Past Video Blasts: “Teardrop”, Massive Attack

August 27, 2010 / / 1 Comment

As always, first the video, then the story:

It took my good friend (and fellow bandmate & awesome drummer) Jeff Arthur years to get me into Massive Attack. I don’t know why I resisted for so long, but the album that did it for me was “Mezzanine” (1998). Probably because it featured more guitar; but damn, that album has some great songs on it. I know there may be purists that scream “Blue Lines!”, but it didn’t take with me back then. (And if “Blue Lines” didn’t cut it for me, “Any Love” and “Protection” had no chance.)

But “Mezzanine”. Damn. I’d basically forgotten how great this is until someone reminded me that “Teardrop” is the House television show’s theme song (basically, kinda, mostly). Which got me to go play “Teardop” again.

The song features lyrics and vocals by Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. And the story has long been she wrote it in memory of her incredibly close friend and fellow musician, Jeff Buckley, who died a year before the album’s release. (So, probably, about the time the album was being created).The two had even recorded a song, “All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun”, but it’s not commercially available…

Even without that backstory, the song is great, truly touching. The video carries the mood, and is equally enigmatic, and was directed by Walter Stern.

Fraser’s no longer participating in Cocteau Twins. She’s been doing a lot of other musical collaborations, and released a solo single in 2009. Word is she and husband Damon Reese may be working on an album.

Director Stern continues to make music videos as well as TV commercials.

And Massive Attack? They released the “Heligoland” album this year, and there’s talk of another studio album next year.

People Kissing To “An Apology”, Future Islands

August 25, 2010 / / No Comments

Another week, another new music video. This one is definitely a labor of love on many fronts, but first:


As you can see, this combines a lot of different visual and video styles (from regular taping to stills, to animation, stock footage, and other variations). But that variety serves to push forward a specific vision, based on a specific (and haunting) song by Future Islands, masterfully voiced by Samuel Herring.

Here’s what director Jerry Stifelman has to say:

“I’d been thinking about how all relationships in life — from human lovers to the way gravity holds us to the planet — are all about push and pull. I think this push and pull is at the root of all ecstasy and misery. And the sweet spot between this, is intimacy. This is what I feel when I hear Samuel Herring of Future Islands sing ‘so far away’ in the song, An Apology. It’s what I feel when I hear him sing ‘Here, in my chest where you burst, I keep the crush and the weight of the world.'”

“The moment where we connect with each other against ‘the weight of the world’ is the essence of this video. To get at this, we focused on people being, uh, facially intimate. Most of our subjects were real couples we found. In one case, we used an actor. And in three cases, we paired people together who had not kissed before. A big part of the video wasn’t just this interpretation of the meaning of the song, but its sound, which feels less like the conscious creation of a group of musicians than something they teased out of the world. It’s like a song found in the ruins of an ancient amusement park where lovers once walked together. To play to this feeling with the imagery, we used a lot of grain and visual noise, actually having images break apart into static, almost like the way nothing lasts in the world. Even the camera angles, were chosen to feel almost impersonal. I kept pretending the camera was actually an alien probe trying to figure human beings out. The distance between what the camera’s not feeling and what the people are adds to both the tension and the sweetness. To help universalize the emotions, we included the stop-motion footage of the wooden figures, along with the dolphins, the pigeons, and the goats. Because, you know, we’re all in this together.”

—–

We’d love to get your comments on this work.

Lost in the Trees – “Walk Around The Lake”

August 20, 2010 / / 1 Comment

First, let’s just get to it. Here’s the new video for Lost in the Trees, the single “Walk Around the Lake”:

Second, some background. This is the latest from our music-video production team, aka Creato-Destructo Imagery.

It’s directed by Jerry Stifelman, and AD’ed by yours truly. Edited by Jerry and Shay Stifelman, with help from Trace Oliveto and myself, and a lot of support and encouragement from Lost in the Trees creative force Ari Picker and his fellow bandmates.

But the REAL story is we shot this in North Carolina, late one January evening, hoping we’d get some great nighttime footage, illuminated by just hand-held lights, lanterns, candles, etc.

Our first set-up was around 6pm. It started snowing about 6:30. And not just “North Carolina snowing” — these were real, fat, heavy flakes coming down in a hurry.

So we thought about that, and discussed it for a while. Our options were to either stop, because there’d be NO WAY to match any snow scene on any other day or night in North Carolina; or keep going that night until we had everything in the can. Yes, continue shooting in a snowstorm.

…So we went for it, with the full support of the band. I believe we wrapped up about 11pm that night; wet, shivering and frozen. But heck, Ari did most of the shoot without a jacket (he wasn’t wearing one during the first scene, so…) , a lot of the band members had to keep holding their instruments (including a very large, cold, snow-covered tuba), and people had to keep running up and down a very dark trail just to keep up with the set-ups. In the snow. Did I mention that?

And personally, I think it looks great. The snowfall looks fantastic and has production values we couldn’t have bought with Jay-Z’s platinum card.

Hats off to Jerry and Ari for making that call and sticking with it, and for the creative vision we now have with this music video.

For even more background, here’s Jerry’s description:

“The concept of is simple — Ari leaves his cabin in the night, walking through the forest, picking up members of the band along the way. Unlike many music videos, this one was as much about mood as concept. We wanted to convey a vibe that was appropriate to the song and the band. There is a feeling of timelessness to Lost In The Trees’ music. We wanted to be true to this by shooting under the light of the full moon supplemented only with candles — and by keeping the band dressed in simple vintage clothing. The idea was to make the “walk” to feel like it could have taken place 100 years ago. This made things hard for band members, many of who had to carry both their instruments and a candles while walking in the freezing snowfall. (This was especially hard for Mark, since he had a tuba to carry around). Another aspect of Lost In The Trees that makes them special is the genuine sense of family. Filming the whole group singing the song was an important part of this, and it turned out so special that we added the live audio of the band singing to backing track of the final video. If you listen, you can hear Ari laughing as he sings. The extreme cold and snowfall made even the most simplest things, like turning cameras on and off, became a challenge, but everyone hung together. Originally, we were going to film Ari actually walking into the lake, but it was so cold, we were afraid he might not come out alive. But ultimately we think the video’s open-ended finish is better leaving it up to the imagination of the viewer.”

“Working Women/Lazy Demons” video, redux

August 10, 2010 / / No Comments

I’d posted a link to this music video a while back, along with a brief story about the team behind it (Creato-Destructo Imagery, which is rolling with a number of projects).

Given the nature of the video’s “story”, we’ve received some interesting and thought-provoking feedback over the last few weeks. (Full disclosure, I officially served as the 1st AD on this, although everyone performed multiple duties — driving, to animal-wrangling, to prop mastery, to traffic coordination; among a few of the more interesting tasks).

To add some perspective,  I got the director, Jerry Stifelman, to reveal some of his thoughts and artistic insights:

“‘Working Women/Lazy Demons’ is a catchy, bouncy song with a dark side. It is an ode to working woman, yet it’s also an insight into the singer’s dark side. It’s almost like he’s a vampire, sucking energy from working women to enable his torpor.

“We came up with the idea of the protagonist (who we named ‘Cal’ in honor of James Dean’s character in ‘East of Eden’) living inside his car and watching the world at a distance as a way to symbolize this. So on one side, the video depicts working women, yet always from the at-a-distance perspective of Cal.

“To cut against the upbeat theatricality of the song, we kept the imagery very naturalistic and documentary-feeling — while still doing things with slow-motion and camera angles to idealize the women, since we’re seeing them from Cal’s perspective. Unlike pop songs, films work best when there is some type of narrative arc, so we decided to bring the video to a resolution, when Cal actually breaks his lazy bubble and engages the worker at the gas station.

“To keep the ending from being too sentimental, we kept this shot very wide. This shot breaks from the rest of the video, which either focuses solely on Cal or sees via his perspective. The last shot is the film equivalent of breaking into third-person narration. Personally, to me the song has always felt a bit like one of those songs that used to open 70’s TV shows like ‘Mary Tyler Moore’, the freeze frame montage was a nod to those shows, which used freeze frames to celebrate characters.”

And of course, best wishes to Randy Bickford and Wyley Pamplin of The Strugglers, and hopes for much great musical and artistic success!

YouTube and You: 5 years, Celebrating

July 28, 2010 / / No Comments

Did you hear? YouTube is celebrating five years of dominating the world of online video.

Yes, the company is milking this for all it’s worth, but the extended celebration makes sense: YouTube was founded in February 2005, got their initial big funding in November of that year (from Sequoia Capital, as an FYI to all those start-up folks out there), then “officially” launched in December.

…And ever since has been the premier resource and destination for uploading and sharing video clips online.

  • Quick fact 1: Five years in, visitors log 2 billion views a day. That’s billion with a “b”. Every single day.
  • Quick fact 2: For every minute that passes, YouTube users load 24 hours worth of video. That’s up from 15 hours of video every minute as of last year. So all this uploading is feeding the viewing, and all that viewing is feeding this uploading.

To celebrate these acheivements, YouTube is sharing the fun with the world. They’ve set up the “YouTube Five Year Channel“ and have invited, well, everyone — including you and me — to join in.

That doesn’t mean you can upload just anything and expect it to get posted; but it does mean there are some really interesting, insightful, funny and touching videos already up,  posted by regular people sharing stories about how YouTube has affected their lives.

It’s not just regular users, though. The company has savvily invited celebrities to curate their favorite clips.

This effort is more than just puffery; you can watch his intro below, then check out what Conan O’Brien likes:

And on the higher-art side, here’s some commentary by Spanish director Pedro Almovodar describing his list:

Getting a little abstract

July 19, 2010 / / No Comments

I’ve been doing two types of video projects recently: working as 1st  AD on music videos for the Creato-Destructo team, and helming more straightforward interview clips for higher-education clients, including a Boston-based law school and, coincidentally, a Long Island-based law school.

I’ve been glad to do all of it. Although some of my more creative colleagues suggested my sensibilities have been growing more documentary-like, even more literal and realistic (as opposed, I think, to more poetic and figurative).

First, nice work if you can get the poetic/figurative stuff.

Second, I finally broke out with something completely abstract based on last week’s schedule. Because I could, I did — and I especially wanted to emphasize motion, playing off grayscale and light-dark.

Beyond that, it also gave me the chance to delve into licensing through Creative Commons. The music is “At A Distance” by Matmos, and falls under the Sampling Plus license.

Let me know what you think. Although I’m not pushing ideas with this, more like emotional responses.

Nearly all this was done in-camera, meaning I didn’t add any effects or other post-production features, apart from the title and the music. Even the last “white” piece was in-camera.

And to go full nerd again, the video’s title is a reference to quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein famously described/derided as “spooky action at a distance”.

I am the cosmos

July 16, 2010 / / No Comments

Yes, I am the cosmos. And so are you.

If I had to do college over again, I would have zeroed in on cosmology.

It’s the one subject apart from film and automobiles that leads me to full-geek mode; and so far I haven’t been able to cheapen cosmology through any grubby efforts to make it pay.

This week has been particularly existing in terms of the universe and how it might have come to be, how it might work, and where it may be heading.

First, did you realize gravity doesn’t exist? I didn’t, so next time I do a header off my mountain bike and wonder if I’ll be breaking all my teeth or just shattering my cheekbones, I’ll rest assured it’s simply a holographic illusion, and those aren’t real blood clots and jaw parts I’m spitting out.

Second, the Big Bang may have been a fake-out. This one I was ready for, because there have been a LOT of questions swirling around about galactic clusters and the fact it may have taken 100 to 150 billion years for these things to come together. Based on our understanding of gravity, of course…

Third, the God Particle may have been discovered. Not by that fancy-pants multi-billion-Euros facility underneath the lesser parts of France and the better parts of Switzerland, CERN, but basically in some run-down garage outside of Chicago — also known as the Fermi Lab.

Yes, those same dudes that sent over bad magnets that seriously dinged the Large Hadron Collider last year. That’s how they do things Chicago-style.

There’s also more evidence tying the single-direction flow of time to the possibility our universe may actually be inside a…

Nah. It’ll have to wait for another post.

old dude gets enlightened

Work examples: Producer, 1

July 13, 2010 / / No Comments

All the heavy lifting and hard work was done by Kenyon College honors film students, Jean Mougin and Martha Gregory, and their incredibly supporttive professor, Jonathan Tazewell. But sometimes, a producer can help…

Client: Kenyon College

New music video: “Lazy Demons” by The Strugglers

July 12, 2010 / / No Comments

Hats off to Randy Bickford and Wyley Pamplin of The Strugglers, may your musical careers be anything but a struggle from here on.

And nice work, Team Creato-Destructo! Jerry Stifelman, director, Trace Oliveto, producer. Ian Ostrowski as the actor, lots of folks in and around Carrboro in other roles (including Wyley again). Production support, Becky Davis and Shay Stifelman (also nice editing!).

Oh, and I was 1st A.D., but enough of my yakkin’. Here’s the video:

My ’00’s List, Part 1: The Velvet Underground is still relevant, dammit

January 4, 2010 / / No Comments

Most end-of-year “Best Of” lists are a huge waste of time.

If we’re talking art — or even pop-culture product — I don’t buy that a few months or even weeks are enough time to gauge the true impact of an artist and his/her work. Still, I watch the Oscars and the Grammys, mostly expecting free entertainment rather than cultural significance.

Also, I loathe the “Most Popular” lists that just rehash sales figures. Although those can be interesting like a car crash can be interesting, I find them mostly sad, depressing, sobering commentaries on exactly where American culture isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to enforce a rigid aesthetic view, I just think my cultural product should have at least some intelligence behind it.

This end-of-decade business is a little better. There’s enough time gone by for trends and influences to take form more clearly, and even if the handwriting isn’t fully on the wall, at least there’s some fairly clear scribbling up for view.

It was with this in mind that I sat down with Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums of the Decade” — not the least because I actually was sitting with a copy of Rolling Stone after many, many, many years away (something to do with relevance).

It’s an interesting take on things. I’m sure their “Best” decisions involved a lot of internal argument and bruised feelings, but hey, they gotta do something to earn their pay.

The list also reminded me of what musician/producer/genius Brian Eno famously said about the Velvet Underground: that while few people actually bought their albums, everyone who did went out and started a band.

I was in a band for four/five years back in the ’90s — don’t waste your time asking, nearly all of our recorded material sucks, and we were held together by a commonality of emotional issues. That, and we changed our names pretty much with the seasons, so building a following was beside the point.

What brought us together was, really, one thing: Nirvana. They dropped an album that was the sonic and cultural equivalent of Fat Man, coming in just as unexpectedly and leveling all the Potemkin-Village music industry creations, and leaving behind what many of us believed was a new world just waiting to be built up. But the Nirvana analogy seems a little too trendy and recent, so I’m going with Velvet Underground on this one.

What’s the criteria for my list? Eh, mostly an instinct as to who’s doing work that makes people start bands or — for people already in bands — gives them enough reason to explore different directions.

Is this list complete? Hell no. I’m adding at least a second part. Is it fair? Nope. Could you do better? Probably.

“They were such a huge early influence on me…”

Radiohead: These Oxfordians showed you could rock out HARD, stay intelligent, and not devolve into some dickhead stereotype. Plus, you can rock out while completely de-emphasizing guitars. Quite the trick for a rock band. And tell me no song on “Kid A” gave you goosebumps. Liar.

Jack White (and all his incarnations): Because he loves and lives the blues, and can make better, more interesting music with a battered guitar, three days and $16 than some people can with $16 million and 14 years.

Jay-Z: Because he can do it all, and does. And he’s managed to hold on to huge success without going insane from drugs/booze or get himself shot. And he can make careers, which is a big deal.

Beck: This one would seem obvious, in terms of starting low-fi and moving on to huge artistic and commercial success, again without burying himself in groupies or releasing a crappy self-indulgent concept album.

Amy Winehouse: Because even though she’s done a great job of destroying herself, she cleared the path for real crooners to get out and croon again. And “Back to Black” will always be a heartbreaking album. Deal with it.

To be continued…