Todd Angkasuwan, ever the storyteller, took a giant risk when he rewrote his personal saga. In 2005
Angkasuwan, 32, walked away from his career as a television news reporter to chase his dream of becoming a filmmaker. The road to Hollywood is paved with similar wide-eyed aspirations, but having directed videos for Hip Hop legends like RZA ("Can’t Stop Me Now") and KRS-One ("Hip Hop Lives"), the career move was clearly a wise one.

Angkasuwan built his demo reel by doing low-budget music videos for independent Hip Hop artists. He gained further clout by releasing No Sleep 'til Shanghai, a 2006 documentary depicting the groundbreaking tour of Asia by Chinese-American rapper Jin. Angkasuwan recently elevated his profile even further through the graphically-intense, color-exploding treatment for Wale’s “W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.” Reimagining the award-winning concept behind Justice’s "D.A.N.C.E.," the video is a flashy, entertaining glimpse of great things to come. Not surprisingly, so is its director.

Hometown: Moreno Valley, California

Resume: AZ “Undeniable” - Styles P “Blow Your Mind,” - Sheek Louch “Good Love,”

On Following Your Passion: “Back in the days, I would always be in the back of the car listening to a song like Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Can It Be All So Simple’ and picture these images in my mind, thinking about how it would unfold cinematically. I would apply that thinking to a lot of things and songs that I was listening to, and I said, ‘You know what, I want to do this and breathe new life into a song.’”

On Filming The “W.A.L.E.D.A.N .C.E.” Video: “I’m friends with [Wale’s] manager and he asked me to do a video for him last year, before Wale [click to read] was even signed, but there was no money to do it. A month later, I heard ‘W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.’ and I thought, ‘Man, it would be dope to do a visual for it.’ So I directed the video with no budget, borrowed a camera from a friend, and edited it in my free time…I think people get it twisted like we’re trying to copy the Justice video, but the whole point is to pay homage. Wale did a remix for the original song, so I thought we should remix the concept for the video and do some crazy random visuals. It came out great.”

On Frequently Using Graphic Effects In His Work: “That came out of necessity in the beginning because when I was doing lower-budget videos, there wasn’t [enough money] to do cool, practical locations. I did a lot of guerilla stuff and I kind of got bored, so I started playing around with visual effects out of necessity. It kind of evolved into my style to experiment and do something different. Not every artist or video lends itself to that style, but I do enjoy it because the possibilities are endless.”

On The Creation Of No Sleep ‘Til Shanghai: “[Manager/promoter] Carl Choi called me and said that Jin [click to read] was going on tour and he invited me to come along and film behind-the-scenes stuff for the tour. Then I started thinking we could take it one step further and turn it into a tangible, cohesive documentary form to tell a story. We wanted to talk to some locals to see what they thought of Jin and Hip Hop to show that side of Asian youth culture. Even me being an Asian-American, you’d think that I’d be in tune with that. But when I got there, it was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t know they were that into.’ You wouldn’t expect that, particularly in Mainland China because of the Communist influence. That was a definite eye opener for me.”

On How Journalism Helped Prepare Him For Directing: “People skills definitely helped. When I was a reporter, I had to coax people into talking who may be camera shy or didn’t want to do interviews.[It’s] just learning human nature and being able to apply that to video sets to try to bring the most out of people on camera. When people get on camera, it’s hard for them to be themselves and act naturally, so I use those skills on the video set to make people feel comfortable and give their best performance."

On What The Future Holds For Todd Angkasuwan: “Music video stuff has taken up a lot of my time, but [feature filmmaking] is something I’ll definitely be working on this year. I would like to do another documentary because my background is in news and telling stories in my passion. Maybe I’ll do something political because that interests me. Maybe I’ll do something that incorporates Hip Hop and politics, especially since Barack Obama is on the verge of making history.”