How Tanner K Williams brought Beat Bunny to boiling point

When we spoke last year, you described shiversucker as the film that changed your life and confirmed that directing was the right medium for you. What changed in your ambitions, confidence or working methods between that film and Beat Bunny?

First of all, thank you again for having me back. Second of all, woof. If shiversucker got me signed, then Beat Bunny put me in rooms pitching against Oscar nominees and winners. It’s been quite the year.

You know, I think what shiversucker proved to me was that what I saw in my head could translate perfectly onto the screen: a maximalist, psychotic, reversed-role, bisexual cuck short film... but dance, lol.

Across all my different artistic practices, I've always had a very accurate and pragmatic mental picture of how a project will look when finished. What I envision is almost always what ends up on the screen. Fortunately, shiversucker, my debut video, confirmed that the same process translates to film. It also got me signed at Magna; my now-EPs immediately clocked how 1:1 the finished film was with the treatment.

That confidence in the final product became essential when selling the outlandish idea of Beat Bunny to Madge and Povoa, the crew, the cast, and my team. With such a wild amalgamation of ideas and genres, it could either be stellar or a cringey disaster, so I had to have no doubt that it would work. 

And, to be honest, I knew it would. <3

The film asks a lot of its performers, both physically and in terms of how explicit and exposed some of the material is. How did you present the idea to them, and what did you need to establish on set for everyone to feel able to commit fully to it?

Beat Bunny exalts the everyday man and woman. It shows pleasure, role reversal and an uninhibited exploration of intimacy. It shows what is happening in more bedrooms across the country than you would ever expect. The viewer gets to peep in on a clunky, last-ditch effort by a couple struggling to maintain their waning intimacy, all wrapped up by pizza-ography.

I only bring people onto my sets who genuinely give a fuck.

So for this to work, safety and trust were paramount: full disclosure of content, intimacy coordination, privacy garments, closed sets and all the protective measures, obviously. But more than any of that, the key was finding performers who believed that the story deserved to be told just as much as I did. I only bring people onto my sets who genuinely give a fuck, to be honest.

After shiversucker, you said you were interested in creating an “anti-sacred space”. Beat Bunny feels similarly provocative, but also bigger, more choreographed and more outwardly playful. Did you see it as a continuation of the same creative territory, or as an attempt to push somewhere new?

I wanted to go bigger. More wild. Completely unfettered and completely unapologetic. We wanted to jam a hyper-serious interpersonal love film into a club banger. Our goal was to make something that genuinely hadn’t been seen before. Being real, people have gone nuts over it.

Above: Beat Bunny, Tanner K Williams’ YDA Gold-winning promo for Povoa x Madge, which pushes intimacy, choreography and absurdity to boiling point.

This is another collaboration with Madge, and your shared history was central to the story behind shiversucker. What keeps bringing you back together creatively, and how has the balance of that collaboration changed as you’ve both developed?

Last year, out of the blue, I got a demo from Madge. Let me just show you the transcript of how quickly and easily Madge and I got on the same page, which pretty much explains everything:

April 4, 2025

1:17 PM Madge: Okay it is decided you have to do a video for this: [Madge sends Beat Bunny track]

4:28 PM Tanner: Oh my fucking god. Hands down. Your shit is so fucking insane rn dude. I’m soooooooo stoked on it all omg. Which album is this?

4:29 PM Madge: I made a bunch of club tracks with Jules [Povoa] in addition to the cute hyperpop album. Lmao. So it’s a separate fourth album.

4:40 PM Tanner: Hhahah ofc it is. It’s HEAVEN. RELEASE IT ALREADY.

4:30 PM Madge: This track is getting a lot of label love. So I think we could get that coin.

4:30 PM Tanner: OMG. Hell yeah.

4:30 PM Madge: To make something v sexy.

4:30 PM Tanner: I think that it’s a cuck performance video. It’s heaven.

4:31 PM Madge: Lfggggggggggg

4:31 PM Tanner: I already see half the video. And it would be fucking gnarly. We’d have to agree to fully send it.

4:31 PM Madge: Lmao please.

4:31 PM Tanner: But it would shut the internet.

4:32 PM Madge: I trust you.

4:34 PM Tanner: Die Antwoord level shocking.

4:34 PM Madge: Perfect.

4:34 PM Tanner: Perfect.

4:36 PM Madge: Perfect.

The performances feel highly constructed but also loose and unpredictable. How much was precisely choreographed and storyboarded, and where did you leave room for the performers to improvise or surprise you?

Robbie Blue, our genius choreographer, and I were both very into the idea of using choreography as our strict form of communication, like how singing is the rule in an opera. It pushed us to think about how choreography could communicate desire, strength, competition, entitlement, dominant and submissive energy, douchiness, celebration, communion, seduction, self-awareness, rigidity and togetherness.

Robbie Blue, our genius choreographer, and I were both very into the idea of using choreography as our strict form of communication, like how singing is the rule in an opera.

To answer the question, though, there really was no improvisation. I communicated to Robbie the strict timecodes, what energy I wanted portrayed in each segment, and who was doing it along with their motivations, but beyond that I told Robbie to wreak his havoc.

We were very disciplined in our approach. That level of OCD, Virgo planning was what made krumping, voguing, sped-up sex choreo and angular militant pizza choreography work together.

The video opens with a comparatively long stretch of narrative before the track properly asserts itself. Why was it important to establish that world first, and was there ever pressure to reach the music more quickly?

I absolutely love to bait an audience into believing a video is heading in one direction and then make an unexpected sudden left turn. 

Our characters needed relatability, histories and motivation before embarking on a lightning-fast and absurdist sex quest.

Above: Behind-the-scenes snaps from the making of Beat Bunny, capturing the cast, crew and carefully controlled chaos behind the film.

For a new director, both shiversucker and Beat Bunny feel designed to leave very little doubt about your point of view. How important is it at this stage of a career to make a statement rather than simply demonstrate versatility?

This past year I’ve written stories about everything from heterosexual friendship in skateboarding and surrealist gymnastics in the mountains to young Christians in the South, Malick-esque banal studies of childhood birthday parties and anime renditions of competitive sports. I am wildly versatile. Constant reinvention is at the core of my process.

Here’s what I'm dying to make: I’m dying for an iconic fashion film, I’m dying to work in sports, I’m dying to bring my sharp wit to comedic spots and I really, really wanna shoot more dance. Here’s what I need: creative directors to give me more chances to show my bandwidth. I will surprise you, and so will my work.

So much of our industry has become regurgitated ChatGPT-written creatives, beaten-to-death pink-and-blue-light music videos that end in a club, and spots that are terrified to be memorable.

What every brand wants is memorability. Think what you will about my work, but you cannot say it has not stuck with you.

Did you expect the film to connect as widely and positively as it has? What do you think audiences and juries have responded to in something so deliberately strange and explicit?

What has stood out most to me is that the most common message is, “I’ve watched this no less than 20 times.” Fans aren’t just watching once. Most people who come up to me to talk about it speak about every detail and sequence and Easter egg. It’s the most flattering part: people engaging enough that they care to keep talking about it.

People love it because it’s absolutely insane that a video like this exists.

Beat Bunny has opened big, sexy, previously-locked brand doors for me.

In the attention economy, it’s really validating to me to see that people are just so, so goddamn sick of watching the same, meaningless, storyless generic music videos… Peerspace locations you’ve seen 100 times, videos that switch lazily between close-ups, mediums and wides of the three rooms available at the standing set, with no rhyme or reason as to why they should be made or what makes them special. Are you not dying for substance, dying to sense even the smallest amount of soul?

I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS THAT PEOPLE WANT MORE AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT BEAT BUNNY PROVES. Beat Bunny isn’t celebrated just because the choreo is pure genius, it isn’t the phenomenal acting or my direction or the nostalgic set or the perfectly ill-fitting wardrobe, it’s that a whole team dared to push the status quo and made something that’s as smart as it is playful as it is punk.

In a relatively short period, Beat Bunny has won YDA Gold, shots Awards New Director of the Year, Berlin Music Video Awards for Best Music Video and Best Performer, Gold at the British Arrows, a D&AD Pencil and Gold at 1.4. Has that recognition changed the kinds of conversations, scripts or opportunities now coming your way?

It’s fucking surreal, bruv. All that’s left now is Ciclope, where it all started for me. 🥹

Beat Bunny has indeed opened big, sexy, previously-locked brand doors for me. I was on a fashion campaign pitch for a dream fashion house a month or two back, and I found out the other three directors pitching were all auteur feature filmmakers whose work I've looked up at from movie theatre seats for the past 10 years. That was a big pinch-me moment.