My Evolution from Music Producer to Filmmaker
by Dirty South
The Grammy-nominated electronic artist lifts the curtain on his new movie and soundtrack “With You”
Dragan Roganović has an eye—and ear—for the artistic. During the past decade, he’s found success in the form of musical expression as DJ/producer Dirty South—his remixes have been nominated for two Grammy awards. Now the Serbian-Australian is expanding his repertoire with visual accompaniment.
I recall walking through the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas with Dirty South prior to a headlining gig a few years ago; he would pause periodically to admire and snap photos of the resort’s multimedia art, with a particular interest in trees, for a project he said he was working on. This impulse to combine music and visual imagery has culminated in the release of his acclaimed new LP, With You, and an accompanying film of the same name. The project’s tagline: ‘See the album, hear the movie.’ Here, Dirty South explains his artistic evolution to Cuepoint, in his own words.
—Deanna Rilling
Dirty South: I went off and started learning about filmmaking: my new love, my new passion. I took some time off, but I had to come back to the music because I still need to have my music job. I went back and made the album and when I finished 10 tracks, that inspired me to have the idea for the movie as well because of my love of filmmaking. In the back of my mind, I’m making cinematic music. And when I finished the album [With You], that’s what inspired making it into the movie… I felt like I scored a movie before I made it.
I was kind of bored of music for a little while. Took a little break, found new inspiration in film and came back to music. I felt like I wanted to make something a little different. I needed to go up. I didn’t want to make just dance music only for the dancefloor. I wanted to make music for the sake of making songs. That was really the idea behind even the very first idea of the album. I was collaborating with some really cool people, pulling their energy and their ideas. I think we sort of had a new vibe and we understood each other and think we came up with some cool shit.
I didn’t want to go and try to get people that are already famous. I wanted to really work from the indie ground up and work with people that are fresh and haven’t been messed up by the industry. The new guys and all that stuff. And it’s really cool to work with fresh people. That’s all we cared about: just making music. It wasn’t about how famous somebody is or how many Facebook followers they have. That’s why we worked really quickly as well. We did a track a day. It was very fluid and kind of organic. I had music ideas that came to me. We’d write lyrics together, they send ideas and put it together, and it was pretty much a day of tracks. So the album came together very quickly. I think it took three months for the album to be done.
When I did step out of the formula, I felt I could do whatever I wanted. I wasn’t restricted to anything. When you make dance music just for the club, you kind of have that at the back of your mind. It has to have enough energy. You’re working on build-ups and drops and all kinds of stuff whereas, when I said, No, I’m not going to do that, I just made songs. And I think that was kind of like having wings. I can do whatever I want, I can fly now. Whatever kind of sound I want to make. I felt like a pelican! Yeah, I’m a pelican. You can’t stop me!
I think just the fact that I worked with all these fresh people was probably the most unexpected bit. There’s also the songs themselves. The thing with a song like “Tunnel Vision” is probably the most unexpected song of the album. And I think a lot of us freaked about by it—but in a good way. We even got that song on the new FIFA game, which is pretty awesome. Songs like “The Unknown” with FMLYBND, again, is very unexpected. Kind of low and very emotional. I think songs like that are going to freak people out in a good way and I really can’t wait.
[Impressions of With You have] been 99.79 percent positive. I think there were one or two people who said, What is this? But everyone else I think they were surprised, but also very happy that I did an album like this because they were basically just listening to music. They didn’t care that it wasn’t straight-up dancefloor because it is electronic still. It is electronic and there are dance elements to it, but it wasn’t made for the dancefloor. People didn’t care. People were just like, Hey, this is really emotional, people love this. And we also like it that it’s fresh in a time like this. It was really nice to see all the comments.
The movie idea came from the music. It’s a long story with a mindfuck—to put it simply… To me, it was always about interpreting the music in a different way. That’s why I made the album because I saw it in a specific way and that’s why I made the film for it. So when you hear a song and then you see a music video for it, you all of a sudden understand the song in a new way. This is kind of the same concept, except it was for the whole album. You get to experience the full album and kind of see the story of each song.
I made the 10 tracks and then I did the script. But then I was going through the script and I was missing songs. For example, “Tunnel Vision” became a song that was inspired by a scene in the movie. So I kind of went backwards and scored a movie. So I made the song called “Tunnel Vision” because it was a song that made me feel like driving. And there was a scene in the movie that was all their driving. It was like a journey. So that one definitely was a song that was inspired by the movie itself.
I think its a much deeper way of making music, because now you’re talking about stories. And like I said, not everyone can do it and not everyone is interested in doing it. It really comes down to the person that’s making the music. And obviously some guys feel the deeper connection to music than just making pop. And that’s how I feel as well. As that’s why I went ahead and made music that I felt like had more depth to it.
To me, it was always about evolving. I think to perform as an artist is to evolve and try different things. And growing up. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I think it’s very important that you do different stuff because people can grow with you. To grow with you as an artists and to see that you’re able to do different things rather than doing the same old thing—which actually gets boring, to me, anyway. I think it’s all about evolving and growing and that’s what this album is.
We just got into a film festival in New York with this film, the CBGB festival. We had an amazing screening at the Landmark Theater with around 300 people, it was amazing. The response was just incredible.
I’m seriously getting into filmmaking. It’s not really a gimmick. We’re already preparing for the next film. And the next one is going to be a feature film. It’s something different than With You. It’s more of a crime movie based on real events beginning filming in March next year.
I will decide as I’m making the film and making the music for it if I feel like it’s a Dirty South album, then it will be there. If I feel it’s more of soundtrack, then that’s what it will be. I feel like maybe I’ll bring in other artists and work with them for a compilation, then that’s what it will be. It just depends. It could be any one of those three things. That’s the beauty of it. When you’re in full control, you can do whatever you want.
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Follow Deanna Rilling on Twitter @deannarilling.
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