Stink Rising has added director LOOSE to its roster of talent. The company will handle LOOSE globally, marking her first commercial representation.
LOOSE is a U.K.-based director and music strategist. Working with some dynamic new artists including BERWYN, Fred Again and Joy Crookes, LOOSE has turned out work that maintains a playful tone, pairing distinctive and colorful visuals with a taste of risk; always keeping viewers on their toes.
LOOSE said of her Stink colleagues, “The guys have been with me from the beginning and been more supportive, nurturing and ambitious than I’ve ever known over the past year. Now it’s official that we’re a team, we’re only going to keep leveling up.”
Growing up as the only one of her musically inclined friends who can’t hold a note, LOOSE loves music but had to find another way to get involved. She ended up behind the screen, working closely with artists at the beginning of their careers, including Crookes and Arlo Parks, to help them stand out. Self taught and having access to very little filmmaking equipment or technical understanding in the early days, LOOSE found it imperative that every idea she developed would be just as good as if it were shot on a mobile phone. This mantra lives on and, although her toolbox has now grown infinitely, every film always starts with a standout concept that cuts to the core of her subject.
LOOSE’s past as a radio producer gives her a unique perspective on filmmaking. Beyond her early days shooting content for 1Xtra, LOOSE is the brains behind some incredibly ambitious activations, including BBC Radio 1’s Escape Room and Hide & Seek with Nick Grimshaw and Greg James,
April was a busy month for LOOSE with the release of two new music videos for Trinidad-born, Romford-raised rapper, singer, songwriter and producer, BERWYN. Produced by Stink Rising, “100,000,000” is the latest account of BERWYN’s vividly penned memories documenting the journey he took to get to where he is now. He describes it as “very much something I had to get off my chest as I didn’t get a chance to on DEMOTAPE/VEGA.”
Relative to “100,000,00,” LOOSE said, “I wanted to help Berwyn tell his story in a way that mixes both sides of his personality, allowing the viewer to understand how special this guy is. I wanted to juxtapose the terrible hardships BERWYN once found himself in, when he was homeless in a car, with his glass half full, extremely warm and playful vibes.”
The video seamlessly connects several clever setups in and around a car, utilizing motion control, fluid art direction and visual effects to form an abstract yet interconnected narrative. The setting is of particular importance, given the story of the song. As BERWYN explained on Instagram: “Wrote this (track) in YMCA carpark sitting in the driver’s seat of the car I was sleeping in. For that she’s a special one of my children so I hope u like her.”
Then launched on April 28 was BERWYN’s “I’d Rather Die Than Be Deported.” The track explores the theme of “solitude” that runs throughout his most recent set of recordings with BERWYN explaining, “without actually saying the words lonely or alone, I’m exploring the details of the situations I found myself in.” In the promo, a one shot performance captured across London’s Dartford bridge and crossing. BERWYN performs from a convertible car on the bridge; it’s technically a stunt shot as he spends the majority of the track leaning out of a moving car. Of the work, LOOSE said, “I’m obsessed with obnoxious rap videos. In this freestyle, I wanted to create the something that subverts the intimacy and vulnerability of BERWYN’s words with the fearlessness and ego that you would more likely expect from a rapper.”
Hannah Bellil, global head, Stink Rising & Music Videos, described LOOSE as “an exciting addition” to the company roster, citing her “fresh perspective, endless ideas and energy to continue making outstanding pieces of film that really get to the core of her subjects.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More