Often times, music video directors have to capitalize on what the situation offers them in order to be successful. On the music video for “BBQ Sauce” by Sean Price featuring Pharoahe Monch, director Todd Angkasuwan was able to capitalize on the on the impatience of Sean Price and the natural unathleticism of his actors in order to achieve the feeling he was after. With plenty of Lavoris nearby, we talked to Todd about the process behind the video, 1950's television, and why it's always a good to bring a green screen to a shoot.

Doug: Where did the concept for this video come from?

Todd: It’s a funny story because they sent me the song, and I was sort of familiar with the song already because I had already listened to the entire Mic Tyson album. I went to re-visit it and I was like, “Oh yeah, this is the one with Pharoahe Monch, the one where there’s a lot of n-words being flung around.” I’m thinking there’s really no defined concept as far as that song. It’s pretty much Sean Price doing what he does and of course Pharoahe Monch on the hook, with a very unconventional kind of hook. I’m thinking, “What do I do with this?” I’m trying to think of something that would make sense. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I was overthinking it. I was trying to listen to the lyrics, I was trying to follow some type of mode of thought in terms of storyline or something that might fit the lyrics, but the lyrics are kind of all over the place. The only thing that was kind of a focus point as far as the song is concerned is the recurring words in the chorus. I was thinking, “What if I did something that was totally ironic?” Something that totally contrasted the words in the lyrics, a lot of n-words and this and that. Of course throughout the song, Sean Price is throwing not too many clean words that are going out there as well. I thought, “What if we set it in a very lily-white kind of setting, a 1950 'Leave it to Beaver'-type of vibe?” When he does say, “That’s that nigga,” that’s that kind of term of endearment in the sense that, “That’s that dude, that’s the guy, that’s the man.” That’s the way I interpreted it, and I think that’s the way they conveyed it. I thought, “Why don’t we make him ‘the man’, almost like the most interesting man in the world?” Even in the treatment I wrote, “Let’s just do this, make him the most interesting man in the world, thug edition.” It was putting Sean Price in this world that you would never realistically see him in. I thought that would be funny and it would almost make it a little bit easier to digest the n-words being uttered over and over again because we’re trying to catch it from a comedic standpoint, an ironic standpoint.

Doug: Do you think the humor that you used softens some of that a little bit?

Todd: Yeah, I think it really does. I think if we tried to make it a hard video, or more of a serious video, it wouldn’t be as comfortable to watch, or as easy to digest. I went that route to soften the blow. Obviously, I’ve done a lot of hip-hop videos, so I’ve dealt with the language before in the past. To me, for some reason, it felt more pronounced. I also knew that there’s going to be a wide-ranging audience in terms of people who may potentially view this, and I want everyone to take something away from it and not feel like it’s too controversial. That does lighten it a little.

Doug: What was the process was with coming up with each of these scenarios that you find Sean in, like the hockey game and NASA. What was that process of finding those locations?

Todd: I’m really into comedy. I’m always random when I come up with stuff - not even pertaining to music videos, just I’m walking the street and I come up with these random ideas or a random thought. For instance, I was at my kid’s science fair ceremony. I was just telling my wife - and it was in a school gymnasium - there was a lot of decorum and everything, out of the blue I just came up with this thought, “What if he didn’t get a trophy and I just picked up this aluminum chair and just threw it across the gym?” You know, little random things like that I just think about for some reason, so that mode of thought is kind of what went into this, just random nonsense. As far as the scenario, a big influence was Wes Anderson, particularly Rushmore. There’s a montage in Rushmore that helped influence the direction and the aesthetic that I went with. Then I just came up with stuff that just popped in my head, and I just thought it would be funny to do the first few scenarios, like the hockey thing, or sports, that are known to be predominantly a white sport - the tennis, the regatta, sailing. I just tried to come up with things that are just the opposite of what Sean might normally partake in.

Doug: There’s not really a question, but I just love the fact that he gets his Jeopardy winnings in a briefcase.

Todd: Let me tell you a story about that though. The thing with Sean Price is he’s very unpredictable as a person. You just don’t know what you’re going to get. You’re in the shoot with him, you don’t know what mood he’s going to be in. I had no idea what to expect. When we shot that, I actually had a portable green screen that I brought with me just in case. In fact, that’s what made the video. If I hadn’t brought that, this video would not have happened. I thought, “Let’s just shoot some green screen stuff that I could just maybe superimpose different things, and it will be easier that way.” Originally, when I directed him on set, I was like, “Imagine you’re holding up a trophy.” So he was actually trying to hold up a trophy, but a lot of times in post-production when you’re editing, other ideas pop up and things start to progress in a different direction. I was playing around with a little 3D model I had of a briefcase of money. I’m like, “Why don’t we put this in his hand?” I had him hold me up the briefcase before I even came up with the Jeopardy idea. I thought, “How am I going to make context out of this? How would this make sense?” I thought, “You know what, let me just snag this Jeopardy stuff.” It kind of worked out that way, and it was more absurd because he’s holding the actual briefcase on the Jeopardy set.

Doug: When you shot him with the green screen, you didn’t have your clips ready? You just kind of had him screw around?

Todd: I had some idea. I did put it on the treatment some clips, and I pulled some archive footage just to give him the idea what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do something. There were some things that I knew I wanted to do for sure, and some things I just loosely knew, “As long as I get him to do this movement, I know I can fit something in there.” Yes, a lot of it came after I got him. After I got him, it was a for sure thing. I knew what I had. I had a definitive thing. I had Sean Price raising his hands up a certain way. I knew that I wanted him to be like on a Johnny Carson talk show, that was one thing for sure, I’m going to have him sit down and act like he was talking to Johnny Carson. I knew I wanted him to do that. I think that was probably the only one for sure I knew I wanted. I had everything ready to go and I knew I wanted to do that. Everything else, I built it off of him.

Doug: How was he, as far as in front of the green screen, as an actor? You talk about his mood. Was that at a good level for that?

Todd: I was lucky because throughout the shoot, he was up and down. Sometimes, if we were taking too long to do another setup, he’ll start to get a little bit moody like, “I’ve got to go.” The way I prepped him was, “This is the last setup. This is the last thing we’ve got to do.” I think that brought his mood up a little bit, because he knew he was about to be done. He was able to let go more. He knew this was it, this was the last take, so let me just give him what he needs. I just let him do his thing. The way he stood up for that Nobel Peace prize podium shot, he just did it on his own. He had his tie and just kind of straightened it out, looked at the camera. I just had him do a variety of different things just so I knew I had some options to work with.

Doug: What about the casting process, particularly in the scenes where he’s with the family. What were you looking for with the people? Were you looking for the whitest, most unathletic people you could find?

Todd: That unathleticism, that was one of those things that I didn’t really plan. On set one of the kids wasn’t very athletic anyway, so I was like, “Let me just build upon that and just make it seem like they have no skills.” Again, it was going back to trying to just play off a stark contrast. With Sean, he's achieved all these things, but yet, his kids are just like the opposite. He’s trying to teach them, and instill these different things in them. At least, that’s kind of the backstory I’m hoping that people would gather from it. That’s what I love about sometimes just having things happen spontaneously. That was one of those things where I’m like, “Just don’t catch the ball, act like you can’t catch the ball,” because he really couldn’t catch the ball for a while. I was like, “Why fight it? Let’s embrace that, and little boy, you don’t catch it either.” That’s what I was going for. In terms of the look of the family, yes, I was trying to go for that Leave it to Beaver and My Two Dads - that era of TV, going for that look.

Doug: What was the process behind achieving those looks?

Todd: First of all, obviously I looked at a lot of videos from TV shows from that era. I knew I was going to shoot in New York and I was like, “Man, I need to find a house.” I was going to start putting out casting notices and other bulletins and posts to try to find a house. It turns out that Dru Ha, the CEO of Duck Down, that was the house that he grew up in. We went to his mom’s house to do that. He’s like, “Oh, I got the perfect house. It’s the house I grew up in.” That helped the process. We got there and there were some things, of course, that are still modern amenities and things around the house that would be pretty jarring, so I thought the black and white, making it black and white will bring it back down to that level or bring it back to that kind of ‘50s vibe.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.