Australian, Riley Blakeway, became a director at 19 and a Robber’s Dog director last October, aged 26. Along the way, he has directed shorts and commercials for Corona, Samsung, Nike, Red Bull, Quicksilver, Wrangler, Monster Children & Skull Candy, won more than half a dozen Vimeo Staff Picks and had his films shown at SXSW, The 2012 Vimeo awards and the Semi Permanent 2014 Short Film Showcase.
The latest work by the young director, who lives and works in L.A. now is a music video. Well, more than a music video, really. It’s an anthem for women designed to galvanise them to stand together to combat the sexism ingrained in our culture.
The song, I Told You I’d Be With the Guys, by L.A. rock trio, Cherry Glazerr, coincides with the group’s being signed to record label, Secretly Canadian. Blakeway partnered with band to draw up a concept and shoot the band’s first video for its new label. Its narrative was inspired by lead singer and guitarist, Clementine Creevy.
As the band members lounge around a modest LA condo, their space gradually becomes incrementally invaded by geeky men in matching red golf shirts and khakis – an increasingly uncomfortable experience.
“Using physical men to fill up the space was a simple and distilled way of achieving this feeling of suffocation without being too heavy-handed,” he explained.
“I wanted to create a passive battle of entitlement that ended with the men overpowering the scenes solely with pure physicality. They’re not being malicious. They’re just taking up too much space.”
Blakeway continued, “Sasami and Clem [Sasami Ashworth and Clementine Creevy] have opened my eyes to a lot of gender-equality issues that I feel like I was previously blind to as a result of the society I grew up in. This attitude needs to change and the idea behind this song and video is to help start a dialogue. Clem had an idea of what she wanted the video to say, so I collaborated with her and the band to translate this into a concept for the film.”
The white to grey palette device was used to contrast with the red tones in the shirts of the band’s unwanted guests, and Blakeway combined this with a slow, hypnotic edit to give the whole promo a dream-like effect.
“I wanted to repeat the shots in the chorus scenes to make the addition of the guys more pronounced,” he explained. “The way we shot the film was heavily dictated by this, as well as the decision to use a dolly to achieve the repetition. This is what really gave it my visual aesthetic and I’m pleased with how it turned out. I like the patience of the edit.”
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