Allow me to clear the air here. I know these past “Arting” updates have been a bit cryptic as to what the end result was for, so here’s the story: we drew our inspiration from a track by Nit Grit called Lupin and made a music video for it. Let it be known that this was all done without the permission of the artist. To say it in a way that someone who might attempt to sue us would understand: Nit Grit has absolutely no affiliation with the creators, the performers, or the video itself.  We have not received any endorsement or compensation from Nit Grit or his representatives. As far as we know, he has not seen it, and if he ever does, he might not even like it.

Aside from that, it was a great experience making something for one of our favorite artists and it’s the coolest looking thing we’ve ever shot. Hopefully you agree because let’s face it, we’re going up against Freebase and Daruthers here.

There’s a 4 next to that 4 up there, which means it’s the last entry of our attempted Arting.

Here we are. The last post about our soon to be completed project. For this scene we brought all of our featureless beauties together in one spot, and wouldn’t you know it? We let them have their faces back. Maybe we know how to use pretty girls in music videos after all.

                                  All you have to do is hide them, right?

All of our previous ladies had their senses stripped from them and were trapped in these environments. But who created those worlds? Who removed their eyes? Who trapped them? In this final scene those questions are answered as we continue to masquerade as people that know what we’re doing.

Cherry Torn was the main actress for this shoot. She plays a puppet master of sorts. The queen that’s in charge of where the other ones are and what they experience. Throughout the video she does this all from the confines of her lair.

                     No lair is complete without two types of satin sheets

When the girls complete their trials they’re summoned back to rejoin Cherry.

As for the rest of the scene I’m sure you can fill in the blanks. Don’t let your imaginations run too far though. You’ll still be able to watch this one at work. Probably not. Although it might be wise to announce , “I’m going to watch a music video,” otherwise these images coupled with you huddled in front of your monitor with headphones on could really give someone the wrong idea.

This project is getting closer to completion by the day. Keep a look out for it sometime in October December.

While trying to be organized and shuffle media around I happen to stumble upon old footage and workings from past projects long forgotten. This would be the first installment.

This is pure cinema in the making. The dedication and commitment are fully present, even up to the point of actually choking at the :22 marker. You don’t want to know how many oranges were devoured in the making of this.

That pretty much summed up the day for us. I blame the delirium from all the rind. But believe it or not, these shenanigans won us a Silver Addy Award from the American Advertising Federation. Good job, us from the past. Below is the fake commercial for IFYW’s Brand Smashed Orange Juice. Enjoy.

You know we can’t stop, won’t stop… Arting.

In this installment of Arting we’ve got Iona Grace stepping in as our featureless woman. Naturally when you’re trying to art you’re going to have to problem solve, but the challenges of this scene were magnified by the size of the set, working with half the man-power, and needing to make it rain indoors. We had our work cut out for us.

Similar to our other attempts at being creative, this scene starts off the same as the others, with Iona exploring the space.

               Not shown: The looks on our faces when we realized we need
               our actress to hit her mark while she’s blinded by prosthetics 

                                    A little touch-up before we start again

Iona is lured through the space by a pipe structure in the middle of this cavern. As she explores the belts that hang from it they capture her, strapping her to the rig.

When it came to bring the scene to its finale, it was time to get the waterworks going. And I don’t mean breaking down and crying because it’s hard. We rigged a pipe system 15 feet high to rain down on the set. But as soon as we got the water going the shoot became a sprint so that we didn’t flood ourselves out.

The set didn’t flood, the camera didn’t get that wet, and Iona got out and dried off in one piece, which was great because the next week we had to get this done…

                                                    It’s a hard life

The 17th Annual Brainwash Movie Fest is not over yet. Tonight $10 Bill will be burning its image on the big white tarp over at the Mandela Village Arts Center in Oakland. Hector and his drunken ode to women far out of his league has been our most well received project thus far and Brainwash is a great crowd so it should be a good night. Show starts at 9pm with food starting at 7. 

                                Click through for a larger image

We’ve digested our ideas and now it’s time for another spat of Arting.

                              Our gaffer, Pete, setting up the panels

If you’ll remember from the last episode of “Arting” we’ve got a creature trapped in a world and forced to explore and accept her environment. Add a pinch of art to fool the good people at home, and you’ve got yourself scene two of a music video. For this shoot we set up four twelve foot panels and blasted them with some red light. That would prove to be our only light source for the scene.

After setting up the panels it was time to dress the scene… using all the rope in the world.

Our actress, performance artist Chloe Camilla, performed her scene in two parts. The first performance was behind the panels in silhouette.

After messing around behind the panels it was time to apply make-up and and get chloe in the air.

We were working with a smaller crew than usual this day so as soon as Chloe went off the ground it was a mad dash to get all of the shots. And if you’re wondering what happened to all that rope, that’s the stuff stringing her up in the photo below.

So here’s the scenario: we hung a girl covered in latex prosthetics upside down and took some pictures of it. “Whatever you say, life.”

If I had to guess I’d say this video was about aliens or something. Of course that would just be silly because in all actuality it’s about… oh looks like it’s time to wrap up this episode of “Arting.” Next time around we’ll throw up some photos of the third scene, here’s a taste.

                                      Does this still count as NSFW?

Harvey was definitely <spoiler extracted> at the end of “Goodnight Harvey” but the tenacious little guy just won’t seem to stay <spoiler extracted>. And in this case, since the film is showing again at the 17th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival as part of their “Big Weird Time” television pilot, he’s going to have yet another chance to be <spoiler extracted>.

Although maybe this year Harvey lucks out and gets the alternate ending in which rather than getting <spoiler extracted>… he lives.

… damn it.

The Brainwash Movie Festival starts up at 8pm this Saturday, September 3rd at the Mandela Village Arts Center, 1357 5th St., Oakland. Show up on your bike, on your car, or on your shoes for the only independent drive-in movie experience that I know of.

In case you were ever curious, this is another look at IFYW in production.

                   It looks like this with a lot more sighing and frustration

A few months ago we were testing a bunch of different ways to go about this new project. Testing make-up, testing set dressing, testing our patience… but now all those tests have paid off and after six weeks of production we’ve got some fancy looking images to show off.

First, a little background on the project. It’s composed of four scenes all set in abstract locations and populated with one creature that is forced to struggle against the environment they find themselves in. It’s…um… all artsy and stuff and that makes me uncomfortable so I’m just going to let the images do the talking for me. This week we’re going through the first scene.

Practicing our shot for…wait they don’t call it practicing on real productions… rehearsing, that’s what we’re doing, we’re rehearsing. Thanks to MC Vulgar for the focus pull.

Here we are shooting for real. Our lovely actress is Gia DiMarco and she’s trapped under a latex sheet as we slide our 5D back and forth.

Here’s a better look at her, posing with the plaster cast of her face that we used to make…

…this custom prosthetic. We had gotten some advice about putting pretty girls in music videos; so we took that advice, hired four models, and covered their faces in latex masks. If anyone ever tries to tell you that IFYW consistently misses the point, don’t let them. No matter how flawless their reasoning is. 

All up in Gia’s face with some macro lens.

This shot became known as the “alien membrane.” I remember it was during this shot that I started thinking to myself, “we are making something really weird.” And I knew we were on the right track.

Here’s Gia in her full face make-up exploring the element that will eventually… well, on second thought I think it’s time to bring this to a close. 

Next week I’ll post some stills from our 2nd shoot featuring Chloe Camilla. But until then here’s this

                                  Dear Lord, grant me SALIVATION

IFYW’s favorite film festival, Brainwash, just accepted our latest puppet project “$10 Bill.” The music video for MC Vulgar’s ode to drunken reminiscence will be shown sometime in August (exact times TBA.)

It also looks like Goodnight Harvey will get another showing as it was selected to be part of the Brainwash television pilot “Big Weird Time” which will get some screen time on the last night of the festival.

Thanks again to the Brainwash judges who continue to exemplify intelligence, foresight, and handsomeness in choosing to showcase our movies. It is on the the shoulders of these giants that we stand, hand-in-puppet, looking aft toward the crimson wake of our fallen enemies and onward to the new challengers that await our 2x4 of Indifference.

Over the last few months Josh has been working as Director of Photography on the short film “Mind Glow.” A project directed by “Goodnight Harvey” lead actor Sam Wohl and his creative cohort Eric Svedas. The film centers around two friends that go on a wild mind-bending adventure after a burrito dealing trash troll impregnates one of them with an alien. A finished clip of the alien abortion is available here.

Principle photography just wrapped and it was a lot fun to shoot these guys go on this journey. We shot the entire thing in eleven days, or something like that, which were all pretty packed considering how ambitious the film is and the minimal crew we had. It spanned nine sets and around six locations within San Francisco. We went everywhere from on the Bay to the deepest dungeons of the Mission creating submarines, dentist offices, rat lairs, and an Extra-terrestrial rights protest.

The most fun (besides the car chase scenes) was being able to light all these dark, subterranean, lairs where these really interesting characters lived. The Trash Troll is a man that lives in a cavern under a garbage can that’s located right on the bay.

It was great to experiment with the minimalist approach the script called for while still trying to pull off something very colorful and comic book like.

Another fun set was the rat house. There’s a point in the story where we leave our protagonists for a moment and peak in on the day-to-day of these two rat roommates.

Again it was a challenge to light a space that needs to feel dark. We gain access to the rat house only after traveling through some boulders and a tunnel so the only light that could exist at that depth would be anything that managed to peak through the ground or anything that they have in the house. 

Contrasted with the video above you get an idea of the full range of looks, scenes, and characters that went into this film. It was a great experience and I can’t wait to apply the lessons and experimentations to some future IFYW work.