Since Major Lazers debut album Guns Dont Kill People Lazers Do in 2009, the cartoon character version of Major Lazer has appeared on the cover of every one of their albums and singles. The giant, muscle-bound, bearded character, who once existed only as a drawing, was brought to life by Terry Crews and director Brandon Dermer in the feature film style music video for "Scare Me." Looking almost identical to the character in the album art, Terry was Brandons first choice for the role and were all lucky the he was able to land him, because hes perfect for it. We talked to Brandon about this video, his admiration for Terry Crews, and the epic credit sequence at the end of the video.
Doug: How did you get involved with the project?
Brandon: My producer Max approached me with the idea of doing a live action Major Lazer video. As you can imagine, I was way into it. Not only am I fan of the music, but I'm a huge fan of the Major Lazer mythology. We were able to get my Nekrogoblikon "No One Survives" video in front of Diplo's eyes and the rest is history.
Doug: Where did the idea come from of having Terry Crews play the part of Major Lazer?
Brandon: He was our dream Major from day one. We were so lucky to get him! The guy is the absolute best. Total professional. Passionate. I could rave on about this dude for hours. Top notch gentleman.
Doug: There are several celebrities involved in this project, what was process of casting the video in general?
Brandon: We just reached out to a bunch of great actors through their management and or through personal connections.
Doug: Did you have anything to base the Major Lazer character on outside of the album covers?
Brandon: Yes. Diplo and his incredible manager sent over some literature for me to look over explaining the back story and where the mythology was headed.
Doug: Was the style of the video based on anything? The way the action is shown and the way the narrative progresses?
Brandon: I'm a huge fan of blending genres... as you can probably tell by looking at my body of work. For this video, as far as the narrative goes, I was really inspired by the 80s classic The Warriors (which also happens to be one of Terry's favorite films).
Doug: What was behind the epic credit sequence at the end of the video? Its pretty unique and uses a different song and stuff, whyd you guys put that in there?
Brandon: Going into it, I pitched Diplo the idea of having some sort of bumper at the end of the video and using a second track. As pre-production got underway and the scope of the narrative and world grew, we thought it would be super effective to push those elements even farther. Max and Josh developed a relationship with the extremely talented crew over at Laundry and they knocked it out of the park for us.
