Enter Zach Gold. Zach is one of the great talents of my generation. A fashion photographer and mentor. Zach taught me so much about lighting...and to handle talent form all the models he worked with. And with Zach's council I could look at the model in Hoobastank in the eye.....with out breaking her stare.....as she talked to me naked. I was getting sick of shooting in LA. It was time for me to come home to NYC.....and hooked up with Zach to shoot my next video....with a still camera....
My idea was to shoot a time lapse video with 500 frame back camera the Sports photographers use. I am sorry and have to admit I ripped the idea off the Smashing Pumpkin's video....
I got the idea for the set from Soccer advertisements.....that scroll in the background during a match. We shot 4x5 stills and blew them up to giant 2 ton drums that revolve in the background. I guess I was making a comment on how our lives had become one big advertisement....(maybe it had something to do with all the commercials I was turning down).....anyway I thought MTV needed some "FU" on its programming......
Little did I know, Viacom was fading out Music video rotation....and turning their programming into more "Reality based" Television.....and less music video.....the death of the video was imminent.....but I didn't care and kept turning in my fees.....I didn't matter.....I was having fun......
It was my first insurance shoot.....it started at 9AM in Coney Island when a sand plow caught our electric cable on the beach. A 10K light flew by my head and sliced open a grips leg.....as I watched the sand plow....shooting sparks.....rumble down the beach with my jenny and my electric cable. I was left waist deep holding the other 10K as sparks shot over my head.....covered in the ocean....later that day the camera's jammed.....to top it off came rain....and someone pulled out a gun in a Coney Island basketball court.....we got ticks in the field around La Guardia airport and duck taped our ankles.....and my Executive producers thought I was creatively spinning out of control....
Enter Rachel Holloway.......my new production designer and painter in her own right....I was entering into the dark ages of videos.....and only my loyal crew followed me there.....Rachel was coming off Sam Bayer....and I loved her vision.....she brought a rejuvenated second eye to my work....with a lot of economically creative solutions.....