"Splash" is Ponypak's shoe-gazing treatment of lost love set in a bildungsroman about the human potential for redemption.
Kidding! It's a booty video with a great house track. The shoot was such a party at Susan Aurinko's Flatfile Gallery that it took quite a while just to ferry all the food into the kitchen. I don't want to spoil the plot (there isn't one), but let me just say I'm still trying to get the milk spots off my camera. The white guy who carries off the girl is Mike Beck, 6'10" demolition racer and stuntman from Joliet.
Any one of these shots would have let me die happy if I had made them: The scene at the farmhouse table, seemingly lit by the bright sun on the table. The back of the screen, just catching fire from the bottom. The giant face of jewish vengeance, projected on smoke.
That first one has a technique I use a lot, either with available light or my own lights. Motivated soft glows from visible surfaces. There's a wonderful bit of it in the projection booth scene with "Mimieux" and Zoller. The arc light that leaks out of the projector reflects off her red dress and gives a red glow. When I'm shooting with motivated bright stage lighting (lots of hip hop videos lately), I let it bounce off skin or cloth onto faces. It's a lifesaver for beautiful dark skin. Likewise, in a recent shoot lit by motorcycles, the headlights bounced off clothes and onto faces.
A lifestyle video for Sean Nitty and Big Cash. There's some plot, a big drug deal shot at my house and a sex trap set in the bedroom of photographer Emily 'Northside' Grimes. I like the night scene lit by motorcycles. Big Cash is particularly scary when he comes around the corner to chase you off his territory. The drug deal in our kitchen was lit by late sunlight bouncing off the cherry wood table. Bigg Nastee and Bo Deal, who had just opened for Gucci Mane the night before, were particularly convincing. Sean was nice to work with. He's so low key but with very evolved taste.
It's a wonderful story, but the short version is that Leigh Ledare (google him), Nan Goldin protege, took some scandalous pix of his 50 something mom, including with her 22 year old boy friend, and some nudes, some kind of, oh, challenging. I had also shot some racy video of her, in a kind of costume romance that would be rated soft-R, I think. She was the duchess and there was a duke, two maids, and the 22 year old hunk as the chauffeur. Bawdy, but no actual sex, no giblets, but some rolling around, exposed curves, and literally ripped bodices. I sent her a copy of the raw footage and she sent it to Leigh. He created a piece out of some of it and calls it "The Gift." He's showing it all over the world, I think. I haven't seen it yet. It's $4,000 a copy but I think he's going to Gift me. Thanks Leigh. Very exciting.
I'm headed off to see dearest friends unseen since the late 60's and 70's. The train ride will be great but I'm a little insecure about seeing these people. They're all 22 years old but carrying decades of success, while I'm kind of middle-aged and pretending I lost it all to Madoff and I'm starting over. Okay, packing enough vegetable matter to feed half an Amfleet Coach, a guitar, and the travel journal (one should always have something solipsistic to read on the train.)
