THE THIRD WAVE
We are proud to present a unique film collaboration between The Last Magazine and Y-3: The Third Wave. Directed by The Last Magazine’s Magnus Berger and co-directed by Jacob Sutton (who also photographed
still images from the project, which appear in our new issue), the film will be shown on thelast-magazine.com and in Y-3 stores world-wide. The Third Wave was choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, with music by Patrik Berger, and features Millepied, a principaldancer at the New York City Ballet, together with four young dancers,
including Jessica Saund from American Ballet Theatre.
Aimee Walleston: Benjamin Millepied has been featured in the magazine before, and now you’ve done this project together. How did you two meet and how did you decide to collaborate on this piece?
Magnus Berger: I met Benjamin through our mutual friend Asa Mader. Benjamin normally choreographs ballet, and I felt it would be fun for him to do something that was more about movement rather than dance, and to use the clothes as a part of that rather than having a costume designer adapting to an existing piece. I wanted to
work with him on something like this for a long time because I knew that he would get it. The key is that I wanted it to feel really fluid. One thing that struck me when I saw Benjamin’s work the first time was the sense that he was controlling time in the movements. So I thought that it would be really cool to do something when you don’t
really know when you are in real time or not. But basically it was also just an excuse to work together.
AW: Performance is notoriously difficult to film, since the real-life experience of performance is in three dimensions, and film is only in two. How did you deal with this challenge?
MB: Well the main thing is that this piece is choreographed for film as the final medium—not for the stage. But what I find interesting here is that we have all these disciplines connecting with each other. It’s not a music video, a fashion shoot or an isolated dance performance. Instead these elements are of equal importance in this piece. I wanted to do something where it all came together and it became something that felt new for everybody who were involved.
AW: Why did you choose high-contrast black and white? And can you talk about the music?
MB: I wanted to do it quite contrast-y in black and white to make it more graphic and about shapes. And our favorite pieces from this Y-3 collection were all black and white. I went back and fourth with my brother, Patrik—he created the music—until we had something that felt connected with the idea of the movements and how we wanted to light and shoot it all. The editing is very important so I knew before that we needed music that could carry that. Everything is shot in 100 frames per second so we could really work with different speeds and be
very flexible with the footage. Everybody that was involved was really feeding of each other and Alastair’s (McKimm) styling was very connected to Benjamin’s and the dancers movements—and the other way around. This is something that me and producer Tenzin Wild spoke about from the beginning. To make it a real collaboration between everybody involved.
AW: And you worked with Jacob Sutton as dp and your co-director. Another Last Magazine contributor, right?
MB: Yes, and we also shot still photography with Jacob for The Last Magazine #04, so it was important that this would connect with the film, and natural that Jacob would work on the film as well. The layouts in the magazine are these disconnected combinations of images. When you take them out of the magazine, they create four separate
poster sheets. We decided to print that story with an additional fifth color (a silver pantone) on a light glossy paper stock, rather than the matte paper than we normally use. It really makes the images pop, and they become their own thing in the magazine.
