Wanna Play Daily‘s gift to you this sunday is another marvelous interview, we’re trying to build up a tradition here: interview sundays!
Today is Saman Keshavarz about Vitalic’s new video: Stamina.

 
WPD: You are a young director, have you ever found difficulties or obstacle in your career? How did you build your career so far?
 
Saman Keshavarz: Yes I am a director, and you are not one if you have never had obstacles. The whole job is one big obstacle. And when there is ever a day that doesn’t have obstacles, then you are doing something wrong.

I made a music video back in 2009 that garnered attention for me. It was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because I was signed very quickly and won quite a few awards… but it was also curse as my inexperience didn’t catch up with my creative ability. Therefore, I was very handicapped when trying to adapt to the starving markets of videos. My ideas were always too ambitious and usually came out fine, but at a lot of quality assurance compromises (ie: technique, lighting, acting etc). I’m starting to get better, but I’m still a bit of a “crazy” director when it comes to my ambitions. The day I stop being ambitious though, that will be the day that I’ll move to Canada and just play videogames all day in a cabin.
 

WPD: Since you are one of Pulse Films talents, could you tell us about your relationship with them and their organization?
 
Saman Keshavarz: Pulse is my second production company. Production companies are a bit tricky because there is no objective “right” choice, there is only a subjective one. They are a very dominant company in UK and have a great reputation in music videos. I was brought in by my Executive in Music Videos: Laura Tunstall. I saw they had a great outlook, and were ambitious like me in terms of reaching beyond music videos & commercials. Their US division isn’t as strong, but they are relatively new and starting to bloom, and they are partnered with the amazing Caviar Content, so it’s great being in the office and hanging out with all those wonderful directors/execs. It’s like having two playgrounds… which is double the fun.
 

WPD: Talking now about your recent work for the french artist Vitalic, “Stamina” has strong imagery and a visionary storytelling, we’re very much interested in discover a little more about the script ideas you had with Nate Eggert and would like a synthetic explanation of the concept through the director’s words.
 

Saman Keshavarz: A synthetic explanation… I like that, i’m going to steal that. I have written a lot of treatments in the last two years and I am not the best at being simple and clean, but I do pride myself in turning in polished treatments that grab people’s attention. However, I’ve been learning that the art of treatment is all about selling, not only to the label, but to everyone. This is usually how I write my treatments.
 
Part 1 – Germ of an Idea:
This is all about selling an idea & song to yourself. This is when I usually listen to the song in between whatever my activities are. If I even like the song (which is usually not the case), I brainstorm to see if there is any fragment of magic in an idea matched with the song. If there isn’t, I pass on the song. For those rare moments when there is a good match like this one, I wrote a little paragraph for myself to come back to at a later time when I’m inspired. Something that read like “Mysterious stamina pill kills fat people. An overweight detective finds himself on the case and eventually curious about the pill himself…”
 
Part 2 – Selling to Label:
Now, I try to piece together a pitch that would make sense to other people. I do this because I am usually quite often mis-understood, and have learned that I always need to step back and try to design an idea that I could sell in the amount of time I have to write it. This is a hard battle because I end up falling in love with multiple possiblities. But in Vitalic’s case, the two ideas i loved worked well: Weightloss and a Stamina pill… so I went with it and wrote up a quick treatment with images that closest represented not only what was in my head, but images that were clear enough for the reader to assist them in understanding.
 
Part 3 – Selling to Crew:
This is one of the hardest parts because in videos, I have found that people come to the table expecting the least amount of work and a simple idea. That attitude has always hurt my shoots which are usually the opposite in every way. A way I’ve learned to eliminate this was to write up as much pre-production info as possible. Props, Looks, Color, Camera, Editing… pretty much everything down to the color suit and tie for the Burger Man’s head. Nate’s rolls are always changing based on the time frame of the video and the kind of idea. In this case, I had everything written out and then brought it over to him. We would knock out all the story kinks and redundancies together while adding some elements from his input. After a few days I send this off to my producer and department heads. For Vitalic it was an overwhelming amount of information since I wanted to be very “Fincher” on this one and pre-plan everything. We would all joke and call it the “Production Bible” because of how thick the fucker was – hehe.
 

WPD: We notice that you used a location that is shown also in your “freeze tag” commercial, what’s the story behind this place? And how do you usually choose the locations?
 
Saman Keshavarz: The freeze tag location is my former school: Art Center College of Design. To be honest, we had very little time and resources for that sequence, and I knew I would have control at the school and we would need very little to no lights because of how well lit the environment was. But on top of that, it was perfect and matched the sterile/clean environment of the “Food Porn” imagery.

Normally though, I choose locations based on many different factors. Sometimes it’s places I’ve always wanted to shoot in, or they are places my producer or location scout recommends to me based on the criteria I give them. However, I believe the best way to work is from the story out. For this I needed a very different location to the rest of the video. I needed to put the character in a foreign world he had never seen before. Something very bright and soulless felt appropriate. Also, I wanted a sense of hopelessness where he couldn’t run away and needed to fight. The labyrinth style hallways of Art Center were perfect because they appear to never end.
 

WPD: An important component of the video are the semi-subliminal messages that flashes for few frames with words like “fat”, “eat” and “run” in fluo colors, are these a link with commercials and tv shows and their deceiving power?
 
Saman Keshavarz: Yes. During the entire pre-production we always referenced the Burger Man as Tyler Durden from Fight Club. That film had great subliminal flashes and I wanted to expand upon that and relate it to the ever contradicting nature of our modern society. We love to eat, then we love to work it off, then we love to eat… Rinse & Repeat.
The advertisement “Food Porn” look was designed to poke fun at the idea that we are bombarded by things that are trying to kill us, but look so appetizing we either don’t care or are unaware at times.
 

WPD: The use of hard cuts is frequent and emphasize the focus on the displaying of junk food presented in “its best light” or on human body, why did you chose this technique?
 
Saman Keshavarz: In America we have way too many obese people. We don’t realize until we travel to different countries that we carry the heaviest people in the world. So, I wanted the push/pull mechanism that many people are affected by. We are all tempted by tasty & unhealthy food, but we know it makes us fat… I am always having to fight the urges. These images represent our character’s urges, yet they are dressed in the familiar Food Porn lighting to connect with advertisements.
 

WPD: A tech spec question for our readers who are in this field: what was your camera equipment? Which editing softwares did you use?
 
Saman Keshavarz: Camera: Most of the video was shot on the Arri Alexa with Super Speed lenses. The Burger Man sequences were shot with the Red Scarlett with Standard Speed lenses. There are a couple shots that I shot myself with my 7D during the edit, but i challenge the viewer to see if they can find them!

Editing: Final Cut Pro
 

WPD: I particularly like the closing credits and thought that the way you’ve taken is brilliant and unconventional, and since your twitter description says “also play video games” it all makes sense. What’s your relationship with social networks, do you think they’re a good communication-vehicle for a director?
 
Saman Keshavarz: I have a love/hate relationship with social media. It has both opened our minds and closed them.

Open: We have more access to anything we could have imagined. From articles, videos, friends etc. We are all in touch at all times of the day.

Close: I feel it has made us not only a bit physically lazy, but it also i feel doesn’t promote the idea of hanging out with a mate and being social. I also think it has allowed a very large saturation of content making it very hard for artists around the world to stand out, but I suppose only the best will stand out.
 

WPD: You’re not new to music video world, what’s your dream job? Is there a band or an artist you would like to direct?
 
Saman Keshavarz: I am so happy to make a living from making shit up and filming it. However, Music Videos are very far from my dream. My aspirations, which is a cliche answer, is to make feature films. So, that is why I always try to incorporate narratives in everything I do. Videos are pretty much practice for me, which is blasphemy for some, but oh well.