn’t float away. And I…

FV: …you question my instincts. Challenge it into something more unique or from me — which is great for the film but not always great for my nerves, haha. Together it becomes this balance: I give it body, he gives it bones. Or something like that.

SB: Which is maybe like the monster. Ugly, but also kind of beautiful. We ‘fight’ because we see different films in the same moment. But somewhere in the collision, a third film appears.

FV: Okay, back to the actual interview.