American Cinematographer - March 2013 - 14

Short Takes

Die Antwoord’s “Freek” Show
By Iain Stasukevich

The jury for the Music Videos Competition at the 2012 Plus
Camerimage festival presented the Best Music Video award to Die
Antwoord’s “I Fink U Freeky.” Shot by cinematographer Melle Van
Essen, the video translates a number of American photographer
Roger Ballen’s still-life installations into dynamic moving images.
Van Essen has a lot of documentary credits to his name, but
they don’t look like most documentaries. For instance, take Mama
Calle, a stylized doc from 1991 about the street children of Mexico
City. “Some people think that once the cameras are rolling, you’re a
fly on the wall, but I don’t believe that,” he says. “I find it interesting
to give a documentary a signature look, and that all depends on how
you bond with the people you’re filming.”
In 2005, Van Essen collaborated with Ballen and Dutch director Saskia Vredeveld on the narrative short Memento Mori, an extension of Ballen’s Shadow Chamber, a collection of black-and-white
photographs taken in an abandoned women’s prison in South Africa.
Meanwhile, South African rave-rappers Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser of
Die Antwoord were using Ballen’s flash-blasted tableaux as inspiration for the kitschy “documentary fiction” in their music, live performances and music videos. Early last year, Die Antwoord asked Ballen
to co-direct (with Ninja) the video for “I Fink U Freeky,” and Ballen
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March 2013

asked Van Essen to shoot it.
On his previous films, Ballen had found himself working more
as an art director; he was happy to shoot stills with his Rolleiflex
6008 while Vredeveld directed and Van Essen lit and operated the
motion-picture camera. “I was most concerned with the objects filling the screen and how they related to each other,” recalls Ballen.
For “I Fink U Freeky,” Ninja focused on directing himself and the
other performers while Ballen focused on the animals — “rats,
ducks, bugs, all those things” — and their behavior.
Van Essen was tasked with translating Ballen’s work into
motion pictures: a pair of hands extending out of a bathtub, clutching a duck (Bathtub, 2011); a woman’s head in a cage with a white
snake curled around it (Caged, 2011); hooded bodies draped with
muddy newspaper (Retreat, 2009).
When Van Essen landed at Tambo International, he was
escorted to Marcia’s Studios, “this weird warehouse in the suburbs
of JoBurg where some strange people were painting the walls and
making the sets,” he recalls. “I have to say, there was great energy.
Even I was painting things on the walls!” Ballen and art director Ben
Crossman created a total of seven separate installations for the
shoot.
Van Essen hoped to shoot “I Fink U Freeky” on film or
with the Arri Alexa, but the project’s budget led him to choose
a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. (He used Canon 16-35mm f2,

American Cinematographer

Photos courtesy of the filmmakers.

Cinematographer
Melle Van Essen
brought American
photographer
Roger Ballen’s still
photographs to
life for Die
Antwoord’s “I
Fink U Freeky,”
winner of Best
Music Video at
the 2012 Plus
Camerimage
festival.

American Cinematographer - March 2013

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