Grammy-nominated Nova Scotian director on creating music videos with a social impact
Andy Hines has directed the videos for Logic's 1-800-273-8255 and Big Sean's One Man Can Change the World
Nova Scotian director Andy Hines still gets emotionally overwhelmed remembering the day his Grammy-nominated music video 1-800-273-8255 went online last summer.
The heart-wrenching reactions multiplied into the dozens — and then hundreds — in the days and weeks that followed as viewers tearfully spoke about managing their own suicidal feelings.
On Sunday, the Avondale, N.S., director will learn whether 1-800-273-8255 wins best music video at this year's Grammy Awards. The song, written by rapper Logic and featuring Khalid and pop singer Alessia Cara of Brampton, Ont., has itself been an impetus for conversations about suicide.
The video, which stars actor Don Cheadle as the teen's disapproving father, Luis Guzman as his high school coach and Matthew Modine in a bit role, has amassed nearly 195 million views on YouTube.
Working to make a statement
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the U.S. says the song also led to a surge of phone calls to its support services after its release and those figures held steady in the months that followed.
Around the same time, he was introduced to Logic through executives at Def Jam Recordings. The two instantly became friends and began collaborating on a number of projects.
A couple of years later, the rapper approached Hines with the basic foundation of 1-800-273-8255. He encouraged the director to run with the idea.
Stories come from the heart, Hines says
Hines started to reflect on his own experiences, the lives of people he knew, and tried to put those thoughts onto paper.
"I write at night. When everyone is sleeping I write these stories. They are coming from my heart," he said.
One of his primary goals is to reject the established stereotypes and expectations of the hip-hop genre by telling human stories. He pushes his artists to feature women of colour in their videos and refuses to glamorize guns.
"People try and get me to put guns in my videos sometimes and I just tell them the guns didn't show up [on set]," he said.
His next project is with rapper Classified, a fellow Nova Scotian, which he says will address ongoing issues affecting Indigenous women across Canada. He hopes difficult conversations will continue to be stoked through music videos, a medium he believes has largely faded in relevance over recent years.
"The format is dead," Hines said.
"So if you're not doing something different with it, it's just going to be content, which there's a lot of these days.
"I don't want to just be making stuff to put on a music blog."