This week: Dead musician comebacks, Star Trek nightmares, schoolyard bullies, is it life, or is it instagram? IdeaGrave is an explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan (when he shows up... )
IdeaGrave is an explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan Black (when he shows up... )
This week: Childhood friend and explorer of the far East, Steven. IdeaGrave is an explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan Black (when he shows up... )
IdeaGrave is an explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan Black (when he shows up... )
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan Black.
This week: Chris Eaton, Toronto author and musician best known for his band Rock Plaza Central and his novel Chris Eaton, A Biography www.amazon.com/Chris-Eaton-Biography/dp/1927040647 Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends, about culture, art and technology. Cohosted by Brendan Black.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. Cohosted by Brendan Black. Topics: GTA 5, self medication, life imitating the internet, digitized memories, bad barbers and sad childhood.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. Guest: L.A film composer Alexis Marsh.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. Guest: Toronto Musician and friend, Shawn Clarke. Full length audio commentary track for the classic film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. Guest: Our former roommate Jerome. Topics: Whisper tapes, Rob Ford, Toronto Transit and Condos and World-star Hip Hop.
This week: Spoilers for every great television show of the past 10 years, how to quit smoking weed without going insane, shitty jobs, big budget film making and high park bathrooms
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. This week podcast cohost Brendan Black. Brendan Black is an indie music promoter and musician.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. This week Mike Juneau and Brendan Black. Brendan Black is an indie music promoter and musician. Mike Juneau is an independent video director in Toronto. He is best known for his work with Tokyo Police Club and his Live in Bellwoods concert series.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends.
Explicit, long format podcast. Conversations between Toronto indie filmmaker Jesse Yules and his friends. Jesse Yules is an independent filmmaker. Brendan Black is an indie music promoter and musician. This week Todd vs The Dark Knight Rises. This episode was recorded as beta-test following the release of the Dark Knight Rises.
"I would have been more successful if I'd left movies immediately. Stayed in the theater, gone into politics, written – anything. I've wasted the greater part of my life looking for money, and trying to get along... trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box which is ... a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with a movie. It's about two percent movie making and 98 percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life."
- Orson Welles
Welles' warning has dissuaded very few filmmakers. Kevin Smith is ready to make a change though. The Clerks director is giving up movies in favour of podcasting. Like Wells, Smith spent years hustling for money to try and turn stories from his life into films. Stories that were, easier and more effectively told by him directly to an audience with a microphone. Smith's personality, as it turns out, is much more warm, witty and provocative than any of his movies. And so he's changing. Unlike Wells, Smith is brave enough to put his ego aside, to ignore critics that might see a switch to the internet as being a step down.
It's conceivable that the internet may flip the production cycle for future movies upside down. In the past a filmmaker would design a personal film. She write a story and take it to a small group of investors that believed in the idea enough that they would fund it's transformation into a movie. After years of marketing, word of mouth and award wins the film would be considered a success and the masses would seek it out. Spin off novels, Wikipedia pages, fan fiction and Comicon merchandise would follow years later.
But the internet is flipping that cycle. Now it's web comics like the Professor Brothers that get offered television show. It's the sketches, the wiki pages, fan fiction, experimental shorts and all the other secondary tribe building elements, published online that lead to bigger deal. The internet allows for simple, text and still image based ideas to flow quickly between people all around the world. Perhaps in this era storytellers interested in making films, should work to build the biggest possible tribes around certain ideas and themes first. If filmmaker can demonstrate to money-men that already have an audience for a project, producing the movie becomes simple.
One more example. After a successful storytelling season at the Moth podcast, Mike Birbigliahis took his insane sleepwalk stories to the large audience at public radios This American Life, then to the huge audience in movie theaters across America, then to unlimited audience online at Netflix. Mike started with just some notes and a microphone. What movie projects could we launch if those tools were all that was needed?
My friend Todd and I planned a follow up to our 2007 Nuit Blanche exhibit Secular Confessional. It was not approved.
For one night only Toronto’s hip downtown yoga studios will be exposed as the seedy backroom torture chambers they are. We would like to stage a goth-themed exercise class inside one of these studios, combining dominatrix style and attitude with traditional aerobics. Visitors to the exhibit will see something that goes beyond fitness. They will see the mortification of the flesh.
Three actors will be rear projected on a 8 metre screen within the venue. These actors will be dressed as a dominatrix and her two slaves. They will be wearing a combination of vinyl, leather, black make-up and spandex. The dominatrix’s outfit will be tight and restrictive. Her two slaves wear more functional gothic attire, in order to properly execute the moves for the audience (her off-screen slaves). After her initial demonstration the instructor circles her two slaves, correcting them with harsh criticism and a whip. A brutal mistress, she exacts total submission to her work out plan while forcing her on and off-screen slaves to work progressively faster and harder. The pace of the workout will be fueled by the dark rhythms of late 80’s and early 90’s industrial and gothic-techno music.
Her interaction with her off-screen slaves will be similar to the popular ‘Nightmare’ board game series from the 1990’s – she will pretend to single out specific audience members, addressing the ‘silly bitches’ upfront or the ‘jailbait’ in the back. The pre-recorded exercise film will be 25 minutes in length and will run on a loop, seamlessly all night. The tempo of the music accompanying the workout will get faster as the dominatrix’s demands become greater. Strobe lights will flash in the room as the routine hits it’s full intensity.
The lighting in the yoga studio will be dim,, similar to a night club. Yoga mats, will be laid out on the studio floor. The walls of the studio will be adorned with images of bondage and other leather-clad dominatrixes, to further draw out the parallels between torture and exercise.
To encourage participation we will seed the event with at least one volunteer per hour, to insure at least one live person exercising throughout the night. Visitors refusing to join in the work out will be bullied by our on-screen dominatrix.
Gothic Aerobics will be a chance for Nuit Blanche attendees to be more than spectators. A full-on workout will pump them up for the night and raise questions about exercise in the modern era. The exhibit will run for 12 hours.
Goth culture is synonymous with self –mutilation, loathing and a fascination, if skeptical, with religious contemplation. It is an ideal presentation style for the considerations we wish to raise with the participants in our event. Superimposing gothic imagery over a traditional workout video, we playfully call into question all the body-image issues that motivate such practices. Physical fitness is normally presented in media as entirely positive. This allows participants to engage in the act without much thought about just what they’re engaging in and their reasons for it. While our installation draws out these hidden aspects and motivations for consideration, we believe a proper questioning and consideration of them will ultimately enrich and enliven the experience.
Todd Julie (www.foveaonline.com)
Todd Julie collaborated with Jesse Yules in The City of Toronto's 2007's Nuit Blanche arts festival, with their installation, The Secular Confession Booth. Todd is a freelance illustrator and painter based in Toronto, Canada. His commercial work has appeared in publications across North America. Todd won Gold at the 2003 National Magazine Awards for 'Best Spot Illustration' and Silver at the 2005 Advertising & Design Club of Canada awards in the same category. A series of Abraham Lincoln portraits, completed for The Boston Globe, appeared in Applied Arts magazine's 2007 awards annual.
Jesse Yules (www.jesseyules.com)
Jesse Yules is a freelance filmmaker and animator based in Toronto. Jesse was awarded Best New Director by the web community Videos.Antville in 2008. He has done music videos for Owen Pallet, Grizzly Bear and Of Montreal.
Some of the most iconic and powerful sequences in cinema are driven by their musical scores. As stand alone pieces, they have much in common with modern music videos. Here are some of my favourites.
Truman Burbank begins to suspect a conspiracy... Set to Phillip Glass’s pounding “Anthem”.
The Ecstasy of Gold sequence from the Good the Bad and the Ugly. I first saw this as a rental from the library when I was sixteen. My Dad made a rare movie recommendation to me, saying it was the best film he’d ever seen. The final duel sequence, is also amazing.
The training sequence that won Stallone an Oscar and spawned a dozen imitations (many directed by Stallone himself) . Root for the underdog!
Apocalypse Now helicopter sequence. Coppola rebukes the US military’s actions in Veitnam by scoring the scene with Wagner, a favourite of the Nazis.
Epic Coen brothers dream sequence featuring Kenny Rogers, during his early psychedelic period.
Stuck in the Middle indeed. The torture sequence that launched Tarantino's career.
The entire end sequence from the Last of the Mohicans.
The 'Wise Up' sequence. Feels more like a musical, but whatever.
The space ballet sequence. I was in college and super baked when I saw this the first time. It was a religious experience. The stargate sequence's terrifying leap into the infinite should also be included.
The opening credits lean heavily on the strength of the greatest pop song of the 60s. The Jumpin' Jack Flash sequence when Johnny Boy enters could also be included.
Walking in the Air, from the Christmas classic, the Snowman.
Hollerado | Americanarama
1. Think remarkable. Write a concept that is easy to sum up or make a remark about. Imagine people saying "It's the one with the Mentos in the soda pop!" or "It’s one where the guys are dancing on treadmills!" People recommend work to their friends and colleagues that is easy to describe.
Fleet Foxes | The Shrine
2. Remember what music videos are for. The first approach is a performance video. Performance videos help fans put a face to the music, and to better understand it's context. Simple and beautiful performance videos are being shot guerrilla-style by La Blogotheque, Southern Souls and Live in Bellwoods for next to nothing. The second approach is the is the narrative video. The video interprets the themes or the story of the song through live action narrative or animation. These music videos act as silent films. They are a stand alone pieces that people will share even if they aren't feeling the song. They are also eligible for submission to film festivals. I recommend choosing one or the other, instead of trying to do both. Note: The majority of the music videos since the beginning of time have tried to do both.
3. Music videos live and die by the track. Cee Lo's Fuck You already had millions of hits when it was a simple text video. Anxiety about the career of a band succeeding or failing based on a music video are baseless. Relax and try to make something wonderful for your fans to cherish.
4. Choose one concept and explore that idea to the end. Avoid the kitchen sink approach. It's expensive, and makes the clip harder to describe when people are recommending it. A filmmaker might start doubting their concept's ability to hold attention. (Note: Audience's are more patient than we give them credit for especially now that the medium has shifted away from the hyper-noisy television, to the mostly text internet.) In such cases we can be tempted to add layers of filters, alternative art direction, or a flurry of cuts to the make the clip more interesting. These paths lead to an inconsistent vision, and feeling that the clip is "average" or "boring".
5. Post the video to either Vimeo or YouTube and allow it to be played and embedded everywhere. Turn off front roll ads. They don't pay much and they abuse the small amount of permission a viewer is giving you when they click on your link.
6. Share the video link with a core group of bloggers you know have supported your work in the past. If your video is great, the bloggers will appreciate your contribution. It's hard filling a daily blog.
7. Don't stress about the number of hits. Having a video go viral is thrilling for the ego, but less important than making a clip that will be beloved by a smaller, committed group of fans. 100 million hits may have made Rebecca Black a household name, but it didn't make her many fans. Not the right kind of fans anyway. The loving fans that will continue to support her career three decades from now. Focus instead on engagement. Are the bloggers we care about discussing the video? Did the band receive offers bigger shows and tour support? Is the video helping to define the zeitgeist of the era? Are fans downloading and sharing the song?
If you are a musician, and have a detailed vision for your a video, you don't need a director. Hire a producer and a talented cinematographer instead. Describe your vision and allow the experts to help you execute it.
