le blog

So I finished post-production on what at the time was my first music video about three months ago. It was for a competition on Genero for a David Guetta (ft Afrojack) track entitled “Lunar”. Genero is essentially crowd sourcing for music videos. You go out, film and submit your entry and if the band picks it, you’ve got an official music video for fuck-if-i-know band. Only as of today we pulled our submission, because of the infuriately long time it’s taken David’s team to launch a response.

The tracks Genero listed on their website for videos to be authored for David was from the 2011 album Nothing But The Beat. Two years old is considered ancient for the internets standards which has been another factor for our decisive push now.

We’re all very proud of the final video and I didn’t feel like having it sit in limbo for potentially another six, seven, twelve months (who knows?) gathering dust wasn’t being fair on us, given the time we’d spent on the entire production.

So soon, we’re launching it on YouTube as an “unofficial” music video with some attempt of a balls out public viral tactic to get David and/or one of his team to actually see it.

Stay tuned!

With my latest directorial works for contemporary classical Icelandic artist Olafur Arnalds my creative ideas intentionally swayed from the saturated low-fi, graphically intense VFX styled film (seen in my work for David Guetta) to a pensive, looming and disorientating video. My main drive was to create a film that would ultise the slit-scanning effect I’ve been obsessing over for the past several months but also to create a film that would require a type of performance from actors leading me into previously unfamiliar territory.

It does have an intentionally ambigious vibe but for those of you who like plot spoilers or for their music videos to be as simple as Andy Warhol eating a BigMac, I’ll let you into a little secret. The main character is in limbo. A waiting room. As he’s holding on to be seen by the man behind the door he comes to the realisation he’s already dead. Boohoo.

The past weekend I had the pleasure of checking out Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Pusher” and the opening sequence has really stuck in my head. It’s strange how something has basic as poorly lit overhead headshots can work so well. It’s proof to just take a step back once in a while and evaluate the simpilist option…once in a while anyway

 

I’d like to say it’s the idea of technological imperfection that makes glitch effects so appealing for film makers. That computers can demonstrate one of the attributes that makes humans human, but it’s not that deep. Glitch effects are fucking awesome because they’re a chaotic mash of spiked shapes, harshly contrasting pixel colour with erratic timings. They’re atheistically forceful, but they also act as the material texture of the digital world. They’re often used in films as a storytelling prop to confirm the falsity of the digital manifestations living in the real world.

Mastered interseller travel but can’t get decent TV reception. Yeeeeeh right.

Glitching out video used to be one of my favourite little novelty tricks because cut it with some dark tunes and its presence sets that ambience damn well. Glitching is also, usually clients’ least favourite art styles (unless of course you’re the CD cover artist for Nine Inch Nails) which is one of the reasons why I sold out, became a corporate slave and made my portfolio PGI13.

But what is it that makes the glitch so fascinating to watch? Maybe who cares, and maybe hamburglers.

Liars – Brats, glitched style music video

Here’s the finished thing. I had problems getting the motion vector pass to work in Nuke which I reckon is the last thing the shot needed but there isn’t all that much movement so I think I can just about get away with it.

3D Gameboy from Sam Jack Gilmore on Vimeo.