Not Your Average “Boy”
John-Mark is one of the most talented young visual artists working today. You hesitate classifying someone who radiates creativity in everything he does: former model, dancer- choreographer, and now, powerful director with a roster of clients and artists with a definite point of view. When he works, it’s quietly, focused, deliberate – gently but firmly making the set his own, but delivering something makes the star seem bigger, the project hipper. His most ambitious works have grown more artistic – cumulating in Duckwrth’s latest video for the single, ‘Boy’, where John-Mark celebrates the physicality and strength of the body while subtly infusing messages of female empowerment and gender fluidity.
fiveXfive: Where did the visual concept of ‘Boy’ come from?
JOHN-MARK: The initial creative direction was sculpted by Mette Towley and Duckwrth over phone calls around the holidays last year. Mette was really interested in subverting the classic trope of a “damsel in distress” and wanted to see a woman deliver a man to freedom on screen, as so often women do in real life.
fiveXfive: It seems like a very complicated video to stage and choreograph – How did you plan and execute it? Especially the fight scenes…
JOHN-MARK: As a choreographer, I started with building seven individual phrases or ‘fights’ surrounding an element of space or an object. I titled them things like “corner fight,” “bat fight,” “doorway fight,” or “knife fight,” whatever made that fight unique. I workshopped these fights in Minneapolis with stand-ins for Mette and the henchmen over two days, then went back to LA with the fights pre-choreographed and set them on Mette and the professional stunt men. From there, I looked at the location we shot in and decided what momentum made sense for the narrative and energy of the space and performers. Some of these individual fights were cut down or abstracted further. There’s always an evolution with this type of stuff. Things are often shifting and changing once you see the space, how it looks on camera, I try to approach these type of shoots with a lot of preparation, but also a lot of flexibility.
As a director, it was important to see an arc in the desperation of Mette’s character as she fought her way closer to Duckwrth. We did out best to shoot in chronological order, so Mette would have a physical understanding of where she had come from in the previous fights. The movement gets scrappier, the breathing gets heavier, the emotions heighten.
fiveXfive: This isn’t the first time you’ve worked with the amazing dancer Mette Towley, who is blowing up everywhere, like Rihanna’s ‘Lemon’. What is the key that connects you when designing concepts for videos?
JOHN-MARK: Mette and I have been working together for about 9 years and we always learn towards narratives with strong female protagonists. . . roles where women are physically explosive on screen. As friends and collaborators, we have a lot of conversation around the representation of women, men, and people of color on camera. We’re not wildly political artists, but there are always subversive elements in our projects and it’s not by accident. Having worked together for so long, we also have a really clear idea of each others strengths and weaknesses. We’ve build a pretty great symbiosis.
fiveXfive: Mette is such a physical athlete. As a choreographer, is that your attraction? Is she your muse?
JOHN-MARK: Mette is not my muse. I don’t like that term for her. It’s not a representation of the collaborative nature of our relationship. Do I love putting her on camera? Yes, but she has an active voice in everything we do together. I don’t see “Muse” as a word for someone who has a voice.
fiveXfive: ‘Boy’ seems like a combination of action movie and a dark love story. Actually, it was a beautifully choreographed Tarantino movie… Would you be offended by that?
JOHN-MARK: Not at all. I’m a big Tarantino fan. I’m not sure there are that many similarities between our way of filmmaking other than our affinity to violent female protagonists, but I have a huge appreciation for his work. One of my favorite documentaries is Double Dare. It follows Zoe Bell, who is Tarantino’s #1 stunt woman. It’s a good watch. Everyone should see it. It profiles the most badass chicks.
fiveXfive: Is it a rejection of stereotyping sexuality in men and women? The flowers in Duckwrth’s hair… He’s the ‘damsel’ in distress. Metta is the kick ass hero… It says to me is we’re all gender fluid… I mean, the lyrics say “…(sweep?) between the genders/wouldn’t that be awesome?”
JOHN-MARK: Absolutely. Gender constructs come into play in our daily lives more often than we realize. I could easily rant on this for hours, but I’ll let the music speak here. Duckwrth’s lyrics really resonated with Mette and I. It’s why we chose to make this video.
fiveXfive: You have an amazing eye for locations in your videos. They are a major player in the emotional response to your dance videos. How do you find them? Does budget dictate locations?
JOHN-MARK: The location we shot in for this video is actually next door to my office in Los Angeles. The video’s producer found it for me. It was all too convenient and totally in our budget. I will say scouting locations for the exterior shots where Mette is running was a lot trickier. I didn’t want the video to feel like it was shot in Los Angeles. I didn’t want to see palm trees or tons of cars everywhere, hard things to avoid in that city.
fiveXfive: How much has working in fashion influenced your directing and editing?
JOHN-MARK: It’s hard to say, but I know the influence is there. Art directing a fashion editorial has a lot of the same challenges as working in film. You need to have an eye for composition, a sense of taste and tone, I think working in fashion was formative in that way for me.
fiveXfive: I loved working with you on ‘air > space’, the video we created through the Arts@ MSP program for MSP Airport. To my knowledge, it’s the first arts video that promotes an airport as an incubator for the arts community – a place to work on new music and new choreography in front of 33-38,000 people a day… When I brought you the idea, what was your first HONEST response? Airports aren’t always thought of as a place for art…
Oh my god, I was so excited. I love any opportunity to create dance somewhere unorthodox. I know that choreographing is always going to be more comfortable at stages and studios, but being on location is more interesting to me. Throughout the last five years, I’ve filmed and choreographed work at trailer parks, factories, dive bars, beaches, and back alleys. It’s fun to make art in these spaces. It keeps things interesting.
fiveXfive: What’s next?
JOHN-MARK: I have a lyric video for Noah Cyrus coming out soon. Also launching a web series with Public Functionary. Fun stuff.
You can watch Duckwrth’s ‘Boy’, directed by John-Mark here:
