Gabriel Baer

CONVERSE X VINCE STAPLES: 
96 HOURS IN THE STUDIO


Vince Staples spent a few days at the Rubber Tracks studio inside Converse HQ in Boston, recording new music for Cry Baby with his team and a few world-class producers. We made a documentary that puts you in the room for those sessions, and shot stills and social content alongside it. The project kicked off the relaunch of Rubber Tracks, Converse's music program.

BRIEF 
Vince was coming to record, and our job was to figure out what to shoot around it. There wasn't a fixed brief. The plan took shape with Vince and his management as we went, and some ideas took convincing on their end. We wanted something casual fans would watch and diehards would pick apart.

OUTCOME 
Every song Vince recorded in those sessions made it onto Cry Baby, which went on to score an 88 on Metacritic. The 10-minute doc came out on Converse's YouTube the same day Vince announced the album and has more than 116K views. The "Through My Lens" social film has more than 375K. We also came out of it with a great working relationship with Vince and his team, which wasn't a given going in, and it kept going: he unveiled custom Cry Baby Chuck Taylors at a Converse event at Undefeated La Brea around the album's release.

ROLE 
I was Creative Lead, in-house at Converse, and oversaw the creative on the brand side. I brought in Softspot and set the initial creative direction for the look of the doc, then refined it with the directors. A lot of the job was staying flexible on set and keeping things moving with Vince's team as plans changed.

Directors: Hannan Hussein, Dan Solomito · Agency: Softspot