The Contest

Last year I decided to film and enter a spec commercial for the website Poptent. If that last sentence confused the heck out of you let me explain. A spec; is a commercial that is filmed with out the companies knowledge and out of your own pocket, with the hope that you impress someone. Poptent runs contests for spec commercials that end with the companies purchasing said commercials. This contest was for SIM Mobile, a pay as you go cell phone company. Their big thing is you can remove your sim card and put it any phone (I'm not sure who owns a phone that still uses sim cards). SIM Mobile wanted a gritty urban feeling while using the tag line "More for the People". For some reason the future set battle scenes from Terminator kept popping into my head. The shooting went pretty well, I even used a few actors from the Cat Power video "Cherokee" I worked on. I called in allot of favors on this one including my old pal Moses Martinez who shot 2nd Unit. My major problem with this project were the post issues. Mainly the music and sound, I had a friend who promised three days in a row to come over and help. Six hours before the deadline to upload the video my buddy Anthony Ceglia and I created the music and sfx using Final Cut. Not everything came out the way I wanted but I was still really happy with how everything came out and I love all the acting. Enjoy!

Cat Power, the desert and I

Have you ever been in a situation that you knew just wasn't right. In summer of 2012 I had my own end of the world experience. I was working in Lancaster (that time of the year you could just refer to it as hell) on a music video for the indie artist Cat Power. If your like most of America there is a good chance you don't know who Cat is. Though she has appeared on Letterman and dated actor Giovanni Ribisi for like 6 years she is still pretty indie. I've also discovered since that shoot that allot of her fans are a tad unbalanced, we could have a whole chicken and the egg conversation with that one.
I was hired (when I say hired I mean I worked for free) to do props, I ended up also doing art department and chauffeur for the singer. I worked for free because they didn't have enough money to pay allot of positions. It turned out they did have two thousand dollars to buy a Ford Bronco for the shoot since it was getting tough to find one to rent.
I can't get too into what happened on the shoot since I signed a confidentiality agreement. I can say we originally were shooting the video for a song off her new album called Ruin (I actually really like it) instead mid-way through filming it was changed to the song Cherokee. If you watch this video and think it doesn't make any sense that has nothing too do with the change in song, from the get go the idea never made any sense! I might have said too much already, don't want to get sued, got to love Hollywood. I can say that everyone on the crew and and all the actors were amazing and some of the coolest people I have ever met.

Check out below the art and clothing from two guys I met on set who you will recognize as zombies at the beginning of the video.

https://www.facebook.com/StoopDownLimited?ref=br_tf

https://www.facebook.com/JouvonKingsby?fref=ts