Basshunter Diary pt. 4

Feature + Academic

After five days on the road and about 10 photoshoots and TV interviews later someting opened my eyes. All these directors who are working on the projects...hmmm...for maybe because they have to pay their rents, but not because their heart is at it. They tell the artist to be normal, but do not really understand what is needed. Me instead am working slowly to gain the trust of Basshunter and thus getting more realistic side of him on the road. This all leads back to why Anton Corbjin is so good: he is one with the artists, not above or below.

In addition, Basshunter project has confirmed something. Pop culture embraces all the layers of the package. Brian Eno says it well:

You sometimes hear something being dismissed because it’s all image and no substance, as though these are completely separate, the first ephemeral and lightweight, the second profound and permanent. But one of the messages of pop culture is that you can’t usually separate them: ‘image’ is constantly turning into ‘substance’, and vice versa. The package is part of the contents.

This represents a decision about where the edge of the work really is. What is being seen as the permissable site for creative work by the artist, and what is just ‘the rest of the world’? What is ‘inside’ and what is ‘outside’?

This problem - if you think it one - is particularly acute in pop music. When Madonna appeared, she was attacked for her concentration on everything other than the music - on the things that people call the package. Even if this had been true, would it have been so awful? Who said that pop music was ever just to do with melodies and lyrics and whatever else the word ‘music’ historically meant? For forty years, pop music and its culture have been at the center of the everyday conversation that our culture has with itself, and the talk is mostly about style: how you choose to look at things, how you value what you are and what you have and what you do. Lifestyle, I suppose is the word.

Is short: for Madonna, designing the package has become her work.

Most directors' and photographers' problem is that they try to loose themselves in situations where it is impossible. How about trying to loose yourself in a real situation where the artist really can feel normal and does not have to pretend the camera is not there. Just let camera be there!

In a wider aspect this gets down to the fact that one has to know the subject being directed. Whether a film director, music producer, academic or company director.

Behind The Bass on Hard2Beat. Tour documentary about Basshunter.

[caption id="attachment_356" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Behind the Bass"][/caption]