Punit Dhesi Interview, Pt. 2 | Behind the Lens

Continued from earlier in the week, here's part two of my conversation with music video director Punit Dhesi.


AM: How did you come up with the idea for Gangrene [Alchemist and Oh No]’s “Under Siege”?

PD: I had been talking to Alchemist a lot, we had been going back and forth. He really wanted to do something for the Gangrene [project], we talked about doing the “Therapy” video, just trying to make something happen. I went down there and stayed with him for two days. We were just sitting there and we came up with it together. We just started watching riot footage and it just came to us. I said, “Can we just put you guys in the riot footage?” I got this documentary done by ABC on the L.A. riots from the library on VHS and just ripped all the footage. Some of it is from YouTube too. I just studied it, trying to match the shots. We shot it all on green screen one day in downtown L.A.

Actually we had printed out some promo copies on VHS, with a cover and everything, and sent out 100 copies to press. My buddy Josh Harding does all the digital motion graphics and effects, I don’t deal with a lot of that. After we edited the whole video, we outputted it from the computer to a VHS tape and made four copies back and forth, so it was a fourth-generation copy. Then we sent it back into the computer. Some people commented, “Those are cool VHS filters you use” and this and that. We just made a bunch of copies of it on VHS, that was how we did it.

AM: Did Alc and Oh No bring their own wigs?

PD: No, I got them at some Korean wig shop. I went in there without much of a budget, I said we needed some wigs. This lady was telling me 200 dollars for a wig. I said no way, and I’m thinking, I don’t know if we’re going to get any wigs. So I thanked her and I bounced. I was in my car and I was leaving, she ran outside and she said, “Okay, okay, you want a wig?” And she pulled out this box full of wigs and she gave it to me for 10 dollars. Oh No has one that was a beard, but he was wearing it as a wig. [Laughs] Weird shit.


AM: Where did the idea for the “Life As A Shorty” video come from?

PD: The song itself set the tone. It was basically written for you. It felt like bright colors, school playgrounds. I wanted to do it that way because I loved the way that [Fashawn] made that song really lighthearted but the content is real. The videos I’ve done that I really like, they’ll play me a record and I just know I want to do the video. I can already see it. For “F.A.S.H.A.W.N.”, they just played me the record and I said, “Let’s do a video”. Same thing for “Our Way”, when I heard it. And it was the same way for “Life As A Shorty”. The first thing I saw in my head was the ice cream and the balloon. The first scene sets the tone for the rest of the video. It’s supposed to be a constant theme throughout it, with the bully. As soon as little Fashawn gets something in his life that he cares about, it gets taken away from him. From the ice cream to the balloon. The toy that his real father gives him, that’s a metaphor for his father coming into his life. He’s playing with the toy and it suddenly gets snatched away from him. He’s sad about the toy but really he’s sad about his father coming in and out of his life. When he tries to go up to the little girl on the playground and give her a little key chain and a bully steps in and ruins that for him. The girl he’s hanging out with, and another guy steps in the picture. There’s a constant theme that every time he gets something, it gets taken away, until finally, at the end of the video, the young Fashawn meets the old Fashawn. He’s sitting on the curb and [the old Fashawn] gives him the notebook. After all this, take this notebook because what you write, nobody can take that away from you.

AM: How do you make creative music videos on a budget without resorting to making the stereotypical “hood” video?

PD: Budgets are nice! I’d love to have one someday. [laughs] Sometimes I think that helps in a way, the minimal tools you have. A camera, two people helping me out, maybe some reflectors and a makeshift dolly. That’s kinda all we have. The only thing I can depend on to make the shots look good are the actual aesthetics. I don’t have all the fancy lights or effects so I have to focus on taking the bare minimum and making something dope with it. Just shooting the street, I’m not happy with that. And I won’t do it, if that’s all there is. I just shot another video for Strong Arm Steady. That’s another one that’s coming out real guerrilla, no permits.

AM: What’s the video about?

PD: The concept of the song is they’re talking about their guns but in the form of women. It’s a real L.A. type video. '64 Impalas, and [a model] is the metaphor for the gun, she’s dressed in black leather and wearing brass knuckles.

AM: Which directors inspire you?

PD: The big budget stuff doesn’t really concern me. I’m looking at people like Jason Goldwatch. He did the “Back Again” video for Dilated [Peoples], the “Mr. Slow Flow” video [for Evidence]. I remember when Rik Cordero’s videos started popping up. They’re doing the guerrilla low budget thing but they make it look dope. I’m inspired by them but I’m also competing with them in my head.

To see more of Punit's videos, check him out at Vimeo!

Punit Dhesi Interview, Pt. 1 | Behind the Lens

This is the first installment of what I hope will become a regular feature. Behind the Lens is a feature where I speak with contemporary music video directors about their work. You may know Punit Dhesi from his work with Fashawn and Evidence, or from his stellar video for Gangrene’s “Under Siege”. I had the pleasure of talking with the Fresno-based director last week.

AM: What made you decide to become a director?

PD: I think it kinda fell upon me, I really didn’t make a conscious decision to do it. I used to DJ…actually I was working as an engineer in a studio where Fashawn used to record at. I used to work for his manager, this guy Hecktik [Aren Hekimian] and I would engineer for him. At the same time, I knew a little about video stuff and I’d never done a music video yet. One day they needed to do a video and I was around. They said, “Do we know anyone who can do a video?” and I said, “Yeah, I know how to do it. We can do something.” Fashawn is 17, I’m 18. They had a camera and we just went out and did it. It wasn’t that great but it wasn’t do bad either. We just kept building. We did another one, one with Planet Asia and just kept getting better. More people started calling. Even up to the “Our Way” video with Evidence, we were just fucking around. I didn’t take [any] of that seriously at all. I definitely didn’t think we were going to be on TV. I won an award for that video [California State University’s Media Arts Festival for Best Music Video]. It took off more than I expected, and that’s when I said, “Okay, I could be doing this”.


AM: Is the video for “Sunny CA” a homage to Xzibit’s “What U See Is What U Get” ?

PD: It’s funny because for that video, we didn’t plan anything out. We made it up as we went. Before we even did it, Fashawn said, “We should do the ‘What U See Is What U Get’ type of thing”. And honestly I didn’t even remember that video. But I said, “Yeah”, and after we did it, I realized [“Sunny CA”] was like [“What U See...”]. The first location we shot was Fashawn coming out of the apartment. That was just the spot we met up at, we were going to meet up there and go somewhere else. And he ended up knowing someone in the apartment so we just decided to shoot there. And from there we made the whole thing up.

AM: What do you use to shoot and edit?

PD: The camera that I use is a Canon XHA1, a basic HD camera. I edit with Final Cut and my MacBook Pro. Those are my tools for the most part. The first video I shot with the camera was the Chuck Dimes video; before that I would just borrow cameras.


AM: The video for the Soul Assassins’ “Classical” has a really distinct, moody look to it. How did you achieve that?

PD: I used a lot of color correction on there, but it was all intentional. I had that vibe in my mind before I shot it. Afterwards it was just playing with the programs enough to find the colors I already imagined. There was a certain location I had, it was actually for a different video I was supposed to do. The song “Therapy” for Alchemist, with Evidence, Blu and Kid Cudi. That location and how I shot that video had a lot to do with the treatment that I wrote for “Therapy”. I recycled it and added the Chinese lion dancer to it. Actually the drumming part of that video, that’s me.


AM: Let’s talk about “The Far Left”. Why reference “Subterranean Homesick Blues” for an Evidence video?

PD: That was all Evidence. After we did the “Our Way” video, he liked the way it came out and he said, “Let’s do one for me”. This was me branching out, because until recently it was all just this association with Fashawn. I had a completely [different] idea in mind, but his album [The Layover] was coming out real soon. He hit me up on a Thursday and he needed to shoot the video in three days. And he needed the [video] back after seven days. We were talking, I was telling him my idea and he just cut me off. He said, “I got it! The Bob Dylan one makes sense. That’s what we’re doing.” I didn’t know what he was talking about for the longest time until he sent me the YouTube video. He sent it to me the night before we had to shoot. We stayed up all night with this guy, Aloy, from The Seventh Letter/MSK [an L.A. based graffiti crew], he’s a graphic designer. We showed up at Alchemist’s studio in Santa Monica with all the blank cards and we stayed up all night. [Aloy] drew up all the cards and when the sun came out, we went to Venice Beach and shot the video. As soon as we got back to Alchemist’s spot, I started dumping all the footage.

It was supposed to be one take, but for lack of rehearsal we couldn’t pull it all off in one take. Evidence’s part is all one take, but for Fash and Al, I cut up two different shots. It worked out alright, it was cool.

This is the first part of the interview. Stay tuned for the second half later this week.