David Wilson

London based film-maker David Wilson was crowned Best New Director at the UK Music Video Awards last week. He also scooped Best Budget Film for Moray McLaren’s We Got Time and we figured it was about time we caught up with him to find out how the last twelve months have been.

First off, a massive congratulations for last week, we assume you’ve had a good year then…

I’ve had a really great year. Everything really kicked off with the promo I created for Moray McLaren, which was shot back in Februray. I was given the very rare opportunity to create a promo with the prep time of two months. No money for the job, but flexibility of time. This was during the months when the recession really hit, so I took the opportunity to use the gaps between projects to indulge myself, and push the animation techniques that you see in the video as far as I could. All the animations are hand-drawn by myself, and I also hand-crafted the praxinoscopes (the spinning mirrors on the top of the record players that create the animation live in camera) – just a luxury you’re very rarely allowed in the ever-shrinking time schedules that promos work with at the moment. With that investment of time and energy it really opened the doors for me, and as a result it’s allowed me the opportunity to be living the dream of creating promos for the past twelve months.

So tell us, what was the competition like?

Of an insanely high standard. I’m writing this a few days after the awards now, so be actually reflecting on who I was up against, and then actually winning the award really puts in perspective how weird I’m finding this current situation. Anthony Dickenson’s work is just beautiful. He’s consistently been producing such innovative work this year, that (although I probably shouldn’t say this) I was genuinely convinced he’d win. Although having said that all the other nominations were extremely talented, with such varied work, I feel really honored.

If you could be nominated for any other awards what would they be?

I guess the really awesome thing about awards is that it gets a whole load of different people under one roof for one evening, and sometimes sat together for a meal. So, I’d love to be nominated for any award that would give me an opportunity to sit next to Stephen Fry at an award ceremony dinner. I reckon he’d be the ultimate person to share a bottle of wine, and comments with – a hard task I know, but hey.

What can we expect next?

Well, the promo for Little Boots’ new single Earthquake is officially out today! So that’s completely fresh off the press, and I’m intrigued to see how it goes down. Hopefully well. I’m also heading off to BBC Broadcasting House a bit later on to be interviewed by Danny Wallace for BBC 6 Music, which is REALLY insanely exciting, and pretty unbelievable. I’m going to explain how the in-camera stroboscopic technique works, that’s employed both in parts of both the Moray McLaren and Little Boots promo. Hopefully I’ll make some sense! I usually like to use hand actions when explaining my process, so radio’s going to be tricky!