…and blogged it.

Here’s some photos I took at the time.

On a separate note, I’m trying to slowly merge all my work that I post on this blog into a more practical page, so for now I’ve set up a Vimeo Channel where you can subscribe.

I have a neighbour called Marc, he’s from Barcelona and he’s a photographer who has lived in London for most part of his adulthood. Like me he relocated to New York two months ago in the search of the new, and seems to be really getting into the swing of things here. We live two floors away from each other, so elevator trips to and from his and my place are becoming frequent, sometimes transporting goods such as sandwiches, wine and cakes to fuel our hard-working ethos.

He needed a new website, so I whipped out the old Flash and knocked this up: marcregas.com

Video by Zahara Gallardo!
I should state that my involvement in this was just on the music front.

This was a week ago. A day after being discharged I was already on Skype with Mr Lazarus discussing (under the effects of some hardcore morphine) RebelRave’s next big step: The REBELRAVE U.S. Tour.

Here’s a small promo I made for it, for more info go to rebelrave.tv/us-tour-2010

This tour is going to be special: 26 dates across the country with Damian Lazarus, Jamie Jones, Seth Troxler and Deniz Kurtel. I’ll be filming parts of the tour which will be featured in REBELRAVE #9, and also I’ll be producing the visuals, which actually I need to get onto right now as there are only 2 weeks left until the first date at Pacha New York.

The U.S. tour will then carry on in Europe in April for a second phase, which again I’ll be filming for episode #10!

James and I go quite a while back, right back to my teenage years in Rome. While I delved into the nerdy world of web and programming, I felt little connection to his own work even though it always fascinated and inspired me. But this year has been the year where I have taken a new direction with things by leaving Flash behind and entering a new world of video, and James’ photography has really inspired me to work with him on fashion-based concepts, bringing his stark style into video form.

So after trying things out together on simple videos like Angie and Lydia K, we often spoke about making something a bit more substantial. And coincidentally Wonderland Magazine asked him if he wanted to make a fashion film for them, which he involved me into to collaborate with.

We developed the idea of a live projection feed, featuring two characters on two different film sets, one set being projected onto the other in real time. The concept was to use light and shadow from one set to hide and reveal parts of the other set, which opened up a mind-boggling combination of different options, the variables being the background and character colours of each set, in different combinations with each other.

Soon enough we had found our two stars: Nick Cave’s son Jethro Cave and his girlfriend Sophie Willing. Finding a couple was perfect: our two film sets were to be opposite each other so that the characters could interact with each other across the studio, so the fact that they actually had a special connection was the icing on the cake.

So here is a story about afterlife.

(if the image link doesn’t work you can find the video directly here)

The makeup is by the fabulous Adam de Cruz and the hair by Ben Mohapi, both from Punishment.
A big thank you goes to Way Perry from Wonderland Magazine for making all of this possible.

Oh and here’s a video I shot on my phone that might give you a better idea of how this was set up.

Marko Perendija and I were asked by Mark Knight to produce some visuals to back him over the course of his world tour. So with the help of James Mountford we put together a shoot with dancer/model Lydia.

For the purposes of the visuals we actually processed the footage in such a way to make Lydia barely recognizable: the photographic elements were stripped down to become rather graphical, as opposed to photo-realistic, which is in fact more suited for club-visuals.

We delivered these visuals quite some time ago now, and it felt like a bit of a waste to have all this footage crushed down to an unrecognizable pulp of shapes and colours, so I thought of making something else out of it. So here is a short promo dedicated to Lydia as she worked so hard for us and had so much patience under those hot lights.

The amazing sounds are by a talented duo from Rome who make disturbingly good experimental/electronic music. Their unreleased album “Platforms” is played on repeat during my every night shift in the studio. They are called Plaster (plastersounds.com | facebook).

Thanks also go to Holly Silius for the hair and makeup, and to Bayo @ The Eye Casting for finding Lydia!
And of course to my buddies Marko Perendija and James Mountford (blog | portfolio), who nowadays I find extremely hard to work without.

DOP: James Mountford
Model: Lydia K (link on its way!)
Hair and Makeup: Holly Silius
The rest: Marko Perendija and myself

An enormous thank you goes to Bayo @ The Eye Casting for putting us in touch with Lydia.

So I went to New York for the 8th installment of REBELRAVE to document the happenings in and around the “Wolf+Lamb” crew: their magical parties have become something of a myth, set in their extremely cosy home/studio/party-venue/pseudo-hotel. Zev and Gadi from W+L were really excited about me filming and made sure we got everything covered, with the help of Lee Curtiss who surprised everyone with his Blind-Date host skills.

A whole day’s filming interviews with the various W+L members was followed by a 18 hour party, which speedily moved through the deep hours of the night into a hot summer’s day, sun rays streaking through the sky light, filling the dance floor (the living room) with an incredible energy. I’ve attended quite a few after-parties and this was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I came away inspired, the kind of inspiration you feel when waking up after an amazing dream.

So editing the footage just brought all those feelings back. Seeing what these guys do is a real inspiration to me: their Burning Man projects, Deniz Kurtel’s art and music, their Black Label, the Marcy Hotel, their unforgettable parties, all the artists on their label. Finding a way to tell this whole story has been an impossible task to fit in a 10 minute video, so unfortunately you’ll only get a taster of some of what Wolf+Lamb is about, but hopefully you can get the general picture!

Go see this on rebelrave.tv (contains tracks info and links to buy)

The music is backed by a set of generative visuals that he controls using a touch screen interface. The concept behind the visuals ties in with the rest of Audion’s artwork (check the record sleeves at the bottom of audion.me), a modern twist on psychedelic shapes and patterns generating within perfectly contained circles.

This particular video was shot at Fabric in London during the last show of Audion’s European tour.

I have a list of projects here on a piece of paper: they are the projects that I am currently working on, and they are 12. You need three hands (which I don’t have) if you wanted to count them with your fingers - unless of you just use a single hand to count batches of five. So I’ve just spent the second night this week working through the night, watching progress bars crawl across my screen.

Once this period will be over I will have a few bits of nice work to show on here, but in the meantime I am posting a song I made last night during several rendering periods.