Today’s something special comes courtesy of Jack King. His promo for To Kill A King demands repeat viewings – with its wonderfully ambiguous blend of post apocalyptic chaos, childhood whimsy and WWE-style wrestlers we’re not 100% sure what’s going on. But we’re sure we like it. And down the page a bit, there’s his equally pagan promo for Anthony Sparke, which we heartily recommend you check out. In the mean time, here’s Jack!
When did you first get into filmmaking – and what appealed to you about being a director?
I got into film making probably as a consequence of writing, which I used to do quite a bit (very badly) from about the age of 15. I found that I got more out of it if I imagined everything I wrote would ‘come to life’, even if just eventually, until the eventually wasn’t good enough and it had to be the next weekend, when I’d call up my friends and tell them to read my script and get some clothes together. They’d never do either and that’s obviously why I’m still not getting paid.
I’ve watched your to Kill a King promo atleast 4 or 5 times now and it’s just so rich with imagery and mystery – I’d love for you to talk me through the ideas and creative process behind the the promo.
Thanks for watching it so many times! It’s hard to track where everything started creatively now, as it all became so layered, messy, confusing and self-indulgent at times that i’d have to take a break before going back to it in order to strip it all back down again. When I first heard the track I immediately envisioned it having kids and a large scrapyard, probably because the track – even though a little downbeat in it’s lyrical content, has a strong sense of hopefulness, and i guess my subconscious affiliated that with youthfulness, or being a child in a barren place, hoping to get out or escape back. It also tied in with Ralph’s lyrics, about a hypothetical atomic bomb – asking the question ‘what would you do if you only had 5 minutes before it hit?’. I would never want to do a literal interpretation of the song because the song isn’t literal, but that inspired me to push on and explore the images of chaos and unruliness I had started to come up with with confidence, and it went from there.
Childhood imagination features heavily in the promo – did you draw much from your own experiences?
Totally, although I tried not to make this too personal or self indulgent, I don’t see myself in any of the characters but I can understand why I felt compelled to write something like this. I used to fixate on wrestling quite a lot when I was young, I was a bit obsessed with WWF and hulk hogan and all that jazz. It pretty much epitomizes a certain period of my childhood, and I guess at the same time I was beginning to discover violence in the real world – getting into little fights at school, other kids fighting in the street near where I lived – general silly politics of the undeveloped brain. I guess some of the content in the video comes from this period of my life – a slight but not total loss of innocence, a time in which my skin probably grew just a little bit thicker. I used to imagine beating the shit out of some of the kids who picked on me, although I never did. It was a bit different to imagining being Raphael annihilating Shredder, or bumping two figures together, and i suppose it’s the cross-over from the comfortable, playful-imaginary world to the colder, real-imaginary violence which defines something in my life and maybe in this video – it’s a distinction I don’t fully understand by analysis but it’s obviously a catharsis that’s still apparent today – only it comes out as a pop video as opposed to a hole in the door!
Mostly living in a city where nearly everyone is miserable and stuck in dead end jobs, or at home, inspires me not to make the same mistakes and do what makes me happy. Not that film making makes me happy, it stresses me out and causes me to lose hair but in the end I’m hoping it’ll mean I don’t end up miserable. Other than that, inspiration comes from everywhere – but I’m particularly interested in people, surrealism, big ideas and anything thats boldly original.
What are you working on next?
A music video for a band called ‘that fucking tank’ with a friend. The track is instrumental and sounds like machinery, so there’s lots of that. Obviously there’s a lot more than that too, but it sounds ridiculous when I try explain it. We have a large pair of prosthetic breasts featuring heavily in it though, that tends to get people listening. There will be no band though, and I want to shift more into a ‘silent film with an original score genre’, rather than music video – as making a good film is the penultimate for me.”
