Thursday, January 28, 2010

Phone Art

This past summer I began to record 30 second videos on my cellphone, a Samung EnV2. (which is a really awful phone) I purchased a microSD card for it and a usb adapter to connect it up to my computer. I have been editing some of these videos and posting them online. All the music is by Zach De Sorbo.

Over the summer I was became interested in different video formats. Since the invention of video there have been many different formats, from VHS, S-VHS, DV, MiniDV, BETA and many others. Now with digital video we have an array of different codecs that videos are shot in and viewed with. And it really struck me that at this moment we are at a bit of a strange crossroads. People have become very conscious of video quality with the advent of HD. But, at the same time we are being stimulated with high definition video we are also being overloaded with very low quality video, that really wasn't common until recently and spawned out of necessity by the slow data transfer of the internet. On a daily basis people are viewing HD tv and surfing the web and watching low quality cellphone uploads.

Now, pretty much everyone has a camera, primarily on their phones. But, there is little stock put into the images that cellphones can capture and I wanted to experiment making videos with a phone. It was convenient to have on me at all times and was very unobtrusive while filming and allowed me to capture images I usually wouldn't considering filming.
By no means am I being original working with pixelated footage. But, I find it more pressing at the current stage of technology. A great video using pixelation is music video for Chairlift's "Evident Untensil (below)


Wednesday, January 27, 2010

No Contest?

Recently we submitted our music video for Power_Love to an online music video contest at www.creativecow.net. You can go to the link below and see the video. In order to rate it you have to be a member of the site, which is free. Unfortunately I guess you have to be unmoderated on their site, which takes some posts and becoming active. It's basically a ploy to get more members for their site- but hey, we all gotta have our hustles.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Curiouser and Curiouser

Just below, Mike2.0 has posted about that lovely Staygold awards show video that's been circling around net lately. As much as I like the song, the thing that's been bothering me for the last few days is the idea that that falsetto-voiced lead singer with the moustache is none other than this puffy haired Scandinavian:



a mental leap that is confusing to say the least. Of course, this puffy haired Norwegian seems to shift, oh so quickly, into this well groomed young man roaming amongst the body builders of Venice Beach, California



One of the best things about foreign pop music is how foreign it seems; how it allows us to jump into the middle of a long running cultural conversation without knowing any of the context whatsoever. A thought experiment, just imagine being able to watch some random piece of pop culture without any explanation or assumptions; everything would be so much more exciting, with so little effort expended on the shift.

Sure, there would be troubling implications, wouldn't there; I think we can all follow them well enough, or at least imagine our own. But still, one can dream, a little bit, about a world where the only thing authentic in pop culture is the reaction of surprise upon a new encounter.



If our preferences towards pop culture (and music in general) shift, then that may be so much for the better. Right?

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Staygold


This is a video of the duo Staygold performing "Backseat" with Spank Rock and Robyn at a music awards ceremony, P3 Guld, in Sweden. This video completely blew my mind. I was in Scandinavia a few years ago, and really love the area and the people, so I am glad to see that music like this coming from there. I have checked out some of Staygold's other music and haven't found it to be as good as this song. I guess Staygold usually does remixes, but I hope to see more stuff like this coming from them. I also have to say that the synth player has one of the best outfits I have seen in a long time. He somehow made a general's outfit (?) with tassles and a handlebar mustache look futuristic.

You can download the mp3 here- Staygold-Backseat

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Cake Commercial

















We recently shot a 1 minute video/commercial for Millennium Blonde. It was shot by Joel Neville Anderson on his 7D, and it gave us the chance to work with the camera for the first time. We were pretty impressed with the results and hope to have it on the web next week. The video essentially involves this cake above and a man's lonely story (but isn't that always the case?) Our goal was to make it feel like a dismal diamond commercial. We can only hope...

You can see some more stills at JoelNevilleAnderson.net

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Power_Love


We just recently finished putting on the last touches on Astro Club
Blonde's first music video. We would like to thank everyone that helped out, especially Jon Stromberg our DP. Now, the band is working
on some new tracks, "A-S-T-R-O" and "It's Such a Stupid World".
Hopefully some demos for those will be online soon.

ASTRO CLUB BLONDE- GEARING UP 2010

Hey Ever