Never Enough: directing performance with purpose

Project timeline: 2026 · video publication year. Published as a retrospective on 23 October 2026.

Never Enough brings me together with my brother Arian through our own disciplines: he performs, and I direct. Jones Hansson is credited as director of photography. I value being able to make work with family, but I also want the finished video to communicate beyond that relationship. It has to reach someone who only knows the song.

There is something meaningful to me in seeing a family connection turn into a piece of work with its own identity. I do not want the camera to assume that the relationship behind the production will be visible by itself. The images still have to find Arian’s presence as an artist and make the audience want to stay with him.

From the idea to the screen

A music video can document an artist performing or use that performance to create a more particular experience. I am interested in the second possibility. What does the image make the viewer feel about the person? How does a change in distance affect the energy? When should the attention stay with the artist rather than move elsewhere?

These are small questions in one sense, but together they create the identity of a video. If every image tries to be the most memorable one, the performance can become difficult to follow. I want a relationship between the moments, so the song has room to develop through the images instead of competing with them.

My work as director meets the cinematographer's work at that point. An intention needs to become a frame, and a frame needs to remain useful within a sequence. A strong image is valuable, but so is an image that gives the next one space to become stronger. The finished piece depends on those relationships.

The same is true of the connection to the music. The song already contains rhythm, changes in energy and a point of view. I do not want to treat it simply as a background for images that could accompany any track. The visual direction needs to respond to this performance and this piece of music.

There is also something meaningful for me in being able to work with Arian through our separate disciplines. His contribution as an artist does not become mine, and my directing contribution does not disappear into the fact that we are brothers. The collaboration becomes clearer when both are recognised.

I want this project to sit alongside the other videos as a collaboration I can name clearly. My contribution is the directing: the attention given to performance and the relationship between the images. The pride comes from making something together while allowing each person’s work to remain recognisable.

Explore the project

• Never Enough — video and directing credits