His real name is Aremu Qudus but he’s popularly known as Director K, a shareholder in the Priorgold pictures, a motion pictures productions outfit. Director K happens to be one of the sought after music video directors rocking the scene right now. He dropped out of school to chase his dreams as a video director. He started shooting videos with an iphone6 about 4 years ago.
He had no one that could put him through video production so he pushed himself and became good at what he does. Dir k’s big break came after he shot Case by Teni and a follow up with Skibii’s. Sensima. Dir K happens to be inspired by Meji Alabi, a London based video director with a difference. He recently had an interview with City People Entertainment Reporter PRECIOUS POMAA. In this interview, he talked about his career and how video directing started for him.
Tell us about yourself?
My name is Aremu Qudus, I dropped out of school.
Why did you drop out of school?
I dropped out of school to chase my dreams.
What exactly is the dream you wanted to chase?
I will not call it a dream per say, I felt school was time-wasting for me. I went to school because of my parent. And at a point, I realized that was not what I wanted. Then during that period, I learnt how to shoot videos with my iPhone, so I decided to focus on it and see what it will bring forth.
How long have you been in the industry?
For 4 years now.
In those 4 years, what are the challenges you’ve faced?
I will not call it a challenging phase of life but a fun phase of life. Not like there were no challenges, but it was just an artiste feeling so smart as to ride on my intelligence because I was so into their talent so they got to use and dump me.
When you say use and dump what exactly do you mean by that?
Well, at that time I felt that we could all grow together so I was always working for them for free but when they got money they moved on to someone else.
How do you get inspiration to write your scripts?
That’s quite hard to say. But most times it’s from the song, just a particular line from the song. Like Fireboy’s Jealous what inspired the idea was when he said just one taste and want more, wetin you give me is not enough. That line inspired the treatment. So just you know, one word can spark an idea.
So you are a school dropout, but you speak good English, how did you achieve that?
(Laughs). I don’t even know how to answer that question. So are you saying that school dropouts don’t speak good English? Well, it is normal, I am human we learnt all we know right from when we were kids. We have been speaking English right from when we were small.
Have you ever watched a video and then you are like I could do better?
Yes, but that was then because right now I don’t think I have such time to go after peoples work feeling like I should have done better. I feel it’s different now because at that time when I was still shooting with my iPhone and was not really into the production thing when I watch videos am always like I could have done better if I shoot the video. But then I realized that whatever video you see, there is a reason why it is like that and reason being that you might not end up finding out what it is. I had a video I shot one time that a lot of things went wrong and it was not my fault but people who knew the main reason cared but those who didn’t know cared less, so I stopped judging peoples works and feeling like I could have done better.
How long did you shoot with an iPhone?
I think a year or two I can’t really remember.
How did you start directing with an iPhone?
One thing I understand about life is, or rather I feel this should be advice. If you are at the stage where you feel you can’t do things to make you successful, don’t stress yourself and don’t be worried, just pray to God and God will send what you will actually do your way.
I used to repair phones, then my friend came to me suggesting that we learn how to handle the camera and I didn’t buy the idea saying my brain couldn’t carry that, so I looked for a way to take away the conversation. Time went on and I was always on my iPhone.
At that time there was nothing I couldn’t do with my iPhone. I had this girl I was dating then so I did a Picture Collage for her and I added a song to it, sent it to her and she was so happy. After that, she sent a screenshot of her friends saying the liked it and they would appreciate if I do something like that for them.
I did and more people called in for same, this actually inspired me to try to record with my iPhone and try editing with it and see what it will look like. I started by shooting a video for one of my friends that was an artiste. At that time I had no idea how to edit or how to shoot, I knew nothing about video production.
I had no one I was looking up to and no one to inspire me, it was God that sent the idea to me. All I did was watch a music video and I knew it was not the artistes direct voice, he was singing to a song and the song was laid under the video for it to be sounding like this, so I told him I was ready. We shot the video, then I was using an Iphone6 16gig.
I got home and edited the video. After editing I was about exporting the video then I was told I had no memory on my iPhone so I can’t export, so I had to go to my camera roll, deleted a lot of things, thinking that I have everything on the App I used to edit, unluckily for me everything was gone and it was really heartbreaking. I even felt like crying because I was the only one who got to watch that video.
Even the artiste didn’t get to watch that video. Funny thing was that after I finished editing the video I texted the artiste saying his video was one in town that he could come over to watch the next day. When he came the next day he saw nothing to watch so I just told him I had deleted the video by mistake. He then said we should shoot another one and we did.
How do you get your jobs, do you get to put a call to the artiste or they call you?
I don’t text for jobs, they reach out to me based on the videos they have seen. But there are few works I reached out for because I felt like I was the only one that could do justice to the video. Fireboy’s jealous, I called for it. Even I was not sure I really wanted to work on that song though but they replied and were like Oya lets do this and that was it.
Which video do you think was your best that shot you to limelight?
Well, the video that brought me to limelight is Case by Teniola. That video changed a lot of things in my life, and then Sensima by Skibi sealed the whole deal.
You are a very creative video director how do you get inspired to write your scripts?
I feel its that way because I didn’t learn from anybody, so whatever idea I am working on is fresh from my head. I have nothing in my head that someone has said this is how you should do it and this is how you shouldn’t.
Honestly people tell me to get people to write my Treatment for me but I don’t buy it, if you send me a song and I don’t have an idea about the song, I’ll rather tell you than letting anyone write for me. The thing is I just try to do what people can connect to and something different, that’s why I make sure that no matter what I am working on people get to watch more than one time before they understand where I am coming from.
When you were coming into the industry, what did you have in mind?
Actually, when I was coming into the industry I felt there was a problem I needed to fix, which was the idea behind how we shoot. I look at foreign videos in a very different way from how we shoot. People always say they had access to all the equipment but then what pissed me off in a good way was when Meji Alabi came to Nigeria and shot Bad Energy in Nigeria.
I can’t remember how many times I watched that video but that video put me into depression. I was so thinking that how on earth can you shoot this video in Nigeria and you make Nigeria look so good? So from that moment I felt I could make a difference, so it is no magic, it is just knowing how to put things together and make it look right in your camera.
So basically Meji Alabi inspired you into making your videos look different?
Yes, big shout to Meji Alabi he is a big inspiration, he has done a lot of things in the industry that people don’t pay attention to. I would like people to take their time to study his works because he is really amazing.
Why don’t you shoot back to back, you happen to be very selective?
I know people are worried I don’t get to shoot back to back as I used to shoot before, there is a reason behind it. When I started shooting I didn’t shoot because of money. I am a very broke person, I don’t have money and the reason I don’t have money is because I make sacrifices a lot. Like now if you pay me money for a video, trust me everything you pay me is going into the production.
I don’t think of putting money for myself because my conscience will judge me if I get to see the video and I know I could have done better. I take risks a lot. Why I am not shooting back to back is because having to shoot back to back is not a good thing for a director and I don’t want to find myself in a position whereby I will be repeating the same idea on different videos.
I am a director because I want to sell an artiste’s brand. So now I am taking my time on each project. I am working to make sure whatever video I am putting out there is worth it regardless of who the artiste is. So just expect that whatever video is coming from me will be Top notch.
Why did you say it is not right for a video director to shoot back to back?
I had this issue when I was shooting back to back. It affected me and it got to a stage that I had no idea coming from my head. They sent me loads of songs and I couldn’t come up with any content for any of the songs, I felt like I don blow, make I just dey shoot all the video dey go, but I swear it is killing and in this industry they are so quick to move on to the next person, once you are gone you are gone. It might be different for other people but for me it is really not healthy and it didn’t work for me. It took me a long while to recover. I can’t see myself shooting back to back again.
