otaku-house.com

The epilogue to Directions.

We're allowed to put these on reels now, so for antvillers here's a direct high quality link.

The DVD streets April 11th and Lance Bangs' and Keith Schofield's bonus videos are for my money two of the best in the whole project.

Thank you for following the series. I learned a hell of a lot, and I hope more artists continue to commission projects like this (with better budgets, fingers crossed). I'd like to know honestly what you think of the thing in its entirety now.

         

hi there, I thought the project in its entireity was a great concept, and more things like this should be done and initiated. A lot of the work was kind of average to be honest, but the diversity was good, and I think you did a fantastic job in managing something as large as this.

         

this is actually my favorite of the bunch by a significant amount. i wish it was for the full song "stability" though... i always hate how this version cuts the whole thing apart. anyway, i remain impressed with the project as a whole. i hope that the concept is taken further in the future...

a big bag of kudos!

         

Very very good Aaron!

         

If you want comments on the project as a whole, I think it's great. It's a good idea and you guys pulled it off. Problem is that 90% of the people making videos out there are really lacking in ideas. I think Directions reflects this really well cause I only enjoyed one of the videos. Most directors seem to stop thinking after they have one idea. Shouldn't we all be striving to get to the next level?

         

firefox on 10.3.9 shows me this in a little 4:3 box. safari formats it ok, but only loads half. only solution: direct link in firefox.

sweet video. (though it really wants to be a short film - fine by me for this track.) nice casting. a little too much memory blur and strip lights. the kids seemed like a homeland version of something out of sigur ros - funny how often we posit all hope on their little shoulders...

         

AARON: So all in all I commend you and yours for putting this series together. I personally was not a fan of the work created, but am really thrilled with the structure and scope of the project as a whole.

A few comments about your promo:

It's great to see Ryang working and Van Der Cruyssen involved in a smaller scene but like progosk mentioned, all those memory 'blow to whites' and long dissolves tend to cheapen the piece on an aesthetic level. Why smash the screen with an overused color/technique? Wouldn't the simple juxtaposition of a girl in the bomb shelter cut to her in the car work just as well if not better...?

The music is only so much there and overall I think your promo could've been truly smarter and fuller than said track. You start with an interesting idea and then fade (literally) into a beat by beat breakdown of an already unintelligable finale that ruins the promo as a whole.

You begin with kids that leave their rooms to go play, live, and eat in an old underground bomb shelter (great!). They play out small fantasies - teacher, student, parent, companion, colleague - and ultimately we learn of their feelings toward these shelters (and maybe wartime fear in general), it's all a big joke (so very smart and interesting!). They scribble crayons, eat cereal, takedown an underground greenhouse after feeling the texture of the soil - all of this is really working. But then something happens.....

As if in some kind of trance, you follow the track into the mediocre below and your argument/concept becomes completely flawed. Which forces me to ask: Why did you lose trust in your own material?

Anything you were trying to say now wallows into a world of overwrought (yet half realized) suggestions of life, futility, and old school american paranoia. Shots of our girl (who may be 10 years old) considering the nature of her parents, her family, and ultimately their domestic reality, are all way too much.

The final unintelligible "message" the track makes should have not become a focal point of the promo. You were doing fine, and there was no need to switch gears. That message should have been on one of the radios your camera pondered over in the intro. Should have been such a side note we dont even realize it's there. Because at the end, what a soft message it is: A girl who tries really hard not to forget the face of her mother. This is so flat and uninteresting. The most intriguing thing about a child's mother is her face? absolutely not.

There's 2 images that completely jump the shark. The first is our last image: a child hugging her mother. Think about it. Your promo doesn't end with a conclusion to the thoughts it spearheaded in the intro, it ends with a hug. No way no how.

The second is where, for me, the promo lost itself. Kids are sitting in the bunker. One tries to turn on a tv that bleeds a blue static as numbers race upwards. No matter what channel they're on, nothing is on screen (consider how prescient this is). They come together and hug (again this physical bond feels like a soft distraction of an earlier focus) and the camera tips backward as if falling into a coma.

What's going on my friend...?

Why did we go in this direction? You were doing just fine.

         

ah, classic Lusk.

I liked it - I thought it was probably the best looking one of the bunch; and felt the most like a Death Cab video (in a good way; a lot of the others go too far off course and feel like they don't belong).

The project on a whole is better than the sum of its parts. I wonder how this will play to people viewing them all at once for the first time. Or to people who don't have that "Antville-tude."

I think "Marching Bands of Manhattan" was so excruciatingly bad and boring; and that's a tough way to open the set.

Hope this moves a bunch of units and there's more video albums like this - can anyone think of any bands who would be perfect for this treatment?

         

otak: pagelink works ok now

         

I get a broken QT link.

direct works fine though.

         

O-H: Tricky call making a second video as it completely redefines your oeuvre, constituting an immediate 50% of your work to date. That's a lot of weight of expectation, so good to see that you've stepped out in a new direction.

I have to say that it didn't have that slap in the face quirky attraction that the Decemberists had. Of course it's different, slower burning, but it felt much less unusual for the most part.

Unlike Lusk, I didn't take it that they were playing. Although it remains ambiguous on that point, it felt as though the scenario was real.

Your direction seems strongest when it's understated. The empty TV channels at the end is an incendiary mixture of banality and terror - a very powerful image of nothing beyond, created with a mere gesture. And the youngest boy anxiously hiding behind his arm counterpoints it perfectly. I can even handle the hug, framed wide as it is.

That whole scene shows a real economy of image to excellent effect. Really nice.

By contrast though, the voice over part at the end felt like a sledge-hammer to crack a nut. And didn't make any sense to me at all. It certainly didn't add anything to the earlier part. I'd have taken the scissors to it at 3'58s.

I'm undecided on the flashbacks. They felt laboured and I preferred the bits that felt fresher, more documentary like.

So when's number three?

         

PS It doesn't suck!

         

otaku, in no way have you "failed as a director". in no way. this is a good video and i liked it. as benroll has said, there are some moments in here that are real gems. some very beautiful stuff. i admit that the voiceover at the end isn't working for me either, feeling unnessarary and a little bit forced, but i commend your attempt to create a different kind of music video and to do something very different from your previous work. for its strengths i prefer this over the decemberists one. being a canadian i feel maybe a bit unqualified to offer this opinion, but when this video is working i think you have succeeded in painting a very haunting and individual portrait of americana. and congratulations on the entire project, btw.

         

I haven't watched this yet (damn dialup) but I'm with this point 100%: "I took the idea that every video on Directions should try (even it it didn't work) to do something different with the idea of what constitutes a video."

I look forward to the DVD to get a more complete idea of this project (and, er, to actually see the vids).

         

I'll see 'em soon. ;) Hell I'm glad they're being released on DVD in the first place - there are way too many videos that aren't. Lord give me millions of dollars so I can bankroll the Directors Label.. and mvdbase..

         

Aaron, your video is brilliant. It was really touching. My cousin died last saturday fighting Taliban in Afghanistan. This whole world is collapsing at the moment for me. The war is getting worse and the thought of nukes or something wiping out innocent people is more real than ever. Im tired of this war on both sides. Your piece has a special place for emotion. Love it!

         

Mr. -Ahn, Mazel-tov, you've created what is surly to be considered the single greatest treatise on nuclear holocaust since Brendan Fraser's under-acclaimed masterpiece "Blast From the Past." I praise both your music video pieces on their truly sophisticated and subtle juxtapositions of global politics and fetishizing analysis of middle-class american adolescence. I just hope that when the po-po break down your door and confiscate all your kiddie porn you come up with a better excuse than Peter Townshend, we all know you're not doing research Otaku-House.

         

AARON: I think you're a cool guy and (again) commend your work on this series. But I'm sorry, your piece, aside from following the track into mediocrity, and regardless of any personal interests/experiences, loses itself in overly melodramatic moments that ultimately mean little.

I have a lot of trouble understanding the idea of 'emotional' music videos. Because they are, in effect, utterly un-emotional. Poises of people in the 'throes of emotion' does not an effective promo make. Nor does it provoke in any way an emotional response from the audience. In order to do so, stakes must be defined.

Think for instance, the brilliant RED BALLOON. A little boy with no companions befriends a whimsical red balloon. In the climax of the piece (20 mins after defining the relationship with said balloon and outside world in general) the boy is attacked by a group of kids who crush and kill the balloon. Our child walks away lifeless before the balloons of paris revolt, find him, and fly away with the child.

We understand the rules. We follow the emotional logic of the narrative. The "a" of the first scene in some way propels us into the "b" of the next. A domino cascade of ideas. One after the other. Again the focus here is in the IDEA with a capital "I". You only have so much time with a promo and need to make bold statements of our characters/world. Boring is shots of sad people looking sad. Interesting is shots of children scribbling on the walls of bomb shelters.

You cant just show me images of a girl looking wistfully off camera and then memory blow to white to her staring out a car window with malaise and tell me that has any weight. Get rid of the song. Let's talk images. What I have is shot of a sad girl blown to another shot of sad girl. What can I deduce: Well the girl is sad for reasons I don't know why. Do I really care on an emotional level? Absolutely not, for What is at stake? As of now, nothing.

You stand behind a desire of wanting to "do something different" with the end. But is a beat by beat visual recreation of the track's finale truly something new and "different"???

Progosk made a great comment about the children. It is so easy to just lump vague ideas of fear and hope on their shoulders, but all these ideas roll off us like a wet duck when the biggest thing here is a girl forgetting the face of her mother. Is that really horrific? Is this in some way correlated to the UNSTATED idea of potential wartime crisis?

Someone paying attention will notice empty space "inbetween the lines" and thus, cannot accept that as part of the power of a promo.

I am not calling you a "failed director" in any way. If anything, trying to provoke discourse as to the strengths and weaknesses of this piece.

If you're a fan of this understated style, I'd like to recommend a handful of filmmakers worth a look: Malick, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Lang, Resnais, Bergman, Lynch, early Ridley Scott, and even some Denis.

---

BROLL: It's crazy to talk of a young MUSIC VIDEO director's oevure. "50% of your oevere" is one of the craziest things I've heard in a long time. Moreover, how can you claim anything in the promo is "incendiary" when it clearly is not (for reasons stated above)?

Furthermore, the 'feeling' that something is happening does not justify its objective reality. There is absolutely no suggestion of some kind of crisis happening. How can u say it is...?

It's like saying, "man, I feel like I'm on fire". But am I?

Hakai has had the smartest comment thus far. This illusory and utterly economic war has spiraled beyond control. The suggestion of nuclear warfare is his emotional projection of the situation. But man, more than ever do we need a nation of stiff upper lips.

         

careful, prof. lusk, i see some of the blushing freshmen here painting L U S K / L U V U on their eyelids...

i do agree that otaku's played the potential rather to the soft side - but perhaps sometimes radical is just not an option. (also: i'm not sure that stiff lips are really what will help folks make sense of the maelstrom they've found themselves mired in.)

oh, and: though the siren at the beginning sounds more like a car alarm (shame), for me they were never playing post-atomic - this is the real thing. so, i think things are (for better or for worse) a little more straightforward than prof. lusk is positing.

hakai: condolences. i can't imagine how that feels. what's worse, to have to describe a fateful death as occuring "fighting taliban" - clearly the last thing this whole disaster is really about - must just be devastating. (did you ever make it to rome?)

         

Nice, the kids should have had to punch a button every 108 minutes.

I think it holds up untill the V.O. what did you it not say visualy that you had to actualy spell out? And as far as the dreamy foggy blurry, next time you can get a better more *creative effect with vaseline on the lens (glass plate).

I am working away..

         

I'd like to now say what, I'm assuming, a lot of you are thinking: Lusk, where are your amazing videos? If you have some, I'd love to see them. If not, have a little respect.

From my viewpoint, the sign on the door says "sign up and post links to cool music videos", which connotes a certain sense of relish and enjoyment. At the least a certain enthusiasm for the art. While it sounds like your heart's in the right place, and your comments are not without merit, but geesh! Have a heart.

I guess there should be some room to discuss the merits of, say, adding a voice-over to an already pretty perfect video, but those sorts of discussions can be done with more tact.

Making a video is really hard. Especially on such a low budget. I'm sorry if Aaron's not up to your standards yet, but in my opinion, at this stage in the game, he's kicking out some grade-A work.

And dude, while a list of good directors is nice, it's pretty insulting to assume that Aaron hasn't seen any Lynch, bergman or (for God's sake) Ridley Scott. That's just being nasty.

Good job, Aaron. And just to spite Lusky-poo, I'm leaving the office to buy the DVD right now.

         

The argument which suggests one must produce better artwork than the artwork you are critiquing, in order to have an opinion, is not a good one.

         

this video is amazing - I was moved. loved the voice-over. the end was brilliant. perfect video.

some of these critics sound like my teachers in college who said "you can't cut in the middle of a zoom!!!"

it sounds like the critic Lusk needs a hug - can't wait for his DVD, should be flawless and mindblowing!!!

         

Familiar, I'm not saying that Lusk can't criticize unless he's produced better work than Otaku, I'm just saying he should cut a brother some slack. Things look much easier from the comfort of an armchair, my friend.

And yes, I bought the DVD and so far it's pretty great. Especially the treatments and video diaries from the directors. It's a video geek's wet dream.

         

Otaku: lol. Andrew Bergman! hilarious.