Not many people are fortunate enough to find their passion early on in life, but ever since David Rousseau first witnessed the fusion of music and television, he knew exactly where he belonged. After paying his dues through the ranks of work-gatekeepers, Rousseau is now writing and directing videos for some of the biggest artists in music: Lil Wayne and T-Pain.
Based in scenic Miami, David creates his visions of beauty as a daily routine. He’s in love with the art he creates, and provides the world an outlet to also enjoy a glimpse into the definition of spectacular. Rousseua is high in demand and expansion would be an understatement compared to where he’s heading fast. David stops just long enough to let DXnext tap into what makes him the new top billing act behind the lens.
Landing Into Directing: “It’s always something that I wanted to do when I was growing up watching MTV and Yo! MTV Raps as a kid. That was really like my first introduction to music and television. I studied Broadcasting in college and took a leap into music video and film production once I left school.”
From Building To Having A Budding Clientele: “The thing about Miami that makes it different from L.A. and New York is it’s really a smaller community so everybody tends to know each other. Once you meet that first artist, which in my case was Pitbull, things just keep bridging together from there. In working with him and through my association with him and all the people he was working with I began to meet this person and that person. Than ultimately everyone has been in Miami. Everyone is here so you can literally go outside and bump into a rapper, so it just ran off word of mouth for me.”
When Time Meets The Treatment: “Well the thing about it is there are different types of videos. You can have a street video, which is like when you say meet me at this place and I’ll bring a camera and we’ll do it. That’s just whenever and however which is kind of how everybody gets their start. That’s with little or no budget. Then you have the label videos where they will send you music and then you’ll have to write a treatment for it and the treatment will get sent over the to the artist. Then the artist and management will select which track they want. Of course those videos have a budget than the label awards the video to the director and you have a certain time frame to turn over the finished product. That can take a lot, because you’re dealing with the schedules of these artist and locations. To be a working director you have to stay within the labels budget and time frame or you won’t get any new work. There’s a lot of time and creativity that goes in to it.”
Incorporating Your Company: “Before we got incorporated, we had worked with Pitbull, Fat Joe, N.O.R.E., and some others. We just started getting called in for more work and the budgets started increasing. Everything was just picking up and we were becoming more involved so we needed to build an infrastructure. You have to get a producer, a crew, an accountant, and a lawyer. There’s the creative part, but there’s the business part. When you build your company up the right way then your business will increase because people will see you’re serious about the way you conduct your business. People will respect what you’re doing when they can tell it’s not just a hobby.”
Work Outside of Florida: “We shot in New York with Fat Joe, we went to Trinidad with Lil Jon, we also went to the Dominican Republican with Pitbull, we’ve done some work in L.A. We’re home based in Miami but we work any and everywhere.”
Fan-First: “The way I see it you’re a tailor and you’re building a suit for this artist. You have to make sure that this suit fits him perfectly so you’ve got to be in touch with my what that artist is talking about their lyrics. That artist is basically trusting you to bring to life the vision that they have for their song. So it’s important that you’re able to understand and respect what the artist has created. That’s not to say that you have to love every track, but you do need to be able to vibe with the artist and their music in order to collaborate with. The more involved you’re able to get with the song the better product you’ll be able to turn out.”
Working With Lil Wayne: “[Lil] Wayne is amazing. Wayne is one of those artists that you just feel lucky to witness his greatness. With him those are the moments that make you appreciate the type of artist that he is. He has a natural talent and ability, he just has a natural magnetic presences about him. You don’t even have to really say anything to me, you just turn the camera on and watch him do his thing. There are certain artist that are just born with it, there’s nothing you can really do about it because that’s just who they are. He’s one of those artist that will always give you a great performance every time and he always brings 100% no matter what else may be taking place in his life.”
Upcoming Projects: “Yeah we’re working on a new video for Pitbull and T-Pain for his new single. We have a few other projects on deck coming up in the next few weeks.”
Goals of Expansion: “It’s just like anything else you want to expand. You want to expand the scope that people are able to know your work. It’s just like if you had a publication you would want to expand your subscriptions and increase your readership. We get emails from people all the way in Turkey and Russia who have seen our work. We want people all over the world to know what we do. Every time we get to travel we also get to learn what’s hot in other areas and make improvements to our production. It’s important to see the world because that’s inspirational to be able to soak that up and be able to use it in your videos.”
Reflections On Your Reel: “Growth. There’s so much growth and I know there’s a lot more to come. You can never be satisfied. I try not to sit back and look at what I’ve done. I don’t want to look at it because I don’t want to feel complacent. The reality is there is just so much more for me to do and accomplish. I personally feel that I’m only half way there. I’m proud of the work we’ve done and to see how far we’ve come. We did it the right way and we come up from just hustling and doing good work, but at the same time there’s a lot more to come.”
DX COMMUNITY