This is my latest video, a new one for Great Lake Swimmers. The song is Backstage With the Modern Dancers, from the new album 'Ongiara'. Once again, Videofact failed to come through, so we did it on the cheap. Hope you like it.

WATCH

My latest music video, for Timber Timbre's 'Oh Messiah', is finished and online. This was a $300 affair, for who I think are one of the best bands in this town right now, woefully under exposed. If you watch the video and like what you hear, head on over to their myspace page and listen to more. Maybe even buy their awesome CD, Cedar Shakes. This song is as-of-yet unreleased, appearing on their next record. Hope you like the video.

Quicktime

I mentioned before that I'm working on a short film at the moment that I plan to shoot in the coming months. Here is a pre-production promo card image. This type of thing is included with the treatment and other materials when presented to people who we need favours, money, location use, or whatever else from.

Haunting music:

1. Gavin Bryars - "The Sinking of the Titanic"
2. Gavin Bryars - "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet"
3. Henryk Gorecki - "Symphony #3: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
4. Arvo Pärt - "Alina"
5. Arvo Pärt - "Te Deum"

It's a Gorecki sandwich, stuck between two very "thick" slices of bread. You should eat it.

Shot a music video today for Toronto band Timber Timbre, who you really must check out if you know what's good for you. The song is called 'Oh Messiah' which you can hear if you follow that link. I'd say they are one of the best bands in this city and their existence and music must not be kept secret for much longer. Hopefully this video will help with that a little bit. It is a tale of religious ritual, enlightenment, hysteria, madness, edification, and purity...or perhaps none of those things. It should be online within the month.

And the second in the new nosebleed series, this one featuring Tony Dekker.

When I approach these, I only think about the image and not the "story". And there is certainly no message. What's interesting is how some of them read as very literal, and others become much more ambiguous as they are "worked". I'm only concerned that the final image should hide some sort of narrative behind it, however cloaked and unclear it may be. There should be mystery.

The Nosebleed Project is an ongoing project of mine that began in 2005 as a series of 5-minute films (there are stills from these on my website) intended for projection and gallery showing, and is now continuing as a series of photographic stills with photographer Sab Politowicz. It's an interesting approach to take I think, but remarkably feels almost exactly the same as directing moving film, and working with a cinematographer. I initially wondered if it would be awkward, considering that I'm not the one actually "taking" the photograph. But it isn't. It's the same as directing anything else. Anyways. This is the first in the new series. The model is Aisha Freeman. Hope you like it.

Here is the third and final Zunior commercial. It stars Martin Tielli. Hope you like it.

Youtubz

or

Quicktimez

It's Jen's birthday. For her birthday I thought I would share with her, and everybody, this: The Greatest Surveillance Camera Footage Ever!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0flNUFBRtB8

Enjoy (enjoy).

I don't know if anybody remembers this video from George Harrison in the 80's, but it's one of my all-time favourites, for the seminal song "I've Got My Mind Set On You". I'm going to re-create this video, for a new music video, but taking the premise much further. Sort of an homage, but also sort of just because I wish that I had made the original one.

The part where Harrison dances around and does flips in the blue spotlight!? AMAZING!

WATCH IT!

Here is the 2nd in the series of 3 internet spots done for Zunior.com. Hope you like it.

Quicktime via my site

Youtube via youtube

Please watch this awesome video for The Softlights, directed by Kris Moyes. Really, this is slick, slick stuff. I'm pretty tired of the whole stop-motion trend in music video, but this is so clever and well-executed, and watching it is a joy. So, you know...watch it and be joyous.

Since I'm not really one to keep a journal, or document my life in this way really, and I pretty much only use this thing to promote shit that I've done, I thought it could be better used to promote shit that other people have done. So that's what I'm going to do. Starting with Rock Plaza Central and their album Are We Not Horses. Author/Musician Chris Eaton is the man behind this joyous music, and speaking of "joy", check out this track.

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The first in a series of 3 internet spots for Zunior.com, is now online, available all over the world wide internets. All of them.

View high quality Quicktime here
or on lower quality YouTube here

JOY!

The other 2 spots will be following bi-weekly over the next four weeks.

If you want to read a short interview with me, then one is up today on Shots Ring Out, a website about music videos. It's a really great video blog run by really great people in L.A.

Click here, or click on the part above where it says Shots Ring Out. Or click on that one. So many places to click. How could you ever be bored?

Thanks.

edit: I almost forgot to say (or I did forget, and just remembered now) that I get to go see Bob Dylan in November, courtesy of my brother. I've never seen Bob Dylan before and I haven't been to a big concert (ie. stadium/arena) in years. All of this = excitement. Excitement = !!!! Excitement + !!! = Excitement!!!

or something like that.

On the new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife, there is a song called Sons and Daughters in which they imagine an ideal future when they will "...build our homes on the water/we'll make our walls alluminum/we'll fill our mouths with cinnamon...and hear all the bombs fade away". It's a lovely sentiment, but I wonder if they've ever really tried to fill their mouths with cinnamon. If they had, they might have thought twice about including this lyric in their song because there is absolutely nothing pleasant about having a mouthful of cinnamon. In fact, I dare you all to try it. Don't even fill your mouth, just try to eat a teaspoon full. That's it, just a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. I bet you can't. I bet you spit it out. Go on. Try it.

For the edification of all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP83IrERdP4&eurl=

The Spirit of Truth

la la livejournal...listen up!

today i filmed some internet spots for internet music store zunior.com. three of them actually, probably too much to do in one day, but we did it, contending with the terrible sounds of aeroplanes and construction workers the entire time. nobody ever really gets to find out the titles of commercials, so i will tell you the titles of these. they are called, respectively, BOX, WOLF, and MARTIN. clever, no? from these descriptive titles you can garner that one of them features a box, another features a wolf, and the last one features a martin. not the bird or acoustic guitar, but in this case, a man named martin. they will hopefully be finished and appear online one by one over the next month or so.

oh, and...chicago is a wonderful city. i was there earlier in the month. you should go there.