videos

There are 168 posts filed in videos (this is page 13 of 21).

A looping cello cover of “All My Little Words” by The Magnetic Fields

Here is a cover of the song “All My Little Words” by The Magnetic Fields that I put together with skilled local singer Annie Jantzer. We’re in the process of exploring our next collaboration but so far I’m really enjoying the unique sound we have, and love how cello and a female vocalist can transform any number of well known songs.

Check out the video if you have a chance!

One Second for Every Day of My Life – 2014-2015


Another year, another video where I recorded one second for every day of my life.

As with previous years, it has been a challenge not just to maintain the project, but to maintain it in a way that performs good storytelling. Anyone can record a second of video everyday – not everyone can use these seconds to create a narrative, an intense feeling, or a memorable moment. Over time as this project has gone on, I have continued to optimize my life around experiencing these moments, rather than recording them. This has led the videos to suffer overall.

But despite all the challenges, I must say that going through all my seconds at the end of the year was still an intensely rewarding experience. So many moments I would have forgotten resurface during this process. I recall people who were incredibly important to my life, and others who I was grateful to have just tangentially connected with.

A few big themes emerge for me:

1) This was the year of the cello – I have no idea where my cello proclivities are going to lead me, but for now, it’s incredibly valuable to me that I have this video document showing exactly how hard I worked at this thing this year. Every single second of cello represents a day that I practiced, and I am proud to have worked so hard at it.

2) Meeting my heroes – I’d almost forgotten that I’d had the opportunity to meet and talk to some awesome people this year, including directors Bong Joon-Ho and Megan Griffiths, as well as George Takei. It’s nice to have mementos of many of these moments.

3) I made a movie – It’s world premiering at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 29th (buy tickets here). And in this video, you see many seconds where I’m hard at work, either editing the movie or sending it off to film festivals. I’m so grateful for the folks at Cut.com for joining me on this endeavor. I can’t wait for y’all to see the fruits of our labor.

All in all, I hope you find these videos provide at least a somewhat-interesting perspective into my life. They certainly are worthwhile for me to continue making, and I plan to continue them as long as I am able.

Go here to see the past videos/posts on this project.

Crazy In Love – Looping Cello Version

About a month ago, I got this nutty idea to perform a looping cello version of “Crazy In Love” with a pole dancer. Why was I moved to try this?

Firstly, I loved the new “Crazy In Love” rendition that was done for the Fifty Shades of Grey film. It was dark, brooding, and its tone really got to what the implications of the original song were. Plus, beyond the fact that I already had connections with an incredibly talented pole dancer that I knew could deliver on an amazing interpretive dance (Danae Montreuil), I also knew that looping cello, pole dancing, and Fifty Shades of Grey had never been combined in this way before. I’d be creating something that would be wholly unique, even though it was based off of a song that had been remade.

After weeks of planning, we shot the entire video in about 5-6 takes at Divine Movement in Seattle using pre-recorded audio. This video was shot using a Canon 5D Mark III (primary camera), as well as a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and a Canon 60D. After we’d got all the material with me in it, I repositioned the Canon 5D Mark III and shot Danae at a more close-up angle, which I spliced in to the rest of the video. I think the result is fairly seamless.


This video was picked up by my colleagues at MTV and Refinery29, along with many other pole dancing-affiliated sites and Facebook pages. It dramatically expanded the audience for my cello playing. I’m grateful to all the people that made it possible.

How My ‘John Wick’ Video Essay Went from 0 to 30K Views

In late October 2014, I published the above video essay on the action of John Wick. I had a great time watching that film and I wanted to put together a brief video that demonstrated my utter disbelief at the audacity the film’s set pieces.

To create this video essay, I used film clips from John Wick’s Electronic Press Kit. These kits typically include a few videos that broadcasters and videomakers can use as b-roll while putting together packages. They are intended to be shared broadly to generate interest in the film.
Originally, I wanted to run this video essay on /Film but ultimately decided against it because it was a bit too thin. So, I simply published it on my YouTube channel (which has around 4.5K subscribers) and just let it sit there with pretty much no promotion.
I was stunned when I checked the video in recent months, only to find that it had reached 30K views, surpassing the vast majority of video reviews I’d done for /Film. I know that 30K is not a high number, but typically, when I publish a video review at /Film (go here for an example), that review will bring in anywhere from 1K to 15K views.
Curious as to what had caused this traffic, I checked the YouTube stats. By far, the greatest number of people had come from YouTube searches. And what were those searches? Check’em out:

 

Tons of traffic comes from people just looking for specific scenes in movies. The other top traffic sources were YouTube Suggested videos, and from social sharing sites.
I know this information may be obvious to a lot of people, but when a film becomes prominently and well known for a specific attribute (e.g. John Wick and its fight scenes), then the more you can deliver on that with a video (legitimately), the higher the likelihood that it will be viewed thousands of times. Sometimes, the more specific you are, the better.