Meadowlark's Dan Broadley on film and the power of failure

If someone had told me when I was 13 years old, cramped in my old bedroom at my Mum’s house filming myself playing and singing Nirvana songs, that in 14 years I’d still be doing pretty much the same thing - but instead of a hobby it would be my job - I would have probably laughed at them.

I grew up like most other alternative teenagers, playing guitar in rock bands and skating, but it wasn’t until my brother got a video camera for his birthday that I found a way to tie those two passions together.

I must have made hundreds of skate videos during my teens and the more I made, the more in depth my understanding of editing became. I soon realised that music had the power to dramatise visuals and thus my understand of how to elicit emotion on screen began to come alive.

Fast-forward a few years and I had dozens of crudely made short films under my belt, a First Class Bachelor of Arts degree in Film… and no idea what to do with either of them.

Being in a band meant I knew loads of other people in bands and it didn’t take me long to realise that I could be out there making money from something I actually enjoyed doing, instead of sitting around and getting rejection letter after rejection letter from various local television companies.

The first proper music video I ever shot was for a band called Lost In Colour who (at the time) had some interest with Virgin Records. I think I traded this video for a support slot at one of their shows for my own band.



I truly believe you have to fail at something to become good at it, you learn so much more from your mistakes than you do from your triumphs. Over the next five years, this became my motto, to not be scared of failure, which allowed me to push the boundaries of low-budget filmmaking and create videos that far exceeded the look of their budgets.

This eventually caught the attention of Kode Media, a start-up production house who took me on as their first signing and represented me as a director. They became my gateway to much higher budget music videos through commissioners at major record labels.



The most wonderful thing about doing this alongside a career as a songwriter is that one compliments the other.

I’m incredibly lucky to be able to direct the music videos to the songs I write with Kate, there’s something so liberating about combining both of my favourite art forms together. Our most recent video has definitely been my favourite so far, probably because I had to feature in the video itself and when that happens I have to relinquish my micro-budget all-in-one filmmaker role and bring on board other creatives who are incredible at what they do and collaborate with them.

Collaboration above all else is crucial in filmmaking: It’s so easy to believe you can do everything, on your own, all the time but once you find the right creatives a whole new world of visual opportunities open up for you.