Jeremie Saindon: Directing the Future

According to Jeremie Saindon, the only difference between him and Musiqueplus -- Quebec's version of MTV -- is "a little hustle work and a few million dollars." By the looks of it, he may be right; after shooting interviews with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Coldplay and Pearl Jam, he's moved onto directing videos for some of Canada's hottest musical acts like We Are Wolves and Omnikrom. Add the clients like the CBC and Adidas Originals and the production of his first short film to the mix, and Saindon finds himself quite the worker bee.

Saindon had known from a young age the path his career would take. "I've wanted to direct since I first saw Stand By Me as a kid, and that's what I was going to do. At the time, I also naively thought I could, if given the chance, act better than River Phoenix, but that's another subject all told. I eventually got my first gigs doing ads for the CBC, Canada's BBC if you will, conceptualizing and directing commercials for their television programs and radio shows. They wanted a younger image for the station, which I think I gave them. Afterwards, music videos became my obsession, and now I've directed quite a few."

As always, financing greatly impacts Saindon's creative process -- something he tends to overcome by surrounding himself with likeminded individuals."The greatest challenge is always budget. Regardless off how much money's involved, it never seems like it's enough. From a music video to a commercial, the budgets always fluctuate and the challenges are always there. Regardless how big or small your sandbox is, you want to build a kick-ass castle...but in most cases I find myself looking for more sand. It's only on the shoot that everything comes to fruition and that you have to let yourself go with the flow of events and let the magic unfold in front of camera. I really love the structure versus chaos that occur in every shoot from the pre-production to the post."

A prime example of this strategy in action is his recent project for We Are Wolves. Saindon explains: "The concept is a hybrid between Houdini's Water Torture Chamber, a water dunking contest and a very minimal rendition of a show setting. The budget was $CAD20,000, and with the rental of the water tank and the high speed camera most of our budget was gone. Thankfully, like in most music video production, everybody came through and we managed on getting a whole underwater crew and my filming crew invested to get the project done. It was definitely a labour of love.The guys would perform underwater for 20-30 seconds at a time, and we ended up filming for almost 24 hours straight. It was a lot of fun though, and it was launched as Buzzclip at Musiqueplus, Quebec's answer to MTV, and has been chosen for a music video retrospective that will be unveiled this summer at The Museum Of Contemporary Art of Montreal."

Saindon also allows his creative process to organically evolve, and is more than open to reinterpretations -- in fact, he relishes the unpredictability and chaos. "I'm a very intuitive creator, and therefore I'm always open to change and to restructuring ideas and concepts. For example, I just finished an Adidas Originals shoot that was redefined completely 4 times over. My storyboard artist didn't sleep for 4 days straight, because it was literally back to the drawing board everyday until the shoot. I think in this case a lot of factors were making the final approval of the storyboards more complicated than usual. For a huge client like Adidas, a lot more people are involved in the decision making and more so, this was the first time the creative agency was working with them.  All in all though, I've grown used to the fact that everything is subject to change. The key is to continue conveying and reinforcing my aesthetic and conceptual views to the fullest and that everything stays on an inspiring and creative track."

As one would imagine, collaboration plays a key role in his work. "I have a lot of key collaborators such as Olivier Laberge (aka Twist), Jerome and Yan from Alt productions, David Valiquette an editor I work with, Exo 7 for digital branding and Christophe Collette and Benoit Beaulieu my directors of photography. All these people keep me on my toes creatively and help me propel my ideas further. I love to be challenged on my ideas and dwell on the concepts and technics involved in a particular project until we've achieved consensus and the best way to attain the wanted product. More recently, I spent 8 month writing and re-writing with my co-writer Stephan Dubreuil a short script that we recently got funding for. We had a group of professionals from the milieu to read and critic our work so we could push the envelop further. In part, thanks to them, we pushed into re-writing some big chucks of the scenario, but this was for the best of the project. Different perspectives always nuance an idea, and enable me to further develop a given project."

In case all of this wasn't enough, Saindon has grand plans for the future. "My mission is simple. I want to direct my first feature length before I'm 33 withRemstar Corp., then I'd like to branch off into the States and work with Anthony Bregman ( The Ice Storm, Thumbsucker, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind) and his production company Likely Story. I've already pitched to Mr. Bregman's Associate with a feature length script that I'd love for him to produce, the rest is in the works!"