🎬 #194 Directors Are DJs - DJs Are Directors.
A bit more of a random thought piece this week. I do enjoy writing these, hope you guys like reading them. It occurred to me that there seems to be a big overlap between the concept of DJ and Director.
Please enjoy
Bry
Top image - Japanese DJ Yousuke Yukimatsu
Bottom image - Director Christopher Nolan shooting Dunkirk
I don’t know much about DJs, but ever since the X-Files theme was remixed (I was an X-Files obsessive) and when I heard the various DJs’ versions of that theme tune, I’ve been interested in electronic music ever since. That, plus the fact that the odd Summer and the occasional day or night or even weekend I would make trips with my brother. I'd basically hang around with him, not being much help, while he did lighting design for various clubs and artists. I loved seeing the lighting and watching him and the crew work - that really stuck with me. The powerful combination of sound and image, and the effect that generated in me and the crowd was seared into my memory - or my feelings I should say. Especially from a sound system that made your internal organs move. Being around that at about the same time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey - sound and image all clicked as the most powerful emotional tool for taking us on a transcendent journey.
Like I said, I'm a novice with electronic music, I don’t know all the sub-genres but I love the artists I love. I hadn’t really dipped my toe into the world of specific DJs. And it was only this year that I was introduced to the DJ in the image above - Yousuke Yukimatsu. Seeing his vital, pure energy performances, it made me realise that like a director, DJs create something original from all their influences, more literally in their case - as it’s the actual music they like.
DJs also create a trance-like effect on the audience, the shape of the track choice, how they mix them, it creates an emotional journey - just as a filmmaker does. They hold sway over our feelings, both DJ and Director. Puppeteering our hearts, minds and bodies in the best possible way. How stories twist and turn, how we expect something and then we’re surprised - or how what we had held in our minds is pleasantly paid off, are all similar machinations of a DJs. The changes in tempo, delaying the bass until an unexpected moment, mixing unusual, unpredictable genres - it’s all a kind of vinyl storytelling.
While they’re showing us their respective performances, the outside world is held back and we’re happily lost in the sonic, visual landscape they’ve created to enrapture us. Cinema, like a club or music event is a communal, tribal space. You can feel the shared emotion even in the cinema - you can hear it - sense the tension as the story takes sharp turns. The feelings are even more primal in the crowd conducted by a DJ - we’re moved literally and emotionally. The cinematic and the pure raw emotion of music are one.
BONUS: I made a title sequence for a film that doesn’t exist. Enjoy (: