Spotlight: Deji LaRay of Guerrilla Film Junkies

The art of directing a film or video takes passion and Deji LaRay, CEO of Guerrilla Film Junkies Productions, can tell you that first hand. One thing he’ll tell you for sure is that he implements passion with each project he takes on. After been given the opportunity to develop his craft through a close relationship with the late Eazy E’s label, Ruthless Records, Deji has merged his experience as a childhood actor and film production, to become one of the industry best new rising directors. Under his leadership, GFJ Productions has graced the screen with video projects for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, So Icey Entertainments’ OJ DA Juicemain, Legion of Doom’s DJ Brad, and many others. But it doesn’t just stop at videos. Deji and GFJ will soon debut its straight-to-dvd independent film called The Dark Party [ which stars Kadeem Hardison (A Different World) and Marcus Patrick]. With opportunities such as these coming his way, let’s just say…our television tubes hasn’t seen the last of his work.

STACKS Magazine had the pleasure to sit down with Deji and get the inside scoop on the film production, its technicalities, budgets needed, and what drives him to put out great products.

What’s the first step to producing a music video?
The first thing is to make sure this is something you want to do. It’s a tough business. People on the outside looking in might say, “I can do that”. And you probably can. But it takes more than just being able to do it technically. It takes someone with a strong passion to do it. I have people that call me and say I’m coming out to L.A. for 2 or 3 months and I’m gonna try this thing out. This is not something that you try out. It should be something that you live. Step 1, is to make sure this is something that you really want to do. Number 2, which is very important I think, is to familiarize yourself with every aspect of film making. Don’t get stuck on wanting to do one thing. If you want to direct, all good directors need to know a little about editing. That helps you with shot composition. It helps you with the flow of the story that you are creating. If you know how it’s going to be cut together, after you’re done directing it, then that helps you. Writing, directing, editing, producing…just trying to familiar yourself with all aspects of film making is really going to help you. You don’t have to know everything. Just knowing a little bit about everything, that’s really important.

What’s the lowest and highest budget you’ve worked for?
That’s a good question. What’s funny is …people will call you all the time and say how much does it cost to do a video. That’s like saying how much is a car. But they don’t know. They think all videos are the same, but they are not the same. Budgets are really important. It tells you what you can do in the video, how big you can go, how small you can get, and what shots you can get. It pretty much the very beginning factor that tells you how much work you going to have to put into your video. In the beginning, we shot videos for next to nothing. You get yourself and you get a friend who wants to do the same thing you want to do. You get a XL2, you get a Panasonic HVX and you go out and shoot a video. That’s when you start learning how to edit. That’s when you learning from your mistakes. Those videos go from $500. You buy the tape stock. Everybody is working for free cause their hungry and you just starting out. When you start getting into videos that are going to air on network television, videos that need to be shot on35 millimeter film or high end HD, that’s when you start talking about higher numbers. One thing about our company is that we have some good relationships with a lot of equipment and crew. So we can do a lot of things that a lot of companies may be more expensive on their end…but on our end we have a lot more relationships. So we can do things for a lot cheaper. A good budget for an artist that is signed to a label, it can range from 25,000 to 100,000. It all depends on if you going to shut down busy intersections. You got to hire all the police in the world. You got to pay the city to shut down the intersection. If you want to rent out a restaurant they might charge you a bunch of money to rent it out. They usually may make 10,000 every weekend. So know you’re taking that over [the restaurant] so you have to pay them to rent it out. But if you use locations that aren’t as expensive and use smaller crews, you can get away with videos for less than 10,000 if you have to. It varies. It goes from next to nothing, to all the way up to a few 100,000. It all depends on the concept.

Do you come up with concepts? do you collaborate with the artist? Do you charge to develop the concept?

Laughs…No I don’t charge [ but I might need to start]. Usually the director will come up with the concept. It’s pretty much my vision. I’m not the type of director that’s “This is how it has to be.” They’re hiring to do a job. You want to get their input especially if the artist is a creative person. They have to be because they’re creating the music. So I get the song from the label or artist, write the concept or treatment, submit that back to the label or artists. If they love it, then were good. Then that’s what we shoot. Sometime, they might have some ideas [what if we did this in the video instead of this]. Then you look back at the treatment and say how can I incorporate his ideas to this treatment. And then you sit down and combine it together and come up with something that both parties are happy with. In some cases, I’m 100% creating the concept. In other cases, we sit down and work with the artist and work on the concept together.

What happens when a label or artist does not like the final product?

I’ll be honest with you. That’s the only time when you get a little nervous. I don’t really get nervous. But that is your project. It is your baby. People don’t understand that you spend day and weeks and sometime months and pre-production into this music video. You put and all this sweat and energy in it and then you got to show it to people that will be your biggest critics. The label or the artist is going to be your biggest critic. Fortunately up and to this point we haven’t had a video where somebody hasn’t
liked. Like I said before, one thing we do we have good relationships. We’ll take a budget that look on screen two to three times as to what that budget is. So if you give me $20,000 and I shoot a video for you, it will look like $50,000. So it’s going to be a very small chance that you’re not going to like the product to what you see. Unless you shoot a video for $20,000 and it look like 10…its not going to happen.

Is there a certian etiquette for artists when they come to set?

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There is no etiquette when it comes to the artist. There should be an etiquette. But there’s not. On our end, we are trained to prepare for the worst. We’ve shot videos where the artists has been late… extremely late to the point to where you have to start cutting out scenes and changing shots. Just changing the whole way you’ve had everything planned and try to scale things down. We’ve had cases where the artists have come on set and just been rude. That’s happened before as well. We should have etiquette. But there isn’t. Keep in mind these are people who are paid to create music and the music comes from a reflection of themselves. This is not corporate America where they have to dress up in a suit and a tie and have to go in and put on their good face and good shoes. This is somebody that get up when they want to get up, go to sleep when they want to go to sleep. Their job is to be creative. So their job isn’t to come to set and act right. It should be. But it’s unfortunately not. We definitely work with some artists that have great etiquette. When I say great etiquette, I show up early. Stevie Stone you know who you are…they change into all of their wardrobe and outfits before you ask them to, they fired up and about to shoot. Those are the artists that realize that were doing this video shoot for them. We’re not doing it for us and not anybody else. We are doing it for them. So when they realize that, they create their own etiquette.

Which do you prefer more, music videos or feature films?

What’s funny…it’s always been feature films. I love to tell stories. A beginning, a middle, and an end. I love that. But I also love music. So I pretty much think that’s where the whole video directing came about. Being involved in film, loving music and you put those together and you have music videos. So one thing I think about myself and my style. I always tend to try to shoot it with a cinematic look to it. Something that would have a great story most of the time. Unless the budget doesn’t allow for that, sometime with narrative and stories, you’re hiring actors and having more locations. You have to take more time because you are trying to tell a story. With the performance videos, that means it’s all about the look of the artist and performance. But with most of the videos, I try to have a story line.

How do someone contact you for acting gigs or to submit tracks for scoring?

You generally don’t put out ads for music to score the movie. You figure out what type of mood you want the scene to be, and then you figure out what artist or group of artists you like, you go through their catalog and you contact them. But if an artist knows that there’s a production company that does a bunch of movies, your best bet is to send them a cover letter and a few samples of tracks. Us particularly, our email address is gfjproductions@gmail.com. We are doing scoring right now for the film we just shot, The Dark Party, and we are going to be doing more films. So if an artist does want to submit tracks for consideration, then that’s the place to send it to.

How does the market differ between Los Angeles versus Atlanta?

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I don’t think it does differ. Once you get to a certain level in the film industry, it really becomes all about relationships. It’s so true. It becomes all about relationships. It becomes all about who you working with, representation and things like that. When you’re starting out its all about word of mouth, you grinding, you getting out there
making a name for yourself. Keep in mind, within the film industry there’s many different aspects. Shooting a music video is completely different than making a movie. Shooting a music video is shorter. You do it and you done. With a movie you’ll be working on it for six, eight, ten months or whatever. Atlanta is a little easier to get things done. Los Angeles is so used to it. That’s the film capitol. In Los Angeles, if you going to shoot on the street corner, you better have a permit. You better go down to the permit office. You better fill out all ten thousand pages you need to fill out in advance. Pay your fees. And make sure you’re authorized to do what you’re doing. In Atlanta, it’s a little bit different. Not saying you just go to a street corner and start shooting. They are a little bit more acceptable to bending over backwards to get what you need to get done. In LA, its more this is the rule to abide by. In Atlanta, it’s just get it done. It’s a little bit more informal. So, it’s fun. That’s why I like shooting out here.

Any last words for our readers?

It is a lot of hard work. It really depends on what you’re doing. If your goal is to become a grip or gaffer, that’s a lot of hard work. But it’s a lot of hard manual work. You come to set. You get there before anybody else. You’re the back bone of the production. The rigging need to be done. The lights need to be hung. If your goal is to be the producer or director, that’s different hard work. That’s more of a draining creativity. It’s a creative process that you have to work on. Which mean you might be up for a period of 72 hours creatively before you start to shoot. If you’re a producer, you’re trying to get things together contracts, making sure everybody is hired. It’s a lot of pre-production work. But the advice I give is you really have to be built for this. Because it is at times stressful. It is a lot of hard work. But the reward is the finish product. Whenever we spend two or three weeks in pre-production on a music video. Whenever we on set for 16 hours in a single day two days straight. Whenever we in the post-production room editing for 16 hours a day for a week. Once everything is finish and you’re sitting around and watching your project on a 1080p high-def monitor and it looks good, you forget about all the hard work that went into making it…and when people like it, that’s an even greater award.

In addition, Deji gave a little advice to those who have an idea for a possible screenplay:

Here’s video footage (Part 1 & Part 2) of our interview with Deji.

To view videos by GFJ Productions, check out DJ Brad’s “In Da Building” below and more videos on their Youtube channel!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN16KcW-XM4&hl=en&fs=1]