Ira Losco’s two new videos just hit the scene some days ago and the creative vision behind them is none other than Steven Levi Vella. He tells Iggy Fenech about his work with Malta’s pop princess and about his other collaborations with Malta’s top performers.
The list of productions Steven Levi Vella’s worked on is long and impressive, with some of Malta’s best-known singers entrusting him with the vision for their music. Among these is a credit as the creative director of Christabelle’s Malta Eurovision Song Contest performance for Taboo, as well as being part of the team involved in the creation of the music video and live performance of the song at Eurovision. Then there is also a creative director-credit for Davina Pace’s video for Perfectly, and another one for the music video for Untouchable, a song by the Kelly Schembri-and-KJ-London-based-duo, Monroe, which was picked up by four international labels.
But what does that mean in reality? What does a creative director do?
“My job is to compose a symphony out of what the management and artists bring to the table for the visuals, and then create a package to be presented to the world in a way that audiences and fans would understand or connect with,” he says.
“That includes everything from location and props to clothes, and the artist’s public persona to their vision for the song or project at hand.”
That sounds simple enough but, as Steven continues to explain, there’s more that goes into it: “This is a process and not simply a one-off thing. With Ira Losco, Christabelle and Maxine [Pace, who is currently working towards her upcoming album launch], the actual work was preceded by numerous meetings where they and I went through the music, the lyrics, why and how they relate to the song, and what the message to their fans was. And that’s the crux of it… As a creative director, you have to be the artist’s fan and their conscience; you literally have to put yourself in their shoes in order to understand the pain or joy the song gives them.”
Yet Steve hasn’t always worked in music videos – he actually started out as a fashion and art photographer, with controversial and lauded exhibitions, such as PORN and Black Porn, giving him quite the ‘bad boy’ reputation on the local photography scene. But, although this remains one of his passions, music videos give him something nothing else does: “I find the adrenaline of creating three beautiful minutes of moving image to be infectious.”
And that was certainly true about two of his most recent collaborations with Ira Losco, who is currently promoting her new double-album, No Sinner/No Saint. Her double video, which bridged ‘Hey Now’ from the No Sinner part of the album and ‘Bad Habits’ from the No Saint side, took months of preparations.
On top of giving a nod to the singer’s 2008 album Fortune Teller, the tarot cards lay the foundations for what Ira’s character in the two music videos – that of good girl gone bad – encounters
“We started out with two potential singles,” Steven explains. “Working together, we looked at ways we could translate the songs into visuals and this is where symbolism became very important.”
The story for both videos lies in a deck of tarot cards. On top of giving a nod to the singer’s 2008 album Fortune Teller, the tarot cards lay the foundations for what Ira’s character in the two music videos – that of good girl gone bad – encounters.
Among the most memorable of these symbols is the mermaid, which, in the olden days, was believed to lure unsuspecting sailors to their death; and the snake, the international symbol of two-facedness. All of this comes together to tell the story of a woman who is fed up with society determining the parameters of what she should and shouldn’t do by reclaiming her autonomy and power.
“This is the ‘hybrid’ which the fortune teller speaks of in the video,” Steve continues. “Ira is the hybrid because she is Ira ‘the person’ and Ira ‘the star’. And that came from one thing that I personally experienced with the pop star: that once you get to know her, the 15 years’ worth of presuppositions and narratives built around her melt away to reveal the human being we often look past; the raw artist that has given us so much wonderful music.”
MaxinePeople and life have always been the inspiration behind Steven’s work. Indeed, two personal life stories from the past year have completely changed his view on life and his work: one was becoming an uncle, and the other was losing an uncle to cancer.
Steven Levi Vella. Photo: Stefan Balzan“Life can throw so much at us that it’s not always easy to deal with it all,” he says. “Watching someone fighting a battle with cancer truly changed my view of the world and how we should be grateful for what we have and the people in our lives. But life can also be funny in the sense that, as I lost an uncle, I also became one for the first time when Jeremiah was born… That’s affected what I do and how I do it: the colours, the ideas, the emotions tackled…”
Another side of Steven’s work is staging for live performances, with Christabelle’s Isle of MTV 2018 cameo being one of them. Here, he tells me, finding a way for the artist to connect with the viewers and audience – sometimes in just a few minutes – makes it a completely different ball game.
“For live performances, we need to find a way for the lighting, colour scheme, the (few) props, the clothes, the people on stage, and even the angles the camera captures the scene in, help the artist deliver their message in a way that can be understood and related to. That’s obviously trickier than filming because there’s no take two once you go live, but that’s all part of the fun.”
And it’s great that Steven loves what he does as his list of upcoming projects is as grand as the one of completed jobs. Just over the first few months of 2019, in fact, he’s got projects with Ira, Christabelle and Maxine lined up, as well as others away from our shores, that include new videos, album launches, and live performances.
“I feel absolutely honoured that I get to help turn these great artists’ work into visuals that communicate feelings to audiences,” he concludes… And, with so much left in store as all these exciting projects materialise, I guess all we have to do is stay tuned for the next Steven Levi Vella creation!
ChristabelleThis article first appeared in the Sunday Circle magazine.