I shot the film above a few months back, but completely forgot to post it on the blog. It’s pretty much a pilot episode for a video portrait series I plan on doing involving various creative types (artists, musicians, comedians) that I’m fond of or friends with. It’s a personal project that’s been in the works for about a year, but has been postponed due to other commitments or lack of proper equipment.
The Doze Green/Blek Le Rat video was shot on location at Jonathan LeVine Gallery as the two artists were setting up for their dueling solo art shows at the New York Gallery. I had been itching to do video for a while now and the quality of video that can be captured by the Canon G9 was so good in the Centralia video I shot in July that I figured I’d try it again in a quieter environment.
See, I started out my photo/journalism career back in high school as a broadcasting fan and eventually headed to college with dreams of breaking into television news journalism. When I realized how little news is actually gathered in the TV world, I moved on to print journalism, where I was trained as a photographer because the publishers at my local paper didn’t want to pay for staff shooters. That said, I still love making videos.
At Jonathan gallery, I got some crazy looks when I set up the bulky point-and-shoot camera on a tripod and began zooming in and out on the artists while they talked to each other. But once the conversation started flowing, no one seemed to even notice that the camera was on. Well except for the French video crew that was roaming around leeching off my interview. I’m still not sure where that ended up. C’est la vie.
So fast forward many months later, and I’ve finally aquired a decent camera (the new Canon HF200) and I’m going to lay out a plan to try to do a video portrait a month for the next year, starting in June. I have my dream list: Andrew Bell, Dave Vanian, Chris Gethard, Ron English, Chuck Nasty, Kid Lew. All are doable, but I need to get this mess together.
I’d love to keep these videos at about 10 minutes and mix interview footage (without me in them) with a photo shoot and some shots of the artist at work. I’m going to attempt to edit these in the new iMovie HD and get them posted virally on some of the art and punk sites I’m friends with.
In the mean time, enjoy the Rat/Doze video, let me know what you think of it, and come back in June to check out a new video portrait.
