Joe Howat

You were born and raised in London. Which area or particular characteristic of London would you say gets your creative juices flowing?

I love London. I think I thrive in a city and having so many people part of the creative scene here can be super inspiring. It of course can be a bit toxic at times, although I couldn’t imagine being elsewhere. New York is the only exception.

What was your route into directing? Did you always know you’d work creatively?

I’ve grown up in a very creative family with both of my parents being graphic designers. So I’ve had that creative blood in me since I was young. I grew up with an immense love for music and film culture. I played the drums for a couple years when I was younger too which I’ve come to realise has had a massive influence on how I edit and direct my videos. I started taking interest in photography when I was 15, mostly doing street photography with my 35mm camera. Around the same time I was heavily influenced by skate culture, I started to bring my dad’s old VHS camera documenting our daily lifestyle, eventually upgrading to a cheap canon DSLR. Being a massive fan of both music and cinema, I put two and two together, music videos were the obvious path for me. When I was 17 I built up enough courage to pursue directing, so I decided to make a 12 minute long spec music video which took me a whole year to make, when I learnt the foundations of filmmaking I needed to know through trial and error. I started promoting the video on social media, landing me my first music video for an artist named Ayrtn.

Downtown Kayoto in Lite directed by Joe Howat

How did you initially approach the “My Best” track when you began the project? How did that evolve into the final idea?

When I first received the track, I immediately noticed the attention to detail with the instrumentation as well as the heavy Neptunes influence present on the track. It gave me a sense of nostalgia but from a modern perspective which I loved. I listened to the track probably 100 times over two days running through various initial ideas. I loved the idea of visualising what it’s like to dissect a song’s instrumentation. Homing in on the intricacies and subtle details the track holds. I settled on the idea of the viewer escaping into the artist’s headspace, as he builds the song piece by piece, and having Downtown Kayoto as the conductor of the track, orchestrating each instrument as the track progresses. I asked for the stems from the track and began to create a short introduction to the video building the instruments up one by one, which allowed me to visualise the pacing and rhythm of the entire video.

What challenges did you encounter while shooting? 

Right off the bat I knew it would be a tough project to shoot due to the budget being £4k. The vision I had was super technical and precise so it was a case of breaking it down shot for shot seeing where we could cut back on without compromising the main concept. My initial shot list was almost 3 hours over schedule so it was a tough pill to swallow but I eventually managed to rearrange everything within budget.

Feux press shots created by Joe Howat

Your shot choices and quick and quirky camera movements are key to the dynamic energy of your work. Is a clear shotlist something you have in your mind from the get-go? How do you work with your DoP to plan each piece?

I like to spend a lot of time in pre-production for these more technically focused videos. Every video I do is very particular with everything being envisioned frame for frame. Myself and the DOP have a lot of discussions prior to the shoot, making sure we both have an understanding on how everything would be executed and what areas need rethinking. There’s only been a handful of times when we get something that’s not on the shotlist, one of which includes the projection on the T-shirt from the ‘Changed it’ music video I directed, and the hanging from the basketball hoop in ‘Lite’.

How did you first team up with artist Downtown Kayoto? How has your working relationship developed across multiple music videos together?

I was first introduced to Downtown Kayoto by his manager Willem Lord, who I’d worked with before with one of his other artists. We chatted about his next track ‘Lite’ and I expressed how badly I wanted to direct a video for it. The ‘Lite’ single release was then pushed back by a year, so in the meantime we worked on our first music video ‘Run From You’. Originally intended as a visualiser which then turned into a full music video. These first few videos we did were shot with a £500 budget so it was all hands on deck. Directing, shooting and editing everything myself with his manager, Willem producing everything. Eventually the time came to direct Lite which had enough budget to hire a full crew allowing me to focus solely on directing. Downtown Kayoto has great taste and an eye for art – he has very similar interests to myself and most importantly has a common interest in pushing the boundaries of what a music video can be. So it was nice being able to experiment without having too many limitations from a music label. Over the course of 6 videos and through a lot of trials and errors, I’ve learnt a great deal about my own directing style.

Internet Made Brand Launch by Joe Howat

We love your photography too. What have you learnt from your audiovisual work that has informed how you approach your photography, or vice versa?

I think photography has given me more insight on framing as well as model/artist direction. I often forget that the artist’s performance is the most important part of a music video. So it’s taught me to spend more time with the artist to get the best out of their performance. It correlates to portrait photography as you have to capture that moment in time, so it’s vital to spend sufficient time with the model, experimenting with various poses/movements. 

Over the summer you signed to CANADA. What sort of projects are you most looking forward to creating with them?

I’m super excited for what’s to come. It’s nice to have people there to bounce ideas off during the concept development stage. I’m mostly looking forward to developing my style over both music videos and commercials, and to really push myself out of my comfort zone.

EP Cover art by Joe Howat for Downtown Kayoto

Interview by Becca Nichols

INFO:

@joe.howat

@canadacanadacom

@downtownkayoto

CANADA website

Joe Howat website