Photoplay’s Jasmin Tarasin directs commercials – for Bonds and APIA with Leo Burnett, Carefree with DDB, Westfield with Sibling, and Intel with VMLY&R, for example. Between these bursts of 60- and 30-second stories, she creates installations, writes and directs films and TV shows and directs music videos, and campaigns for gender equality within the film industry, having worked with the Australian Directors Guild and as the Australian head of Free the Bid. The ever-busy creator has just directed a strikingly beautiful music video for Melbourne music artist and close friend, Laura Jean, for the song, Too Much To Do, from Jean’s album, Amateurs. It was shot in the architectural splendour of Phoenix Park Studios and will be integrated into a larger film by Laura Jean that will be released in November.
The beauty of the film underlines Laura Jean’s vision for her album. “These songs arise from my acceptance that I will always be an ‘amateur’,” Jean stated. “At the same time, I was fuelled by a desire to create something inordinately luxurious and beautiful. The video shows different parts of myself ignoring each other, fighting and playing, scaring and thrilling myself one minute and boring myself the next.” In many ways, the video is a showcase of Tarasin’s signature style, the raw, stripped back cinematic beauty that shapes all her projects. She creates emotionally charged heartfelt stories driven by humanity and honesty.
The two woman have been working together since they met twenty years ago. Tarasin went to see Laura Jean perform on the advice of a close friend. She loved the music and approached her with the offer, “I’d love to make a clip for you”. Tarasin then directed the video for I’m a rabbit, I’m a fox, from one of Jean’s first albums. It was also one of Tarasin’s first music videos. Friendship and collaborations followed. Jean made soundtracks for some of Tarasin’s documentaries for the ABC and performed in a video installation, Live, Tarasin created for Sydney Festival, for example.
“Then during Covid, Laura told me that she wanted to make a film of her next whole album and release it as a film as well as producing creative components like this music video. The video will be in some ways part of it,” Tarasin recalled.
The project was developed over two years. “A lot of long term collabs were involved,” Tarasin explained. One was the mask that Laura wears. “It is by Maggie Hensel-Brown, a famous lace artist I’ve known since I grew up in Newcastle. She now exhibits internationally and the hand-made the mask took a long time, and Michelle McCosker made the other masks for the dancers.”
The Stable: Where did the video’s story come from?
Jasmin Tarasin: The video concept was worked out by Laura and me together. We went through the album and created characters together that were all part of Laura’s personality and integrated into each song. Then we created storylines around them that I fleshed out visually. Whenever I work with Laura, we have a lot of foundation conversations about what we’re saying, what we’re doing, what the work means. It’s not just a series of shots. It’s a beautiful conversation which is so rare. It adds so much weight to the work for me so that the creative collaboration is as enjoyable as the finished product. There’s meaning oozing out of every frame.
Laura and I both relate to this song. We both always have too many lists and too much to do, always trying to fit it all in. And the demons that form with that kind of energy and life really do get the better of you sometimes. The clip is about confronting those demons so you can be lighter and freer and enjoy what you’re doing.
TS: A great deal of your work is female-oriented. Is this by design?
JT: I think I’m very conscious of my female gaze and I love working with women. I feel very passionate about women’s voices been heard when they’re missing. Laura is still a minority in the music industry. I’m still a minority in the film industry.
Maybe I won’t have to do that as much when they’re not missing but at the moment they are. It ties in with my work with Free The Bid over the years. I am very passionate about realigning gender in the film industry.
TS: What else is keeping you ever-busy?
JT: I’ve a feature film coming up and a TV show. The feature, The Untold Story of Jesse Belle Ray, is an adaptation of an award-winning novel by Courtney Collins, The Burial. We’re casting it at the moment and looking to shoot next year. Its proof of concept was The Story of Lee Ping, which did incredibly well.
I’m also working on the TV show called Family Happiness, with Anya Beyersdorf, Nicole Dade, John Collee and producer, Linda Micsko. It’s about a near-future female-led commune and tackles isolation and motherhood but also family and climate change and was a finalist at the Sundance Episodic Lab. And I’m creating a new large scale video installation work called Home in response to the ever-present domestic violence statistics in Australia.
