Director's Works
Hak Baker and Joe Armon-Jones, Wrong Side of Town Broken Antenna
Directing duo Broken Antenna - aka Myles McAuliffe and Gustav Newby - grew up in Camberwell, South London, loving films and hip-hop. After getting their foot in the door working with the location department on films such as ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Made in Dagenham’, the pair went on to university to study film. Early work included a fascinating documentary ‘Lo-Down in London’, which followed the London chapter of a New York gang called Lo-Lifes who exclusively wear Ralph Lauren clothes. Agency experience came at Mother London, before a move into shooting music videos which allowed the duo to create a fantastic body of culturally fresh and visually experimental work that’s since been recognised at the UK MVA and Berlin MVA awards, Ciclope, and air time on Channel 4’s Random Acts. Broken Antenna’s fun, youthful aesthetic, mixed with an experimental approach, has attracted brands such as KFC, TikTok, Uber, IKEA, Samsung, Yamaha, Panasonic, Zalando, Ben & Jerry’s, and the British Heart Foundation, whilst their promo work goes from strength to strength, with videos shot for Wiki, Jam Baxter, Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, Hak Baker, Riz Ahmed, Wiley, Kamaal Williams, and Yurufuwa Gang.
video for Hak Baker, who here teams up with Mercury Prize-winner Joe Armon-Jones. The conscious single – an upbeat, dub-influenced song - is about being priced out of London, and the accompanying music video sees Hak cycling around the parts of London he grew up in, observing the effects of gentrification, but also the surviving parts of a working-class community that continue to define the city. Directors Broken Antenna and artists Hak Baker and Joe Armon-Jones discussed what the song meant to them - specifically gentrification and the idea of how different areas of London are used in different ways by different parts of the community at different times without them really acknowledging one another. For example, areas like Dalston, Brixton and Peckham are completely different in the daytime when they’re focused around the local residents, shops and markets versus the night-time, when loads of people descend into the area to get drunk and have a good time. They also felt strongly about support for social housing and the communities within them. Whenever Broken Antenna work with Hak Baker, they want the people featured to be Hak’s people. When showing the right side of town, having people embedded in the community close to Hak meant that they could authentically show it, rather than having to fabricate tapping into people's lives for a music video. Broken Antenna then worked on developing their trade-mark mixed media approach, by incorporating footage of politically-charged events – from the NHS workers striking for fair pay to the people in the housing meetings trying to figure out how best to spend the budget. Broken Antenna’s criteria for what should be included was that every person featured in the video is working towards changing and influencing the city. The video was also edited by Broken Antenna, with a grade by long-time collaborator Jack McGinity at Cheat. The entire production budget for the video was £500. Tonally, the promo deftly blends political rage with light-hearted, nostalgic reflection, reflecting both the directors’ and music artists’ viewpoints that life isn’t all doom and gloom. Rather than be preachy, it is meant to feel observational and reflective, told from their own perspectives even if some of the subject matter in the video is pretty dark. Myles McAuliffe (of Broken Antenna): “Where I grew up was a block of council flats within the Elmington estate in Camberwell. It was where my Mum & Dad grew up, my nan, my cousins, aunts and uncles lived too. When I was about 14 or 15 everything was knocked down except for the one block I lived in and everyone was moved away to other areas while the council rebuilt it around my block. The council ran out of money spending most of it knocking the flats down and sold it to private developers. So I was quite passionate about making a video showing this. From there, it was a case of a film with 2 halves, the right side of town and the wrong side of town - the lines blur at times and that’s where it gets interesting. After all chatting, Gus and I put together a treatment with how we wanted to do this and it all went from there and it stayed pretty true to that.” Giving more context, Hak shares: “All our lives people have been looking down their noses at us but we used to have the safe haven of the estate, blocks and high roads to commune and be human. Now, we hardly have that, the wealthy come to our area to take over and not take part, shoving us outwardly looking down their biased beaks. Nah mate, not round here. I think it’s time to scream and shout that we’re here to stay and if you don’t like it, you must be on the wrong side of the town.” The promo was shot all over London - the Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf, Canning Town, Hackney, Peckham, Tottenham Court Road, Trafalgar Square, Westminster, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Stepney, Elephant & Castle, Poplar, Aberfeldy, Camberwell, London Bridge, Bermondsey, the City, Lewisham, Hither Green, Forest Hill. In terms of style, a documentary called Rat Film inspired parts of the promo. Plus there was something about capturing London as it is now with new build property hoardings acting as a backdrop throughout that reminded the directors of the way films like Babylon, The Long Good Friday or Passport to Pimlico are so entrenched in the way London looked and felt in those moments in time. Another influence was the end scene of The Wire. Broken Antenna wanted to make something that showed the natural cycle of the way the city chews people up and spits them out. There is so much promise that is lost in bureaucracy. Another reference was a short called Lambeth Through Our Eyes and the way that it showcased social imbalance in London.