Written by Kianna Best on Feb 13, 2024. Posted in Awards and Festivals

Interview with director Nicholas Lam

Director Nicholas Lam is no stranger to pushing the creative boundaries of his work. His most recent venture in doing so? The J Hus anime stylized music video for his charged-up track, Cream. Marking the second anime project from Lam, the music video is a true testament to the director’s own love for the medium and the confidence in his creative freedom. We spoke to Lam to get some insight into how the project came about, what his career has looked like leading up to this point, and what he has coming up next.

 

 

What has your creative journey looked like from the start up until now?

I started off shooting live sessions for artists and bands and I credit that experience for learning how not to become starstruck. On the side, I was directing small music videos and commercials – whatever I could get hired on – and kept pushing the creative, the relationships, the challenges.

The thing that any young up-and-coming creative should be told is that unlike the corporate path where there's an understood hierarchy and career progression, when it comes to the arts, you get in however the hell you can. You call on friends, you cold call, you build doors and knock them down, you sneak onto set, you run your own set, you strike at every angle you can until something clicks. You cannot be in love with the concept of “a starving artist,” even though you will be one (for a time).

And remember: sometimes, when you’re facing the crushing weight of rejection, it’s actually the universe’s way of putting you on a better path. You need to have faith.

 

 

And was that something you always wanted to do?

I was always a creative, expressive child, and I'm so thankful for my parents who never stopped encouraging that side of me. Most people in the world do not have the benefit of genuinely knowing what it is they want to do, and fewer still are able to pursue it as a sustainable career. I acknowledge that to be able to do so is to come from a place of relative safety and privilege, both financially and emotionally. That being said, nothing is impossible. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

 

So speaking of creative orchestration, how did the J Hus music video come about?

This was one of those unicorn projects where I had already worked with the commissioner, Dan Miller (from Sony Music UK), and he directly offered me the job. Our first video together, “Lie For You,” was an animated music video for Jess Glynne and Snake Hips. It went on to win a slew of awards and critical acclaim, so we went into the J Hus video wanting to top that.

We’re both anime and videogame nerds – he has more gaming trophies than I do on PlayStation Network, dammit – and as a result, we already have that inherent level of creative trust.

 

 

How did you bring together a UK grime artist with the anime style to tell the narrative of the track?

Upon first listen, the track immediately struck me as having a very spaghetti western, Tarantino-esque style to it. In the history of Western pop culture, there have been frequent notable crossovers between black and Asian culture – ie. Wu-Tang Clan, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Enter the Dragon, Afro Samurai. It is also one of my goals as a filmmaker to push Asian culture further into the Western mainstream, and so, I thought, let's take this cowboy vibe, marry it with a neo-feudal Samurai aesthetic and set the whole concept in a nebulous future.

There are numerous aesthetic differences between traditional anime and Western animation, like anime’s emphasis on intricately detailed backgrounds vs. western animation prioritizing simplicity. Anime also leans heavily into “tricks” like parallax to indicate movement, whereas western animation prizes continuous fluidity. And so another idea in marrying these two worlds was to embrace traditional anime techniques for a distinctly Western artist and track.

 

Is there a certain signature you believe you have creatively?

I used to think the answer to this was superficial. That is, it was all about the color grade, cinematography, you know – the immediately visual stuff. I was under the impression that I had to replicate “a look” repeatedly so that upon first glance, anybody watching would be able to identify that as mine. However, that’s a sad, reductive way to characterize one’s work. Ultimately your brand isn’t the format you shoot with or the aspect ratio you shoot within, it’s your point-of-view on life. The stories you resonate with, the emotional beats in which you choose to place emphasis – those are the hallmarks of your style. That is what defines you as a filmmaker.

 

 

What do some of your upcoming projects look like?

A national campaign with MTV tackling a critical social issue facing young people today, a half-live action/half-anime commercial for a new battle royale videogame, and an Olympics campaign for Toyota representing the entire APAC region. But most importantly, making sure my work life doesn’t take precedence over my family life. That’s the real work-in-progress.