17 minute read
Mazi O
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Q. Tell everyone who you are and what you do?
A. My name is Mazi. People call me Mazi O, because of my last name. I am a cinematographer, videographer, director, and editor.
For that, I like to say I'm your favorite rappers' favorite director.
Q. What motivated you to be a director?
A. I actually stumbled upon it. It wasn't something I intentionally wanted to do. I wanted to be a rapper, like, a lot of people back in the day. So, I thought I was going to be the next
Jay Z. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out the way I expected it to. So,
I started nibbling and dabbling in video. I was watching TV, you know the home shopping networks where they are selling stuff on TV? I was sitting in the house one day, and he was like, hey, get this camera for only three payments of 25.99.
So, I was like, oh, that looks fun.
And I bought it. And then I got some software from one of my brothers.
And I just started fooling around. I was like, wow, and try this. And the first video I did was with a friend from making the band. I got so much great feedback that I was like, wow, this is what I should be doing.
And I just stuck with it. So, I didn't realize I had the talent for it until then.
Q. Tell us a little bit about your journey and the roadblocks you've had building your business?
A. The journey has been, it has had a lot of highs, a lot of lows.
It's difficult. I'm actually working on a course, a video course for other people who are aspiring to be videographers and have some measure of success in the entertainment industry and doing stuff with celebrities. For me, I had to learn the entertainment industry is very different from the normal, everyday life in industry. A lot of the things that we take as normal, you just won't do in the entertainment industry. So, when I do what I do, when I get into a job, when I get a gig, when I'm working with a client. I had to learn really quickly that as the camera person, as the camera operator, you're just supposed to be invisible. I've worked with a lot of clients. I've worked with Akon, Cardi B, French Montana, and Ray Kwan. I've worked with just about every major rap label in New York City. And some of these people are people that I've listened to. I grew up listening to these people. But once you're on set, I can't fan out, I can't be like, hey, and can I get a picture with you really quick. You have to just do your job act like it's nothing, and just stay focused. So, that was one thing I had to learn. Then the next thing as far as hurdles, is you learn real quick, or you have to learn really quickly, that you need to be better than the next person, especially now. Like 20, say 2015 up to 2020 equipment started getting cheaper and cheaper, everybody was able to get their hands on a camera. So, you had to start learning how to separate yourself from other people with cameras. And that can be a hard lesson to learn. Especially if you're juggling multiple jobs or you've got other things going on in your life. And I've seen a lot of guys come and go but if you stay persistent, you can outlast the others. So, hurdles have been just trying to get in where you fit in as they say.
Q. Okay, I love that. But I see you're working on a project, Traphouse.
Can you tell us more information about it and what motivated it?
A. Whoo. Traphouse is going to be good. I'm not one of the people who are into hyping things up but
Traphouse is going to be good.
So, Traphouse the name is a little bit not what you expect. It's a lot of what you don't expect. But basically, Traphouse is the story of a woman who was trapped in somebody's house. And it is basically a horror/thriller. And what motivated me to put that project together is that there are a lot of horrors by black people. And then some of them that you do see, they tend to be a little cheesy, they tend to be corny. So, I wanted to get into that. I've done stuff. I've done a lot of rap music videos;
I've done storylines inside of rap music videos. I've done things that are all centered around being a gangster, shooter, mob, drug dealer, and stuff like that. So, I kind of wanted to do something that was outside of that. But I like the idea that the name kind of implied that. You know when a person hears oh, did you see that movie
Traphouse? They're going to think, oh, it's a drug-dealing movie or something like that. They're going to think about people who hustle.
But when you watch it, you'll see oh, it has nothing to do with that.
It's a woman trapped inside of a house. She's been abducted. And part one is all about her trying to get out of the house. And I just felt motivated to do it. Because at the time, I was thinking about, what do you call it? The abductions that were going on inside of Georgia.
That was a big thing. I think last summer or the summer before that everybody was talking about sex trafficking and stuff like that.
So, that kind of inspired me. And then also, when I saw, they got this movie called Paranormal Activity.
And just watching it from a creative standpoint, me being a directive, just watching how they were able to create this phenomenon with
minimal special effects, I should say. They did a lot of playing with people's senses. When you watch the movie, your eyes are wide open, your ears are wide open, and you’re really trying to figure out what's going on? What's the next move, and you're like on the edge of your seat? So, Traphouse has some elements like that. It has a few elements where you're looking for something. Wow, did I hear something? Did somebody move, wait what was that? So, I wanted to combine those elements right there. Then I wanted to work with an all-black cast, me being a black director, black writer. I got black producers working on it. So, I just wanted to give people a variety besides just a regular shoot 'em up bang bang stuff.
Q. Okay, I can't wait to watch it.
But out of at all the films you've done, which one is the most inspiring to you or your favorite?
A. So, I've worked on a handful of independent films. I've worked on one with... I come from a huge family. So, I got family doing all types of stuff, music and films, books, all type of things. So, I worked with a family member on a movie called Brotherly Love. That was about some kids out in Philly. And it was a great project to work on. It was a great project to be a part of. That one had a lot of people. It had Keke Palmer. It had Romeo. So, that one was great, because I really learned. Actually, that was my second movie. But that was the first movie that actually came out. So, I had worked on a project called Brooklyn Bread. I worked on another project called Playtime, which was a dating movie. Then I worked on two projects after that one called 99 Problems. But Brotherly Love, was great because it was a way bigger budget than the other movies I worked on. And there was a lot of magic going on. I was still kind of new because I was shooting music videos and shooting movies and shooting TV and shooting documentaries. They seem like they're all the same, but they have differences in them. And you can be an expert in music videos and not know a damn thing about shooting a television show. So, that was a really great experience for me to learn and then to network and meet a lot of people. So, that one was good for that reason. I just did a pilot episode for a show called Shepherd, it's new. It's going to be on, the lead is Damon Dash has a network, so it's going to be on Damon Dash's network and it's about this principal who basically turns around this school. He's the guy who has to keep this school in order because it's just wild and crazy. So, probably something kind of like that Lean on Me movie from back in the days with Morgan Freeman. But a lot of projects and sometimes I even writing little stories, little stories that people use to put inside of their music videos mean a lot to me as well. Anything I get behind a camera for means a lot to me.
Q. Let's talk about your clothing brand. Tell us about it?
A. You see, I'm black, but I'm blackity black. That means if you mess with me, I'll flip this table over. Be careful. I'm not one of those oh, he's one of the good guys. Yeah,
I'm a good guy, but just don't mess
with me. Okay. So yeah, I have a clothing line. Black Boulevard. And we started Black Boulevard in 2019, was the end of the year of 2019. The motivation behind Black Boulevard and the name was I had often heard about this city, this town that black people have created back in the days called Black Wall Street. And it was just like this self-sufficient area of just black excellence, and so on and so forth. So, I am one of those people you can call a serial entrepreneur. I'm always taking the money I make from videos and flipping it into other things. So, I decided I wanted to do clothing. And that basically was my inspiration. I was looking for a good name, and I don't even remember how I stumbled on it. I knew I wanted to have black. I knew it needed to be black, I needed people to understand the power of black. I wanted black in it. And when you think about a street when you think about the black culture, the black community, it's like, we get fresh, we get fly, and we go out on the block. Do you know what I mean? Or when we go out, especially in New York, because I'm originally from New York, you go out to Times Square or you go out to Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, or you'll go to Jamaica and Queens like you will get fresh, you would get drip, you would get fly, whatever word you use, that's what you would go and do it. So, I wanted something that represented that, and you have the street, you have the block, but then you have the boulevard, which is much bigger than all of that. And then anywhere you go, there's going to be a Boulevard. So, I wanted to put those two words together and there you go.
Q. Where do you plan to be in the next three years?
A. The next three years? That's a good one. Well, I want to start doing more documentaries. I've been lucky that the work I've done as a videographer and director has allowed me to travel the world. And there are just so many stories that can be told. Even if you just start here in America. A lot of the things that are going on within the black community, a lot of the issues that we have with ourselves and those outside of our community. I think they need to be captured. I think if you want to educate people on the whole, then TV movies are the medium that can be used. Music and television have a major influence that people don't realize. So, I want to start doing and creating content that is not too preachy, but definitely educational. So, you'll be able to watch it. For instance, the movie by Jordan Peele, Get Out. It was a horror, but it had little jewels throughout the movie. That movie, to me it's one of my favorite movies because it’s kind of created its own genre. It’s kind of created its own category because it was just so genius that you can be this entertaining, and this educational and subliminal actor at the same time. So, in a few years, as you said in the next three years, I would like to have created several documentaries. And then also some projects that are not necessarily documentaries but maybe biopics, tell some stories that just encouraging and enlightening. There are a million stories to tell. I'm in Atlanta right now. And Atlanta, the whole strip club culture, the gun culture. Being Georgians, it's a gun state. So, everybody, and their mama got guns. Me coming from New York that was kind of shocking to me to just see people walking around with guns. But there's a story in that how did Georgia become that type of state? Besides this last election with Georgia being a red state, how is it to be a black person living in a red state? There's just so many stories that can be told. So basically, that's what I want to do. I want to talk about just things that can help our culture. One of the things that is dear to me, is the relationship between black men and black women. Why do we seem to have so many problems with one another? And how do we solve that? How do we fix that? How do we speak about the things that need to be spoken about without us offending one another? So, I want to do a lot of projects on that as well. And then, on top of that, I want Black Boulevard to be the go-to clothing line.
Q. What is your favorite film?
A. Get Out is one of my favorite films.
Black Panther is definitely up there. Avatar by James Cameron is one of my favorites. I also love the NWA movie. It was something about that movie that was just, that was another movie that was shot great. You know what it is, is the fact that they took a group who call themselves niggas with attitudes, and they turn that into an underdog story that went mainstream. You would have never been able to
convince me that some rap group called niggas with attitude would be in the movie theaters and making crazy sales. So, when I see things like that, it's like, wow, this is great. So, that's another one. But probably one of my top movies is The Social Network, which is the Facebook movie. The way they shot that as I said earlier, me being a creative person, a cinematographer, I look at certain things like lighting. I look at how stories blend together. I listen to dialogue, setting, and that movie is perfect. I can watch that movie over and over and over again.
Q. So, what makes a film great for you?
A. I think a great film, one thing that makes a film great is the ability to take a person and remove them from their reality. You could sit and watch a movie and completely forget you're sitting in a room or sitting in an office or sitting on a plane, and you're just caught completely in it. That is the number one thing that's great. You allow a person to take a break from their real world. Number two is the ability to evoke emotion. Making somebody laugh that's good.
Hysterical rolling on the floor, tears coming out of their eye laughing, that's good. But if you can make somebody cry, that is just like something in what you wrote and what you show reached inside of that person and it touched them.
Because we don't all just walk around crying. But if you can get me to sit there and start going like this, and like oh, man. Well, then you did a great job. A movie that was like that, for me was... it's been a couple I can't remember the older ones. But a recent movie was When
They See Us by Ava DuVernay.
The movie about the Central Park five kids. That movie was touching as hell. They did an incredible, incredible job. So, to me, films that can remove you from your reality and films that can get any emotion out of you, are really good movies.
Q. What advice can you give to others that want to be a director?
A. I guess the first thing I would give is, get a tough skin, get a thick skin.
Don't be discouraged because you can be told no 100 times about stuff. I've walked up to artists and said, hey, let me shoot your next video. And they'd be like, no, not even knowing what I can do. Just be like, nah. And then it's like, later on, or I've been on set with... I'm not famous. I'm not Spike Lee. So, people don't know my work unless someone shows it to them, or unless I show it to them. So, I've been places and people will think, oh, you don't know what you're doing. Or whatever. Things like that, things that come across as discouraging. You just have to have a thick skin. That'll be the first thing. And then the second thing will be to never stop learning. Like, really figure out how to be best at your craft. And sometimes that involves practicing. That involves doing stuff. Oh, wait, a matter of fact, let me take some of that back. The first thing would be do not try to do it for money. Okay. If you're going into it for money, find something else. Because I probably shot dozens of videos before I got my first paycheck. And I think the first video I've ever done that I got paid for I was paid $50. Did a music video, and I earned $50 to shoot the music video. Then it took a while and I just steadily kept building, building, building. So, those are the two pointers that I would give. Well, three, don't go for money, never stop learning and have a thick skin. Learning is probably the major thing. Keep studying the craft. I love watching YouTube videos on new equipment, on new ways to shoot things. I was just watching a video last night on how to shoot even more systematically because there are just new techniques and stuff like that to come out. I even went to school. I took some classes. I take classes all the time, I love to learn. So, I'll take a few dollars to pay for some classes, and just try to learn about lighting, about green screen, about directing, actors on how to do things. It's just a constant learning process. So, that's the type of advice I would give, keep learning.
Q. Is there anything else you want to tell the audience, any upcoming events or projects?
A. Black Boulevard you know, go to the website. Blackblvd.com. Go to Instagram, same thing. The
Black Boulevard on Instagram, theblackboulevard.com. We have
Traphouse coming out which is going to be great. You're going to see some Black Boulevard gear in there. Let me see what else we got going on. There's a lot of stuff going on. I do app development. There's going to be some documentaries coming out. I want to tackle black beauty, beauty standards in America. Like there's so much. Just follow me.
