GREATEST: BRTHR
Travis Scott and The Weeknd’s go-to directing duo on the importance of an artist’s visual identity in the Internet Age.
The Golden Age of Music Videos was nothing short of a landmark moment in the music industry. Label executives boosted sales through a lucrative marketing tool that captivated audiences, while artists were afforded a new method of creatively expressing themselves and connecting with fans. But gone are the days of feature-film budgets, record sales as a primary source of revenue and televised broadcasts. In a time where song streaming and endless-scroll content feeds dominate shrinking attention spans, directing duo BRTHR is preserving the cinematic experience of short-form filmmaking.
Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman first met as film students at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Unchallenged by the program’s curriculum, the two dropped out after their second year in 2010 to cut their teeth in the field. Today, the duo count The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez and Kali Uchis among their collaborators.
BRTHR’s trademark visual style is instantly recognizable and frequently imitated in today’s pool of rising music-video auteurs: cotton candy-hued lighting, rapid-fire jump cuts, swirling camera movements, lo-fi glitches. The pair’s fluency in After Effects and penchant for grandiose mise en scène are a testament to their Internet-Age understanding of what stimulates a viewer’s retina for more than just a few seconds.
Wrapping a commercial production in Ukraine—which the two weren’t at liberty to disclose but will be one of their most ambitious projects to date—BRTHR discusses the role of music videos in today’s content landscape and how a strong visual identity can take an artist from internet sensation to global superstar.
Tell me about the time you guys first met.
Alex Lee: I casted Kyle as an actor for one of our student short films and we got really tight. We were both a little more in tune with the realities of becoming a filmmaker than our peers. I feel like we're both really hard on ourselves, and it showed in our finished projects.
Kyle Wightman: We also had a common bond, which was editing. That was our skill early on, and then directing and whatnot followed.
When and why did you both decide to leave SVA?
Lee: We left after the second year because it just wasn't [...] I don't know. I almost feel like we should have majored in something a little more technical.
Wightman: In retrospect, VFX, animation or cinematography would have been better for us. To get into this industry, you have to be well-rounded—you can't just go in expecting to be a director.
Lee: Or you need to know someone in the business, or you need to have money. If we had rich parents, we could just be like, "Hey, can you fund this project? We'll hire all the good editors and submit it to Sundance.” But we couldn't do that. We were broke.
Wightman: We also had an opportunity to do some real work, and we didn't want to lose that momentum. Do we just stay in school and spend all this money? Or do we try to actually do it?
You’re both self-taught, right?
Lee: Yeah, we're products of the Internet Age. We grew up in a time where we had to be savvy.
Wightman: Torrenting plugins and programs. It’s a self-taught generation for sure. For film, I think I would’ve learned a lot more from just being on sets early on, and understanding the flow and the structure of how a set is actually run. You can't get that in film school, even when you try to simulate it in a class where people are pretending to be different roles.
Lee: I wish they taught us more about cinematography because that's something we really had to learn. When we were first starting out we’d shoot our own things and we had to experiment. But I'm still really proud of two early things we shot: the Ben Khan “Youth” video and the GEMS “Sinking Stone” video we did in collaboration with Dazed.
Wightman: There's something to be said about going out there and just doing it. You can gain a lot from that. But it's really useful to understand the terminology and the theory behind lighting when you're talking with your DP [director of photography]. Without those skills, it's hard to conceptualize different scenes.
I actually first discovered you guys from that Ben Khan video.
Lee: I think that video really defined our style. Then we kind of brought that style into rap videos and shit really took off from there.
Being from different parts of the world—Yokohama, Japan and Long Island, New York—what were some things that inspired or influenced you individually?
Lee: Growing up in Japan, I didn't realize how hard I was on myself, which goes back to the self-discipline and the quality control in our work. Subconsciously as well, all the overstimulation there influenced how I saw things that I liked and things that we're making now.
Wightman: For me it's kind of the opposite. Growing up in a small town that isn’t the epicenter of culture, you gravitate to the internet. As a young kid, I spent a lot of time on the computer and got into making my own little stop-motion and short films where I was basically learning iMovie and, then, Final Cut. Early music videos of [British music video director] Chris Cunningham, like “Rubber Johnny,” were also super inspiring.
Lee: I remember being obsessed with Western culture: Limewire, The Matrix, Kid Cudi, Arctic Monkeys...
How did you guys ultimately decide to focus on making music videos?
Lee: It just happened, honestly. The first music video we did together was for this guy named B Major and it got a Vimeo Staff Pick, which held a little bit more merit back then. Then we got in touch with a music video agent in London and it spiraled out from there.
These passion projects we did also really helped, like the Ben Kahn video and the Dazed thing. That's how The Weeknd found our work.
What purpose does a music video serve for an artist today versus 10, 20, 30 years ago?
Lee: We missed the glory days, man.
Wightman: We don't have a BRTHR private jet, unfortunately.
Lee: I think it's important for an artist or musician to establish their visual universe; the most famous musicians also have a strong visual element to their work. That's why they're superstars—it helps create their identity. But the internet is so oversaturated with music videos now, so it's harder to create something that stands out. You need them for promo, but people who take it further than that do really well.
Wightman: It's cool when an artist doesn't go the SoundCloud route where they’re just pumping out these videos in a day, as opposed to doing something that's a little more considered and curated. From a fan’s perspective, it's so much cooler when an artist has a visual identity and is actually involved in the process.
Is there a specific kind of artist that you guys prefer to work with?
Wightman: It goes back to what we were saying before, about gravitating towards artists that have a vision and a unified aesthetic. I think if you look back at all the people we’ve worked with, they have that.
Lee: We definitely like to push ourselves. For example, we did a Lana Del Rey video recently, which was a really slow song, and we're known for fast-paced things. But we’re not like, “Oh, we're only going to do videos for The Weeknd or rappers like Travis Scott.” We like to work across different genres. If there’s something about the artist that we like, or if we think it's a great way to push ourselves and do something different, we'll do it.
Do you guys have a favorite project that you worked on so far?
Lee: I think “Butterfly Effect” by Travis Scott is one of my favorite things that we've done just because we were able to do everything that we planned, and I feel like Travis had more trust in us after “Goosebumps”.
Wightman: Music video-wise, I agree. Early on, it would be Ben Khan and then commercially I'd say our FIFA job was probably my favorite. Our goal for the longest time was to make an ad where we could actually put our stamp on it. So many times you go and do a commercial and the initial idea is cool and then things get watered down and go in a different direction. But that project we saw through to the end.
What types of projects would you like to work on eventually?
Lee: Sports commercials. I feel like we could really do something crazy. TV would also be really cool. I haven't really thought about the narrative side just yet. I feel like we have a little more work to do in the ad world.
Wightman: One of our dreams is to do a baseball commercial for Gatorade or MLB.
Lee: We always want to make sure that we put our stamp on things and keep elevating the work. There are directors now that have a style very similar to ours. It's funny because some of them you recognize as fans back in the day.
Wightman: We never want to get comfortable and think that just because you can do a certain style of commercial or music video you can coast on it. We always want to keep evolving.