GOGO WYNE

A Director’s Memoir

LATASHÁ - “GOGO WYNE”

For those that don’t know, I’m 1/4 of a Creative Media Force called Lytehaus, the rest of the team consists of my best friends from college Terrance and Angel who are amazing Photographers, Filmmakers, Actors, and Artists (more from them coming soon) and my girlfriend Latashá and if you don’t know who she is then my response to that is, how come? Outside of being the most compassionate, endearing, and loving person I’ve ever met, she’s also an ingenious creative and magnetic performer and recording artist, in fact, the first time I saw her perform was in a bar in Bed-Stuy, there had to be about 20-25 people in the room and she made it feel like a stadium of 500,000.

Before our relationship blossomed into to what it is now, we started as two people that admired each other’s work and wanted to collaborate, which we did on her “Pretend Janet” visual in 2014, the first of many. Now, fast forward six years and here we are, in a great relationship, living on the other side of country with our best friends, in midst of a global pandemic, and gearing up to shoot “Gogo Wyne”, our biggest challenge yet.

Our original ideas changed drastically due to places being closed and curfew being in full effect, so we decided that we were going to shoot the visual at home, which brought on another set of obstacles. First, we transformed our living room into a studio space and discovered two things, one didn’t have the space we needed to shoot a full wide and movement shots, and we also didn’t feel comfortable shooting in our living room. In order to create the studio space we had to uproot and rearrange our furniture, filming was also taking longer than expected because we kept adjusting to compensate for the lack of space, so the combination of that and waking up every morning to see our living room in a bit of disarray didn’t feel right to us, and we didn’t want that energy in the middle of our home, so we decided to keep the best of what we shot and go back to the drawing board for the remaining scenes, which meant delays.

One thing knew for sure was that we wanted night scenes, and since we were in a brief reset we decided to get our wide and movement shots outside once the curfew was lifted. We shot “Who I Am”, Latashá’s previous visual during the day, with the last sequence ending at night, so we thought if we shot “Gogo Wyne” at night it would offer a different pallet while having a loose continuity with “Who I am”. Our first-night location was for HustlaTash (Red Fur) at the L.A River, and it was going smooth! We got in a good groove, Tash’s performance was on point, we moved through all our shots quickly, and we wrapped on time. Then, when we were packing up our equipment to leave, I ended up dropping my camera lens in the river (smh). Terrance ended up fishing it out, but the damage was done (literally) and in order to move forward we needed to buy a new lens, which meant more delays.

While we were waiting for the new lens we found out that we had more time to complete the video, which was a blessing so we decided to get the rest of our shots in our garage. We set up the various backdrops and once the new lens arrived we got to work, and the garage shoots definitely went the smoothest, I think by that time we learned so much through the different trial and errors that and we were able to apply everything we learned to finish strong, we also decided to add one more choreography scene outside, after that, I got to editing and the rest is history.

The weight of being a small independent team was definitely felt this time around, we had to work and push through tighter parameters, but there’s beauty in that. The parameters were tighter because we’re getting bigger, we no longer fit, we’re constantly evolving and we can no longer be contained. A pandemic couldn’t stop this vision, it tried it’s best, but it’s best wasn’t good enough. With that being said, this process also made us fully realize our expansion, and how much we need the support of the people we share these visions with, you. Everything you’ve seen in “Who I Am” and “GogoWyne” was created by the four of us (Actually 5, shout out to our beloved Domino.) with little to no backing, but with all determination and purpose. What we’re doing now is the foundation of what’s to come and moving forward it’s important for us to identify and cultivate our supportive community. So if you’ve connected with anything you’ve seen we humbly ask you to please support, we’re 1000% grateful for the love and appreciation we’ve received thus far, but also, please share and purchase, it’ll go a long way in helping to bring these visions to life, and keeping the Lytes on.

Latashá has started a #Gogofund for her upcoming creative inspo platform Lytewrk, for donations please visit here, and stay tuned for the Lytehaus website.

8.26.20