A Conversation With Filmmaker Vincent Haycock

In the current episode of the Telekom Electronic Beats podcast, former TEB editor-in-chief Derek Opperman talks to director and photographer Vincent Haycock, who has been involved in projects with Paul McCartney, Johnny Depp, Florence, and the Machine and Lana Del Rey, among others. The 41-year-old Californian’s next project is the release of the film of the Gen-Z initiative #whatwedonext together with Billie Eilish and Deutsche Telekom. In his opinion, all generations can learn a lot from each other in their diversity, since they all grew up under very different conditions. While today’s young digital natives were born with social media, he spent his childhood without the internet and networked technologies. In an interview, he reveals that in his school days, punk rock was his personal salvation from numerous pitfalls of the small town. The almost brutal emotionality that unfolds in punk culture continues to influence his artistic work and his life, which has hardly followed any precise paths, to this day.

Besides working with numerous celebrities, he regularly casts people on the street for his works. When creating his films and music videos, Haycock likes to dive deep into the real-life and emotional world of his protagonists and thus create unique images. Corona has completely turned the advertising and music film industry, in which he works very successfully, upside down. In this sense, he also talks about his individual privileges and how he would like to behave in order to positively influence the future. The fact that the world is currently going through phases of enormous pain in many places occupies him on the one hand, but on the other hand he also looks at the potential of many good developments and how we can all internalize them together.

Published August 13, 2020.