visual madness

I’ve known Swedish magician Jonas Haglund for approximately 5 years now, and in addition to being an extremely insightful and entertaining personality, he’s also one of my favorite flourish video artists to watch. Not just because he’s got a devastatingly smooth and off-hand style, but also because his videos are about 130% more creative than most of the ones you see online today. Considering the fact that most of his videos are filmed in his bedroom with nothing more than a static webcam, that’s quite an accomplishment if I do say so myself.

As of late, Jonas has been re-uploading some of his older videos onto his Youtube page. In addition to serving as a generous helping of nostalgia, it’s also a charming reminder of what can be done with a deck of cards, a camera, and the limitless possibilities of one’s imagination.

Here are a few of my favorites: » Read the rest of this entry «

During my early teenage years I listened to a lot of what I now consider to be sub-standard music – I won’t name any particular artists for fear of trampling on anyone’s tastes, but let’s just say that for the longest time I was perfectly content with the onslaught of whiny voices, unimaginative power chords and love/above rhymes that dominated the charts at any given moment.

Then came the event that changed everything – in 2005, my friend Sean made a mix CD for me that compiled a plethora of music by Indie Rock artists, most of whom I’d never heard of before. Within a few weeks I had abandoned most of my prior music library, replacing it with the songs that Sean had given me.

Out of the hundreds of new tracks that I had added into my iTunes playlist, the ones I ended up listening to the most were Raw Sugar, Combat Baby, Hustle Rose and Calculation Theme – all songs by Canadian band Metric. The combination of masterful lyrics, playful yet pensive synth chords, as well as Emily Haine’s beautiful, mesmerizing voice just completely sucked me in and they’ve been my favorite band ever since. » Read the rest of this entry «

As soon as I read that Don Hertzfeldt was going to be in LA on the 30th to screen his new film, I immediately had a heart attack, went to the hospital, recovered, came back home and then bought tickets for the 9.30 screening. After about a month of playing Calendar Countdown, the day finally arrived and I got to see the madness first hand. » Read the rest of this entry «

Even though my first viewing of 12 Monkeys at age 12 was what opened the door for me as far as film-making went, it was only when I started making little flourish videos in ’04 that I finally walked through it. In making my flourish montages, I always had one simple rule – I had to know what song I was using before I put the video together.

When I did HFFH four years ago, even before shooting it I knew I was going to use that particular track off of the WWE Anthology. Likewise, Void Deck was destined to have Emily Haine’s haunting voice in the background. And one of the reasons Portable Playground took so long to come out was because I had to find that one song that fit – eventually I did, and now I can’t imagine anything other than Sam Roberts’ track playing in its stead.

So I guess when it comes down to it, one could say I’m a music video maker with a very specific subject. And while I don’t consider myself as much of a music-video nut as I do a film geek (more on that next time), it’s a format that I’ve come to be very fascinated with. » Read the rest of this entry «

I was lucky enough to bump into Paul Harris at LVMI 3 years ago. No, he didn’t show me any magic (given how tall the guy was, I was probably at a bad angle anyway), but the honor of finally meeting this living legend in person was awesome enough.

The Art of Astonishment was one of the first books I read when I was starting out, and at the time I’ll have to admit I just sort of breezed through it. Yes, I read through all the effects and learnt them, but in hindsight what I was really doing was just taking each item at face value and going ‘oh, I can do this… no, this one’s too hard… where can I find the gimmick for this?… I don’t know if this would work…’ so and and so forth. Flash forward to present day, and the only thing I do from the book is a variation of Reset. Kinda sad, don’t you think? » Read the rest of this entry «