‘It wasn’t shot the way I would have shot it,’
Anthony Mandler says of Lil Wayne footage shot before he came onboard as director. Drake’s “Miss Me” video is the third project between the rapper and director Anthony Mandler (Jay-Z, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige), following their work together on the Toronto star’s “Over” and “Find Your Love.”
According to Mandler, he and Drake are establishing an aesthetic via their collaborations. Mandler said that “Over” was about re-establishing Drake visually and “Find Your Love” was intended to make Drake the lead in story.
With “Miss Me,” however, the director said the video was a particular challenge because co-star Lil Wayne’s footage was shot prior to Mandler coming onboard.
“It wasn’t shot the way I would have shot it,” Mandler explained to MTV News. “So I had to come up with a world where I had ultimate control. I think with Drake, we’re always looking for overarching themes. We’re always looking for bigger themes to hang our hat on. With ‘Miss Me,’ what was interesting to me was not the idea of ‘miss me because Wayne was gong to jail.’ Because it was deeper than that. It was the attainability verses the unattainability. And how stars and people who are public figures are expected to sit on a platform and be grabbed and watched and photographed and controlled. Video after the jump.
