Dreaming Whilst Black in Technicolour

Despite popular belief, it actually takes quite a long time to be an overnight success. There are plenty of hidden seconds, minutes, hours and even years of either apprenticeship, training or even networking that have to be logged in order to take proper advantage of presented opportunities. Director/writer/actor Adjani Salmon certainly has a few stories about his journey within the creative industry leading up to present day and the recent Showtime Networks release of “Dreaming Whilst Black” – Adjani’s evergreen look on life of a Black Briton attempting to become a filmmaker. “Dreaming Whilst Black” in more than a few ways mirrors Adjani’s own non- linear path, in and around various obstacles, trying to break into film. After spending his formative years on the island of Jamaica, attending Mount Alvernia Preparatory and Munro College respectively, Adjani went to England to pursue a degree in architecture at the University of East London. After getting his degree, Adjani decided to make a return to the place he holds so very dear in order to find some direction.

“After that, I came back to Jamaica. I moved here for another three years and that’s when I got into film. I used to work as an assistant editor to Michael Cushnie from 2011 to 2014.” He explains. During his time with Michael, Adjani was working on music videos, corporate commercial sets and made for television programming such as the fashion focused ‘Mission CatWalk’. As it so happened, Michael made the decision to leave Jamaica for a project in Africa which again forced Adjani to reassess his life goals.

“To be honest the only reason why mi decide fi guh back to England is because Michael cut guh a Africa. After him cut, I was here twiddling my thumbs like wah mi a guh do. You know what I mean. That was one of the things where I was like, the most creative stuff in Jamaica is music videos. But even music videos are hampered by an incredibly limited budget. Funnily enough, I remember him telling me that like any director that you look up to in Jamaica wanted to make feature films.” Adjani reveals “But he was like yuh nuh, yuh obviously need to make money suh yuh start do like ads. And then yuh start mek likkle money suh yuh buy a car but now yuh have a car so yuh need fi mek more money. Then you might have a woman so you need to make more money and from yuh have pickney a it that, you are now a slave to reality TV and ads because yuh haffi mek money every month. So he was like, yo if you want to make a film try do it before any of this happen to you. And that was why he initially sold all him tings and guh a Africa. So I was like if you gone then me gone. So I applied to film school and guh back to England.”

Now armed with two degrees, Adjani made – what he had hoped would be – his triumphant return to the land of wood and water. Unfortunately nothing much had changed in the years he had left. He still could not get a job, the film production in Jamaica had not progressed enough for him to be employed as a director. So do you know what he did? Come on, take a guess. Adjani made his way back to England where his luck with job searches did not improve; however there were more opportunities available to him than were on the island.

“At the time I was applying for jobs all over the place. I remember I was like mi a guh apply for a job a day. Mi never end up do that, but by the end of the month I would have applied for 30 jobs. And every month mi apply and mi couldn’t get nutten til I randomly ran into a bredrin of mine. He was working in the art department on ‘The Jungle Book’ and I was like, Yo don yuh can talk to your boss and see wah can gwaan fi mi. And he was like, yeah yeah him will see wah can gwaan, that was how I got on.” Adjani recalls.

That connection led to Adjani doing jobs as a labourer on sets for art departments. Specifically for the subsection of a film’s art department called the ‘Greens’, this subsection deals with the landscaping aspect of filmmaking. From laying dirt, building drainage and cutting grass to pruning trees, the ‘Greens’ are responsible for making it all come together. That was how Adjani got his foot in, a day in the ‘Greens department’ of ‘The Jungle Book’ which immediately led to a job on the set of ‘Snow White and the Huntsmen 2’ and so on. Now this could be considered a step forward as Adjani was now working on film sets but in reality he was not any closer to his goal of sitting in the director’s chair. Adjani’s progress within the film industry actually could have stopped for him there as working in ‘Greens’ provided him with a digger license, a dumper license and he was not too far from acquiring a license to operate a forklift as the more machinery a person could operate, the more money they could demand. A real comfy setup however Adjani dreams were bigger than just that. So what that job, and the stability that comes with it, actually did was to give him the breathing room needed to write potential projects near and dear to his heart.

“Basically how ‘Greens’ work, is kind of project to project, right. So I would be on ‘The Mummy’ for like four months straight. But then when that done mi haffi guh wait till them call me back to do something else. Right. So that’s when I wrote the web series. It would be a ting like I would have a month off where nobody called me. I would be like when it’s not ‘Greens’, I would be over at the library and write, write, write, write, write, write. Sometimes it is like a two week job like reshoots. So dem jus need someone fi come in and build up this thing one time. Cool, suh mi know seh for two weeks … BOOM … gone again. Build up likkle money. BAM … Writing again. So I would write in between jobs and the Christmas period cah nobody really film Christmas. Suh mi know seh from the film lock off October nobody nah call mi til all March at best.” Adjani explains.

It was only in 2017, after completing writing the scripts for his web series, when Adjani stopped taking on jobs in the ‘Greens’ department and began working on shooting the first iterations of what would become “Dreaming Whilst Black”. In order to help, somewhat, with his transition into filmmaking, Adjani and his friends created a company that specialized in shooting property videos and corporate videos. Apart from film school, where he ended up making seven films within his final year, this was the most time Adjani was getting behind the camera – perfecting his craft. As a writer however, Adjani was having some challenges piecing everything together, it was only after reconnecting with a friend from film school that the ideas initially posted began to flow into coherent scenes.

“I started writing it on my own and at the time. I was struggling with the connectivity. I remember my bredrin was like, ‘Dawg, this feel like 10 short films. It don’t feel like a through line show.’ And then he was like, ‘Yo, why don’t you get Ali fi help you?’ Ali is a bredrin from film school. I was like, oh, yeah, let me link up with Ali and see wah a gwaan.” Adjani explains. “So that’s when we ended up writing together and he really helped at the time, because he did his masters in writing. I did my masters in directing. So he really helped at the time. Saying that, ‘Oh, Yo we really need to establish this.’ Okay, cool. So he really helped me turn it into a through line web series. But we were writing it with the full intent of shooting it. The reason why it took so long to shoot, is because we save money, shoot, save money, shoot, and so on.”

Drawing inspiration from Issa Rae’s ‘Awkward Black Girl’ web series transition into ‘Insecure’ a critically acclaimed hit series for American cable giants HBO and the gimmicky ‘Man’s Not Hot’ song, that became viral, from British comedian Michael Dapaah, Adjani saw a way, through YouTube, to have his series distributed. Donald Glover’s ‘Atlanta’, specifically its first season, influenced the way both Adjani and Ali presented their material on screen. As there were no shows at that time in Britain that truly reflected the type of grounded in reality issues that ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ was aiming for, it was hard to get the support for the show during pre-production and especially after the show was made. It is easy to look back now and say that ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ was destined to break out and become not only a web series that would resonate with a significant audience but also a hit television show that would air on both BBC and Showtime. Yet, at the time, most people within Adjani’s friend circle believed the creation of web series to be a grand waste of time. And for a good while it was beginning to look that way until a significant leap of faith provided the right platform to garner the attention needed to make the jump in the wider public’s consciousness.

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“We never guh viral, we never passed 15 thousand views, nothing crazy at all. It’s funny because I actually started writing another short film because we released in March 2018, Get a likkle buzz inna Jamaica, we a di likkle views but di views nuh really a run weh. By June, July, August …. Nutten nuh happen. Nuh body nah call mi. We emailed all the agents, nuh agent nuh interested. Emailing networks, networks nuh interested nuh have nuh agent. Which is where that line comes from in the pilot. You can’t access these people without an agent and if agents don’t respond to you they don’t respond to you. Mi nah guh lie for a while mi did a get demoralized. So mi did a seh mek mi jus humble miself and do a short film.” Adjani continues. “But I remember we got into a film festival in Rio, Brazil. Everyone did a question should we go or not cause a di money and stuff like that, and mi a seh dog mi waan guh because we never really get into nuh festival like that. Plus a Brazil. So mi book di flight, five hundred pound, and mi stay a mi bredrin yard. Guh deh fi di week. Award ceremony come and we nominated for six awards. Me and mi bredrin guh and him bring all of him friend dem cause mi feel we mus win supp’im. Suh we deh deh, best trailer …. somebody else win …. best actor …. somebody else win. The first three that come out early doors we never win. My bredrin was like, ‘is alright you got to come to Brazil, we been going to the beach every day we have been going to parties. It’s cool.’ Then di man man guh suh BOOM, comedy. Win! At least mi a guh home with supp’im. Literally, as I collect the award and was walking back to my seat and they were like best director ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ and mi tun round said time and collect another award. The last award of the night was Best International Series … BOOM …. ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ and prize money was five hundred pounds. Yo, mi get emotional like ‘Unnu nuh know how hard it has been for me, bro. Mi nuh get love nuh weh.’ To be honest that was the turning point. Because we went on to win 32 awards from film festivals. For some reason from summer to November, we never get inna no film festival but from the Rio ting it just snowballed.”

‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ triumph in Rio directly led to Adjani being signed by an agent which then led to ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ being commissioned by the only black female commissioner in the British isles. In her final act as commissioner before she resigned from that post. Talk about riding the wave of good fortune. One of the unintended consequences of the show’s success was the universal acknowledgement of Adjani’s acting acumen. What started as a way to save money, as Adjani took on the main character role in lieu of paying a trained actor right off the bat, has become a third active career, after writer/director of course, with appearances on the British science fiction classic Dr. Who and a number of short films. And with more starring roles sure to come, there will definitely be sections of the public that would categorize Adjani’s rise within the film space as meteoric and in a sense they will be right as it normally takes eons for meteors to be visible from Earth.