Part II with Young Guru - Jay-Z's Producer #202

All photos via Rik Cordero (1,2,3,4)

The second part of Young Guru's industry talks didn't disappoint. If you didn't read about the last talk I went to then let me bring you up to speed. Basically Jay-Z's right hand man/long time producer Young Guru runs these industry talks for young musicians/filmmakers/producers. He pretty much brings together all the people at the forefront of each medium for us to learn. Last time it was focused on producers, this time it was focused on filmmakers. He bought along some of the sickest guys in the industry - Coodie & Chike, Jason Goldwatch, and Rik Cordero. Coodie & Chike are known for their collaborations with Kanye West, particularly with his first album. Their rise to fame was when they made Kanye's music video for Through the Wire. Ever since then their productions have got bigger and bigger. Rik Cordero is the newest to the game and got his start following the Youtube distribution route. He makes sick short films. From what he previewed he's doing some really crazy stuff with Nike. Jason Goldwatch is someone to watch. He's done films for Eminem, Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, and Pharrell. At the end of the talk he previewed some of his work he was doing with Jay Electonica. Everyone in the room sat there gasping. Let's just say it's going to raise the bar for filmmaking. Coodie & Chike even said to him after it screened, "You know what you're sitting on right now, right? Like this is it. The is the next shit! We saw this with Kanye 10 years ago. It's the same thing, the same feeling. This is going to be big man." Jason nodded in agreement. I'm pretty stoked I got to see the future.

There was a lot of talk about how filmmakers are to distribute their work these days. The general consensus was that the internet is your vehicle. Traditionally most of them judged the sucess of one of their music videos, or films, by whether it was played on MTV. Now the success of a film is based on YouTube views. They also talked about the relevance of being educated for this career choice, all of which came to the conclusion that it was not as important that everyone made it out to be. The biggest piece of advice they gave was "Just go out there and do it". Word.

☮ Morgs