Media Spotlight
14 November, 2009 by Jasdeep Kundi
Interview with Phink TV on the set of the advert for Bundi's latest track "Girls" (Out November 30th 2009)
Photography by Adeyinka Adepitan
Today I was going to be interviewing a director who was filming an artist's viral advert, the location was a Launderette, 'Service Washes' in Leytonstone. The director is from Phink TV and the artist is Bundi. Phink TV specialises in music videos and commercials.
As I arrived the director Ady Le Roux and business partner Mark Wilson were filming and recording the sound of the washing machine, washing clothes. The opening scene is of Bundi putting money into the slot in the washing machine. I was intrigued at the intro and how the project would all come together.
Claire Eluka, the actress provided by the I Feel Experience was wearing a t-shirt with the words "Girls" and the number "6". This was a nice touch as it subtly drops a hint as to the title and theme of Bundi's track.
After watching everything unfold, I was keen to catch up with the director, they clearly had a vision for the advert, I liked the comical angel and I wanted to find out more about the projects they have been working on. Having done my research on Phink TV, I could see they were big in the game and I had a whole host of questions about there experiences and journey, so I got straight to it.
One of the projects that have been developed by Phink TV is the Knice project. The project features UK Urban acts such as Bashy, Akala and Killa Kella and many more artists. This is one of the most high profile urban anti-kinfe crime campaigns to be developed in the UK. It has been developed to help understand the issues surrounding knife crime within the community. With the slogan "Make a Knice life. Not a knife life" it's a project that is so relevant to the lives of a large number of young people that are growing up in the inner cities of the UK. I loved the concept and I wanted to find out how these guys felt about working on it.
I love the work that you did on the Knice project. What was it like working with urban artist like Akala, Bashy and Killa Kella? Did you enjoy it?
Ady: Yeah, I did... yes it's always good working with talented artists. The project came about because I'm quite established in shooting urban shorts and music videos. I used to do something called Indelible. From that came on Knice and other projects and we are now in a good position and developing our production company Phink TV.
For those of you that are not well schooled in the history of UK hip hop, Indelible was a Hip Hop video magazine. The first of it's kind bringing it's viewers cutting edge updates on Hip Hop since 2001. It must have been difficult trying to break ground in the UK with a genre of music which has always been very much underground until recent years.
What was it like working on a project such as Indelible and developing it here in the UK?
Ady: Producing on Indelible Hip Hop magazine working on the UK Hip Hop scene in general is always a bit of a nightmare. You got to pretty much get your camera and go, you can't plan too much with the music scene I find because often its in vain. So you're better off going with your creative flow and working and just get going.
Facing obstacles during production is something that didn't seem to faze the team too much. I wanted to find out more about how they handle these situations and what hey found most difficult about production.
So what obstacles do you face during production?
Ady: The first obstacle is always coming up with your concept once you have come up with your concept it's very plain and simple in how to approach in terms it if it is a normal production job. However today, last minute we had our girl pull out and that was about 8:05 a.m. this morning so that was quite problematic. From 8:05 to 9:35am I was pretty constantly on the phone and receiving emails. Apart from that the shoot went fine and everything went smoothly.
How did you come up with the concept for the advert and video?
Ady: The concept for the video "Girls", I think it came about from the general rule of a comedy sketch. You can remove reality once but you can't really seem to do it twice. For example with rolling the dice concept in the advert, that's one element. If the guy was rolling the dice and then the dice started talking it's a little bit strange. The general rule is you can only remove reality once or you start losing the grounding of what's entertaining and what's not. It's naturally what I do. Everything we do at Phink TV is concept driven and that's my talent. My concepts come from, partly just sitting down and thinking about what my concept is and how do you sort of counteract normality and also brainstorming and bouncing about ideas.
Phink TV have also worked with clients and house hold names like Toni and Guy and Clearasil, I wanted to find out a bit more about there feelings about the high profile campaigns that they have been involved with.
The Toni and Guy project seems like a great high profile project to get involved with. How did you find working on this compared to working on urban music projects?
Ady: Toni and Guy was always bread and butter to us, we are not in the game to do fashion I find it a bit of a fickle industry actually, however, I do appreciate having a client like that it did enable us to do projects like Indelible so that's cool. I loved working with Stuart Western.
As well as being an amazingly talented director and creative thinker Ady is also a talented artist. I was impressed to see such creativity and passion for art. Very inspirational and at the cutting edge of the urban music scene, Phink TV represent the past present and future of the best of UKs urban talent and are another reason to be proud of the diversity and progression of urban music in the UK.
