Johan Rank: from dance music to "Chernobyl"
From the Swedish Eurodance of the 90s to the directing in one of the most successful series of today - it's all about Johan Renko, director of the famous "Chernobyl", clipmaker and musician. How can you get from regional music to Los Angeles, and how is Madonna connected with it?
1993. A young man is dancing bizarrely in a gray baggy outfit. In the background plays dance music with a repetitive chorus in the style of Snap !. The man, the author of the dance music now known as Stakka Vaughn, due to budget constraints filmed and directed the video for the song ‘Here we go’ - and in a few weeks the song would become a hit.
Now the name Stakka Bo has something to say either to the old fans of 90's dance music or to people who stumbled upon their songs on boomboxes and cassettes. After two hits and popularity, Rank suddenly leaves his personal music career and moves on to another music story - clipmaking. While shooting videos for Swedish artists, including Baxter, Madonna's wards, in 1997 Rank became the director of Madonna's video and blew up the world with a clip - Nothing Really Matters. This video work has taken the clipmaker to another level - Los Angeles shooting, Madonna at her peak, a red kimono from Jean-Paul Gauthier and a complex work with the crowd in the video itself. After such success, Renko's career as a director entered a new space stage. Filming for Kylie Minogue, New Order, Beyoncé in the coming years, work in advertising and entering the new millennium as not a performer, but a popular director.
Moreover, even without specialized education, Rank demonstrates almost virtuoso mastery of all directing techniques in his commercial works. For the Madonna clip that was mentioned before, Johan puts symmetrical mise-en-scène in which the singer's strange, unconventional dance moves look even more alien (which seems to have been the goal of the video). But for people from the post-punk New Order (clip for the song Krafty), Rank does not hesitate to move the camera during the whole video. This movement is clearly delineated by a circle, a typical technique for romantic comedies. And given the fact that the action of the video unfolds in the laundry, where two coworkers are loving each other, the contrast between technique and context is expressed only by the director's work.
So it is no surprise that Rank started directing feature films. His debut work, Downloading Nancy, completed in 2008, was selected for the Sundance Film Festival. The film, which tells a very dark story of a broken man trying to shorten his life in a macabre combination of sex, pain and relationships, was not liked by critics. They smashed "Nancy", saying that the tape was "painful", "incomprehensible", "uncomfortable". The audience left the session, and in Sweden it was written that Rank had failed. However, at least one person liked the film. And that was Vince Gilligan.
Now it is probably not necessary to explain who he is and why the previous paragraph should have been completed on the name of this person. Gilligan liked "Downloading Nancy" and called on Rank to shoot episodes for an unnamed (yet) series in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Later, Gilligan's idea would take a form of what we all now know as Breaking Bad. But Rank wanted to go to the movies. He thought that television was a dirty job (because it was the end of the 2000s and the Golden Age of television series was just unfolding), but he accepted the fateful invitation from Gilligan. To this day, he is called as the director who worked on the famous Breaking Bad.
From now on, Rank, without leaving advertising orders, began working in the television industry. He can afford to make a living from a few commercials a year. In an interview with the Swedish fashion magazine Café, Rank said that this is not the job he enjoys, but at least it allows him to pay the bills.
Currently, Johan Rank is very careful in choosing projects. According to him, working as a hired director on individual episodes of major series, lets him embody about 25% of creative freedom (the other 75% hang on showrunners, screenwriters and producers). So, after getting experience at The Walking Dead, Rank began filming either pilot series (as for the Vikings) or miniseries, where the director is responsible for the entire product (like The Last Panthers).
And of course, as in previous times, further career growth was guaranteed by grateful viewers. The Last Panthers was seen by Craig Mezin, and in 2 years they decided to shoot "Chernobyl" - a work that won 10 Emmys, BAFTA awards for "Best Miniseries", Golden Globe and brought Renka worldwide recognition. In order to find out how he directed the story of the catastrophe of 86, which is close to us, we invite you to our master class on September 19 at PMHUB.