The Directors: Savannah Setten
British director Savannah Setten creates unnerving visions of individual worlds. Nominated for Best New Director by SHOTS in her first year of directing, Savannah's work continues to deviate from the expected, and instead lives in the unfamiliar.
Cultivating her lens on the felt human experience, her films live in the unfamiliar through collaborations with an all-male cast of inmates in a high security prison in Ukraine, the community of a cartel-run barrio in Monterrey Mexico and the indigenous Udege community in the eastern Russia borderlands. Savannah's form-breaking music video Rare with legacy artist Nas set in his Queensbridge community housing project in New York, featured the rapper embarking on an out-of-body experience where he faced a game of chess with only himself as the opponent.
In recent times Savannah has penned music and commercial concepts for Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free's company pgLang in LA. The Melodic Blue, Savannah and pgLang's latest release, is an experimental short for Amazon Studios examining the fragments of memory, trauma and temptation of young Grammy winning music artist Baby Keem. Savannah is now back in her hometown London, building a video installation film focusing on the lives of men searching for internal freedom as they serve time in a high-security prison.
Savannah's work has been nominated for Best Video at SXSW Film Festival & Cannes YDAs and nominated for a selection of awards at UK Music Video Awards, SHOTS, 1.4 and Clio awards. Her work can be seen in British Vogue, iD, Nowness, Rolling Stone and Complex.
LBB> How do you approach creating an idea for a spot?
Savannah> Every job is different! I used to think I could come up with an idea by locking myself in a dark room for days, refusing to see or speak to anyone. But by taking some of the pressure off, I've found ideas come more naturally when I go about everyday life, whilst keeping a brief or design in the back of my mind. By being receptive to things I see in the interactions of people around me, it started to help me build well-observed human ideas around products.
One example of this is when Dave Free showed me the new Converse silhouette he and Kendrick had designed. I was thinking about the shoe when I was stuck in traffic on my way home and my Uber kept coming to a stop next to the same car, over and over again. The situation made me think of a scenario where two people stuck next to each other start talking through their car windows, and the idea about using your Converse to find connections in a lonely city unfolded from there.
The result was an ad where we saw Selah Marley use the laces from her Converse to play a Strings game as an unconventional way of starting up a conversation with a person she had nearly collided with in the street.
LBB> What type of work are you most passionate about - is there a particular genre or subject matter or style you are most drawn to?
Savannah> I love collaborating with real communities. When we filmed the music video for Nas' song “Rare” in Queens, we partnered with Magnum photographer Khalik Allah to capture the essence and soul of Nas’ home community of Queensbridge Houses, as a way of teasing out his story.
You might know Khalik from his book “Souls Against the Concrete” with photographs depicting people who inhabit the Harlem corner of 125th Street in New York City. Coming together with his unique perspective of the people living in Nas’ childhood neighbourhood and finding ways to capture a real sense of their emotions and lives there took the piece to a different place.
I am forever grateful to our collaborators in Queensbridge Houses and to Khalik.
LBB> What’s the craziest problem you’ve come across in the course of a production – and how did you solve it?
Savannah> Filming in hostile or challenging real world environments can throw up a lot of unusual production considerations. When cinematographer Christian Huck and I filmed in a high security prison in Ukraine, we were at the mercy of the hierarchical structure and social dynamic between the inmates serving time in the prison rather than any production related restrictions such as time or the agreed shot list.
Accepting that I had to relinquish control in that environment and lean into the story the inmates wanted to tell about their experience of incarceration, instead of our own interpretation of it, became the most natural way to uncover unexpected magic outside of the perimeter of my original idea.
LBB> What are your thoughts on opening up the production world to a more diverse pool of talent? Are you open to mentoring and apprenticeships on set?
Savannah> I was lucky to learn a lot from watching directors on set while working as a runner. For me, directing became a much more tangible career option when I understood that it's just thousands of actually quite manageable micro decisions that create the final “big” vision that feels impossible.
Through being on set as a runner I was able to connect with a lot of crew members who further down the line came on board my first short film project “Utopia”. That was how I got started in directing, so I think there is a lot to be said about getting young people from all different backgrounds on-set experience.
I’m 100% open to mentoring.
LBB> Which pieces of work do you feel really show off what you do best – and why?
Savannah> “The Melodic Blue”
I'm really interested in psychology, and working with artist Baby Keem opened up an interesting space to explore the human condition for a younger audience in America. I had previously worked with Baby Keem on the music video for his song “No Sense” and we reunited for “The Melodic Blue”, a short music film for Amazon Studios.
The film, which was executive produced by Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free’s creative vehicle, pgLang, is an introspective journey that takes viewers through temptation, sex, trauma, and responsibility - but in a form that was experimental and formless. In this piece Keem leads us through fragments of memories as he navigates the depths of his own psychology at age 21.
Converse - “Lost for Language”
I directed the ad campaign for the pgLang x Converse silhouette. It is an unconventional story about a connection in Kendrick’s hometown of Los Angeles. Loneliness, searching for connection, an intimate language outside of words and speech - were all parts of the world I felt I could bring a personal and human perspective to.
Nas - “Rare”
I grew up listening to Nas and so his track “Rare”, with its unconventional score-like dynamic, its unique shifts and switch ups presented such a meaningful opportunity to explore his legacy from Queens to global legend, in unexpected form.
In the video, Nas has an out of body experience when he returns to his childhood neighbourhood Queens, where he finds himself locked in a game of chess with only himself as the opponent - the men from his community providing him with the chess pieces to make the top play. Involving dialogue and hearing from the man himself, at the beginning of the film, took it somewhere really personal.
We street cast this entire piece, working with non-actors, non-dancers; and all of these men were instrumental in creating this stirring culture in the chess scene. As detailed earlier, I worked in collaboration with Magnum stills photographer Khalik Allah and the community at Queensbridge Houses on this piece to capture the soul of Nas’s upbringing.
slenderbodies - “Arrival”
For slenderbodies “Arrival” I collaborated with an all-male cast of inmates serving sentences at a high security prison in Ukraine. The piece was observational in parts, but further looked to deconstruct whether freedom is a mental or physical state through the eyes of the man who is not physically free. The piece was nominated for Best Video at SXSW Festival and for the Young Director Award at Cannes Lions.
