Wendy Williams Meets The Neighbors
As you can see here, I seem to have developed a reputation for bringing the funny. Wendy was great to work with as was her entire organization. I came in and produced and directed this piece, seeing it through from the writing process, through production and then post. We had a lot of fun with this.
“We Are Young” by fun. from the series “Sonic Live”
My take was that these guys, despite their look, were actually creating classic pop songs (think 70’s TV variety shows) so we decided to shoot them in that classic 3-camera style. Was I surprised when, two months later, this song hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100? I’m gonna say “no.” This clip had over 3 million hits before the client took it down. This version, which I posted, is the director’s cut.
“Not Done Yet” by Soja – from the series “Sonic Live”
I drove down to Philadelphia the week before the shoot to meet these guys and watch their show at the Electric Factory. I immediately discovered that:
A). they know one another extremely well and genuinely like each other;
B). they can really play.
Everything you see in this video flows from those two observations. You can see how different this is from the previous clip from the same series.
Time Is Money
This piece was part of a show at the Library of Congress in 2012 called “Politics And The Dancing Body.” We recreated a dance piece from 1934 and captured it on video. I then edited this video together with images from the magnificent LofC WPA collection and added a voiceover. I co-directed this with the supremely talented Tom Hurwitz.
“A Concert For Peace” at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a notoriously challenging (and expensive) place to shoot. I don’t think anyone has managed to capture a performance as successfully and as inexpensively as we did here. One of my specialties of which I am particularly proud: doing great work for, as Rick Siegel (one of the camera operators on this) says, “a nickel.” (Yes, we paid Rick his rate on this one!).
The musical performance was magnificent. It helps when you have Yo Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman and friends playing Mendelssohn. We did the same show the next night in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library Of Congress with the addition of Bono of U2 but it didn’t have the sparkle of this performance.
Lou Reed
It was quite unusual for Lou Reed to play a venue as small as New York’s Knitting Factory but he loved the room. He booked the show and asked us to document it. I wanted to capture the sweat and intimacy of this performance and to turn the challenges (tiny(!) stage, overcrowded venue, less-than-ideal camera positions) into advantages.
Lou is having a blast with his home-town crowd; the band, with Fernando Saunders and Tony “Thunder” Smith, is killin’. It’s a great night to make a video!