Brian Cox

Director Brian Cox’s ‘this is what I want to do with my life’ eureka moment came on the music video set for nü metal band Coal Chamber’s song ‘Fiend.’ Donning blonde spikes (a la Chester Bennington in ‘One Step Closer’), he heroically pedaled a prop bike, acted out expressions of bewilderment, and generally played the part of a kid whose life, upon discovering a rock band in full force, has just been changed forever. 

“In the middle of the video I'm peering through the garage door, and there's this incredibly stellar acting moment where I pull away from the door as though I've seen something crazy. It was a one take wonder,” he says, laughing. “I thought to myself, ‘Man I'm really good.’ Little did I know they just wanted to move on because time is money and my shot wasn't that important at all.”

Now a seasoned pro, Brian has filmed and directed videos for Hollywood Undead, The Used, and The Struts, among many others. Before the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began documenting UK metal titan Bring Me the Horizon, effectively letting the world into a songwriting and recording process that until that point had been shrouded in mystery.

“Oli [Sykes] called me and was like, ‘Come stay at my house for 10 days and let's just shoot. We need to get used to letting cameras in the room while we’re working.’ Throughout that whole recording process we were capturing moments that we couldn’t ever replicate, footage that’ll always be unique in its own way.” Three individual seasons of the Bring Me the Horizon mini documentaries served as a lightning rod hype machine, propelling the success of the band’s apocalyptic-themed comeback EP, POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR.

Read on for the full conversation, where we talk touring Japan with Bring Me the Horizon, shooting first person POV around Los Angeles, and his all-time favorite music videos and inspiration.

I know you grew up in and around LA, but you’re UK-based now — what’s one thing you miss about California?

The sunshine. And the palm trees. Actually the one thing I’ve been missing a lot lately is just hopping in my car, getting in the car and going for a drive. I would love to sit in LA traffic right now. It can be therapeutic. Whenever I'm coming up with a new music video treatment, and I get stuck, I'll just get in the car and go for a drive and listen to the song over and over and over, and out of nowhere an idea can pop up. It’s the constant movement — it gets your brain fired up.

How did you get into filmmaking and videography in the first place?

I found my love for video production when I was around 15 years old, maybe even younger. I actually started my own little public access TV show in Monrovia, where I grew up in California. It was every Thursday night at 7, and it was called “What's Up?” and I would just get on live TV for an hour with my own little table and chair, and I would just talk to people calling in.

Fast forward a little later and my older brother is a drummer in a band that was popular in the late 90s and early 2000s. They were shooting a music video at Universal Studios and he called me saying, “Hey we need a young kid in the video, for a song called ‘Fiend.’” They just wanted a kid to ride a bike, so I show up to set and that day was when I decided I wanted to be a music video director. It was back lot of Universal, full budget, crew of 50 people, everyone running all over the place. I just kept watching the director, everything he was doing to map these shots out. I was like, “Wow, I want to get into music videos. This is it.”

We'll skip over 10 years of trial and error in filmmaking — stints trying to shoot weddings, corporate video, anything I could to stay creative — but I kept falling back to music videos. One day I sat down with my film partner and just said, “I want to get into bigger music videos. I live in LA, I'm meeting all these people, and I know a lot of musicians, but nothing’s really sticking. It's just all these underground bands.” It can be discouraging. Life starts to hit you and eventually you feel like, “I don't know if I can do this anymore … 'cause I'm not gonna able to feed myself.” My partner said, “Well, I should introduce you to a friend of mine, this guy Jorel. He’s in a rap/rock group called Hollywood Undead.”

Little did he know that when I was a teenager trying to make sh*t happen back in high-school, I used to write to Hollywood Undead on Myspace, begging them to let me make their music videos. [Laughs] Fast forward to when I'm in my late twenties, so of course I’m like, “Can you get a meeting together?”

We went to the Rainbow in Hollywood, and I told him, straight up, “10 years ago I was messaging you on on Myspace.” He said, “I'll tell you what — you're still doing music videos 10 years later? I'm going to give you an opportunity, if you want it. We're looking to do a video for this song ‘Usual Suspects.’ Come up with a video concept, send it to me, and I'll show it to the guys.”

I came up with this idea to put a GoPro my head and just run around LA getting f*cked up. I'm going to these different bars, stepping into a tattoo shop and getting a [fake] Hollywood Undead tattoo, just getting into trouble. The whole concept of the video is a Hollywood Undead fan on the way to a show. I wanted it to reflect someone who could be a loner, but who, on that night, is partying harder anybody else. We got some live footage from their show at the Troubadour that same week, and I sent the video off to Jorel. 2 AM that same night, the band calls me back like, “Dude, the video’s insane! Can we use it? It's perfect!” Next thing I know I'm basically getting called to go on tour with them, and I've done 8 music videos for them now to date.

I was going to ask about pivotal career moments, but that day on set at the Universal Studios lot seems like a huge one. What was it like being in a Coal Chamber music video?

It's funny 'cause my brother and I joke about this all the time: I actually have more screen time than him in his own video. The kid riding the bike in the beginning, with the badass Justin Timberlake blonde spikes … that's me. [Laughs]

When the director was pitching it to me, I got real serious with him. I was like, “So do you want me to ride away pedaling … with aggression, or do you want me just chilling on the bike?” And of course he just said, “You know man, however it feels natural. Just ride the bike.” In my head I’m thinking, “Alright right, I think we can do this!” Meanwhile everyone on set is laughing to themselves, and the whole band is standing there cheering me on. The bike didn't even work — it was a prop bicycle, so it didn't even have any pedals. They had to push me down this little mini ramp so that I would wheel out of frame.

In the middle of the video I'm peering through the garage door, and there's this incredibly stellar acting moment where I pull away from the door as if I've seen something crazy. It was perfect, a one take wonder. [Laughs] We really did it in one take, and then the director said, “Alright cool, moving on.” I thought to myself, “Man I'm really good.” Little did I know they just wanted to move on because time is money and my shot wasn't that important at all.

But that day was definitely the big turning moment. I'll always be grateful to my brother for giving me that little spark, whether it was intentional or not. It changed my whole life.

I read the Instagram post you wrote about seeing your brother [Mikey Cox] on the cover of Kerrang! magazine back in 1999, and you running around town showing everyone in person because social media didn’t exist at that point. Do you think social media has changed the way we consume photography/videography for the better, or worse?

Creativity is lacking, in many ways, because of platforms like TikTok. People are just throwing sh*t up there for the hell of it, just to get a quick laugh, and then calling themselves content creators or filmmakers. There's a lot of ambition missing when everyone's all about the instant gratification. When I was coming up, the end goal was to get a music video on MTV. That was it. That's not something you can just sign up for an account for. You gotta push for it, create videos for years on end, connect with tons of different people, and really lay down the groundwork to make it happen.

To be honest, the number one reason I’m not a fan of TikTok is because I absolutely hate vertical video. It’s the bane of my existence. And hey, I get it — I post stories myself. It’s a very useful tool for engagement, but from an editor’s perspective … it’s a nightmare having to output two separate versions, rescaling everything, especially for timeline like mine with with dozens of layers. Your eyes on your face are horizontal. Your eyes don't go vertically on your head. That’s the reason cinema is viewed horizontally — it's how you're going to perceive something if you're really in that room.

Video editing can be a grueling process — how do you avoid burnout?

Taking a break from what you're doing really helps, even sometimes just going out for a 10 minute walk, getting fresh air, putting on some music in my headphones. Just listening to something different helps. Also, changing your environment where you're editing.

Apart from that, good reactions from people will always kind of help me push through, because it’s like, “Well, people are loving the content, people are digging what we're doing.” That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

I loved the Making Of for [Bring Me the Horizon’s] ‘Parasite Eve’ video, which. you referred to it as a “socially-distanced-quarantine-lockdown-isolation-station-creation-music-video,” since it was pretty damn challenging to make. Have there been any other gigs recently that pushed you to your limits and challenged you as a filmmaker?

In the Summer last year, on a big Bring Me the Horizon tour, I had a Black Magic URSA Mini, a Sony α7S II, and a bunch of GoPros, plus the rest of my kit. We were going from Germany to Italy, and the only thing I took on the plane was this little tiny VHS Sony Handycam. One battery. No charger. Everything else I had to check in this flight case, but I didn’t think much of it because the band doesn't really want to be filmed on planes anyway. After the flight, we’re at baggage claim in Italy and myself and the whole band are standing together waiting, since everyone else’s luggage had already come out. Finally my road case comes out down the belt and I go to pick it up with two hands, thinking how heavy it would be, and I go flying backwards because it’s so light. I open it in front of the band and it's completely empty. No foam, no gear, and all my cameras are gone. Matt (Bring Me the Horizon’s drummer) is just like, “… why did you bring an empty case?”

So we had to call the airline, do the whole thing. I’m up all night trying to figure out where my gear is, sending emails, filing missing luggage complaints to the German airport. I had to film the next three shows, and also the entire process of them writing and recording ‘Ludens’ in the Ukraine, with this one tiny little VHS camera and a battery, without even a charger for that battery. I remember Oli had asked me, “What are you going to do, man?” And I looked at that little VHS and said, “I'm just going to use this.” There was a pause, and then he was just like, “Sound. Alright, cool.”

Anyway we did a few shows, and then miraculously I get an email from the German airport telling me that they found my equipment. I get on the phone with this German woman and she tells that when they were clearing the plane to take off someone had opened the case, pulled everything out of it, set it all right next to the wheel of the plane, and then thrown the empty case in the cargo. Apparently someone else was doing the rounds on the plane and found this foam casing, and actually took it down to lost and found. Personally I think someone was trying to steal it, hiding it by the wheel until they could snag it later on. Maybe they just didn't get away with it, so they left it.

I flew back to Germany after the tour was over to get my gear, and they tried to convince me that the airport workers took all the gear out because of the lithium batteries in the cameras. Now, that’s ridiculous, because those cameras passed German security three times with the same lithium batteries, and besides that, I fly with them all the time, probably more than anyone else. It was a pretty wild experience, and I think the theme here is to keep pushing onwards in the face of something dramatic.

You wrote a social media post saying, “I abandoned five ghetto LA rappers for five proper English gents.” Hollywood Undead to Bring Me the Horizon. Tell me about that transition, going from the center of American media in LA, to a Russian tour with one of the biggest bands in the UK.

It’s been life changing. I wouldn't have met my wife, and I also wouldn't be living in England now, had that transition not happened. If you would’ve asked me three years ago if I’d be married to a Brit and living in Britain … I probably would’ve laughed. A lot of things happened very quickly.

In regards to the artists, every band’s got its own characteristics. With Hollywood Undead, there was a different kind of commentary between us. We all kind of … talk sh*t to each other. [Laughs] With Bring Me, it's a bit more professional, just kind of a different vibe. The pace is a lot faster as well. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I've left something at the venue because the second their shows end, the band is hopping in the van and going straight to the hotel. It’ll be 30 seconds after the last beat of the last song and we’re already in the van driving away. They’ve got their towels and they’re saying, “Oh that was a good show!” and meanwhile I'm thinking, “Oh sh*t I left my 15 mm lens on stage.” That kind of stuff took a lot of getting used to.

Do you have any favorite moments from being on tour?

It’s difficult to pinpoint one moment, but in a more general sense, something I’ve realized recently is how much I miss touring. Just last night, I was going through old footage from a The Used tour, back from January of last year, and I kept thinking, “This was my job every day. Now it feels so foreign to me.”

I remember being in Japan on tour with Bring Me the Horizon in August of 2019, and at the time, I was burnt out. It was a country I'd always dreamed of visiting, but in that moment I just didn't care. All I wanted to do was go home, break out of the cycle of constantly getting on a new plane. It sounds exciting, and it is for a while, but you do get to a breaking point. Now that it's been taken away, in a sense, I look back and think, “Man, I'd do anything to be back in that hotel room in Japan again.” I want to slap myself back into reality. Opportunities that other people would dream of, I was kind of taking for granted. The lockdown has given me a chance to look back on tour life as a whole and just appreciate all of it.

Any tour survival tips for anyone in photography and/or videography?

Drink coffee. And keep it light. And what I mean by that is, keep your vibe light. You're literally living with the same people, in close quarters with one another, for so long, that it’s easy to feed into someone else’s negativity. Most of the time, it’s not even their fault. Everyone has their moments, just like I had that moment in Japan. I probably wasn't very fun to be around because I just wasn't feeling it. It happens to everyone, especially on tour. That’s why I say keep it light. It's not always about trying to impress the person in front of you. I could be on a bus with a band and not say a single word, because I’m keeping it chill. So keep it casual and know the boundaries, so to speak. You have boundaries, and the band has boundaries. It’s about balancing those.

What is your favorite music video you've ever shot or directed?

I don't like any of them, to be honest with you. [Laughs] I don't know what compels me to dump five million glitches on videos, but sometimes I watch them back and I’m just like, “What was I on?” Best part is, I’ll be five years sober in March, so that makes me question it even more. [Laughs]

I guess I’d have to say ‘Usual Suspects,’ with Hollywood Undead, because of the significance it had in my life. I made that video with no intention other than to impress the band and make something I thought was cool. There wasn’t anything else involved. No label telling me what to do, no deadline, no one asking for it, no money exchanged, no contracts. That was the last video I did that didn't have any of that bullsh*t attached to it. It was fun, and there wasn’t as much pressure.

‘In The Dark’ with BMTH was a pretty wild moment too. I can’t claim that one, really, because Oli directed it, but that experience was insane because it starred Forest Whitaker, who was one of my favorite actors growing up since my mom always had his movies on. I actually got to meet him briefly when I was in the arts department at Universal Studios and he was directing a commercial short for Mountain Dew, back around 2005. Fast forward all these years and I’m now on set co-directing a music video that he's starring in. It was a weird, full circle thing, that I reacquainted with Forest Whitaker 15 years later.

I was still living in LA when we made that one, but I’d flown out to England to see my girlfriend at the time (she’s my wife now). I’d planned to surprise her and just show up. So we went out to dinner in London on a Wednesday night, and we’d barely sat down when Oli calls me saying, “It's really important that we talk right now. I have this music video idea, and we need to shoot it, but we need to make it happen by Friday, because Forest’s only available Friday.” And I'm like, “Friday as in … this Friday?” Planning it in and of itself is a long story that I probably can’t share, but it came down to the point where we had less than two days to pull off this music video. It went from me coming to England to hang out my girlfriend to, “Sorry babe, I have to go direct this music video with Forest Whitaker.” It was nuts.

That video, in particular, has some incredibly in-depth fan theories in the comments section.

Oli went to town with that one. The video became very personal for him, in many ways, so there's definitely a lot of meaning behind it.

As for the comments, it can actually be kind of a toxic thing. I used to read all the discussion, people critiquing everything, saying things like, “My eyes hurt — why does Brian do this to my eyeballs? Why so many strobes? Why so many glitches?” It took me a very long time to look beyond the comments, learn to take them with a grain of salt, and stop taking them personally. People in comments sections think they have all they answers, that they know the meaning behind everything. I always want to ask, “Have you ever considered that you weren’t there, and that you don't know what they were thinking?”

It goes back to what we were talking about earlier: the instant gratification of social media and our shrinking attention spans. That stuff also breeds a society where everyone thinks they're right about everything, and no one else is allowed to have an opinion, especially if it's different from their own. This lockdown’s almost like a giant test experiment on the whole world, with everyone at home literally just sitting on their phones. I’ll admit I do it just as much as anyone else. But it leads to people just exporting all their emotions onto the internet without ever thinking about the real life consequences.

I met a guy in Finland on the Hollywood Undead tour, and after the show he comes up to me and he goes, “Brian you do video for Hollywood Undead? I love love love your work. ‘California Dreaming’ my favorite music video.” Then he goes, “But you know, your video so much better than the fucking a$$hole who made ‘Black Cadillac.’” And I’m like, “Well, you know I made the ‘Black Cadillac’ video too, right?” I just saw his face turn so red. That interaction right there … that’s basically what happens on the internet all day.

I've noticed that I can put out a video for Hollywood Undead with a ton of glitches and FX, and then I'll put out a similar video for Bring Me (‘sugar honey ice & tea,’ for example) … but the comment sections, the responses, are night and day. Bring Me fans will love it, saying things like, “This is so good!” and “How do they make things like this?” And then you get Hollywood Undead fans who’ll comment things like, “This video gave me epilepsy.” It’s weird how people follow. I’ve realized that the first 10 comments under a video will set the tone for the rest of the response from there on out. If the first few people say, “This sucks,” then you're going to get 100 more people that say it sucks, even though they probably didn't even watch it all the way through. They just want to be part of the “in” thing.

What’s a music video that you wish you shot or directed?

There are so many. There's a music video director named Mike Diva who’s one of my biggest influences. All of his work is phenomenal, and I've been following him since day one. He uses a lot of crazy colors and a ton of effects with zombies, neon lights, and black lights. All of it has an amazing 80s aesthetic. He has a video for Kill the Noise called ‘Kill the Noise Part One,’ and I go back and watch that music video all the time.

Another one, in a different category, is Travis Scott’s video for ‘goosebumps.’ BRTHR did that one. Those two — BRTHR and Mike Diva — are my two biggest inspirations. The way they play with colors, add so much saturation, and make everything distorted, I take so much inspiration from that.