Jerry Kai-Lewis
26 September 2008
interview
If the Channel O Music Video Awards are anything to go by, Shike is Botswana's premier music video director. His work first caught everyone's attention when music video fans across the continent voted Mista Doe's Hot to Death video, done in conjunction with Itseng kae Phape, as the Best Hip Hop video from Southern Africa.
To the unsuspecting eye, the video looked nothing like Gaborone; even the railway station looked like it was out of this world. That shot of the young Motswana model with the bottle of water, the stuff of every warm-blooded Tswana male's fantasy. Just when we thought it was going to be a one-hit wonder, Olsen upped his game when his well-scripted and shot video for Acid's Banyana le Basimane won, against incredible competitors from Nigeria and South Africa, yet another award. Once again this year, Olsen's videos for rapper Zeus (Imagination for Best Reggae) and house music producer and one-half of the now defunct Acid, Leroy (Merafe for Best Dance category) are up for awards.
Mmegi: Tell us a bit about yourself and what inspires you.
Shike: To be honest, this wasn't a path that I had initially thought I would have chosen. Being a late bloomer, it's something that, instead of carving a path for, I eventually ended up doing. Now becoming a face for it is actually a strange thing because I still consider myself a novice at what I do. I'm hardly anywhere near what I'd like to do. What's happened is that I went from having an education in broadcast journalism to now basically becoming a publisher, somebody who is keeping a record and documenting the experiences of creative young, urban Batswana. This is where I draw my inspiration from and that fuels all the other disciplines that I'm in: the video making, the publishing, and the photography. What moves me is the desire to see young, creative Batswana progress; and documenting it so other kids can see and also get inspired as well.
Mmegi: Your videos tend to have a certain artistic flair to them, especially Leroy's Merafe video that's up for an award this year. How do you come up with these concepts?
Shike: The funny thing is that all these music videos that I've done were purely a mistake; a very surprising mistake! Initially, we were doing a recording project and had garnered so much credit with different studios that our way of paying them back was through shooting videos for them. And all the videos thus far, save for Mista Doe's video, had all been paying back for studio time. The videos were all done with budgets of less than US$100, all of them! Basically, what I do is listen to the song and come up with a concept. You now have a global focus that moves toward blinging-out videos and what I ask myself is 'what is it that we are going to try and represent?' What's been interesting about the tracks we did do the videos for was that they have a very Botswana feel in terms of what they sound like; whether it's the language, the imagery or the metaphors used in the music. What inspires the videos is that I set out to make videos that are representative of Botswana and with a Botswana audience in mind. That gives it a local appeal, which always translates to support on the major music networks like Channel O because Batswana see them and hence request to have them played.
Mmegi: Videos in South Africa are being shot for hundreds of thousands of Rand these days. What Kind of a video would you produce if you were to get a sponsorship of P100, 000?
Shike: If you are talking about a music video, technologically, we'd also have to look at where the art of video-making is going. It's slowly moving away from the independent DV market. So you'll be looking to now upgrade in terms of your acquisition; getting out of the DV environment and moving into higher and more expensive formats whether it be DHD or film, God forbid we have money for film! But you don't just blow your money on just your acquisition. There are other things you have to look at - like a decent story; production design; what's going on in front of the camera; what kind of people you have; make-up; wardrobe, etc. It ends up being pouring all the money back into higher production values, as the industry calls it, for telling the same story.
Mmegi: We now see a trend in Hollywood where music video directors are making a break for directing movies. What would it take for us to get to that level?
Shike: Many people who make films, whether directors or DOP (director of photography), cut their teeth on music videos because they are actually a short form of telling a story. And deep in the heart, anybody who does have any desire to do anything with a camera usually wants to make a film. But it is no easy task. It's a whole lot more effort and money. Even with us, we all want to do film; I just recently shot a film here for Soul City with another crew of Batswana, directed by a young Motswana scriptwriter. That's where we want to be and getting a budget to shoot a film was actually cool. And you say to yourself that all this stuff that you've learnt while you're messing around with all these music videos actually adds up and put you at that level where when somebody comes to town they can say: "Great, I'm working with a pro here."
Mmegi: These music video awards tend to focus too much on the musician, as opposed to the director. Is there something wrong with that picture?
Shike: Well, if you look at other award shows for this sort of thing like MTV music awards, it's usually geared toward the artist. But there is, to some degree, a recognition of the people that put together the videos in the first place. It will be nice if there is some sort of recognition, not an award or anything. It would be nice if they actually invited the director to come to the awards, just to see what your US$100 budget translated into. I'm more especially talking for myself, after doing it for three times in a row.
Mmegi: At its core, I'd say the Channel O Music Video Awards tries to promote continental cultural integration. But so far what we see are artists from the bigger countries engaged in that exchange. We have yet to see a Nigerian, Kenyan or Mozambican artist from that platform perform here in Botswana or even see our own big names going out there to perform under the Channel O banner. Any word for Channel O on how that could be redressed?
Shike: First and foremost, the Channel O Music Awards give an opportunity to countries that would never have any sort of international platform to showcase their music. The business of music is very young in Botswana and other countries' are very well established. Botswana's is very interesting for a country with a small population. But in the same breath, you have to think of it as being a coup when, for example, last year we won for Acid against some of the biggest producers in Africa. When you go up against a Nigerian or a South African artist you'd expect numbers to be what counts. But then you get a country with a population this small and the votes you garner beat an artist from South Africa, I don't even know how that works: whether it's because Batswana vote more or it's actually the rest of the world like the songs. The more we win the more we will see our artists getting out there into the continent.
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