George – Occupy Maui

This week, during my “time off”, I couldn’t resist joining the crew of Occupy Maui as they launched a week of direct-action against Monsanto. I love visiting various occupations around the world – it’s like discovering extended family you never knew you had.

Friday’s event culminated in a musical performance by the folk musician Human and his merry band, singing “Monsanto Go Away.” Emjoy the vid!

The program is pretty incredible actually: basically investing large amounts of money and time to foster the BC artist community (even more important in the face of devastating Liberal funding cuts).

Ben is one of the Top 20 finalists for 2010, and his first challenge was to shoot a video introducing the project and his own involvement. We batted around ideas, at one point seriously considering a parody of the Old Spice guy (we gave up after it didn’t pass my wife’s cliche test).

Instead, we opted for the following: straightforward, with a little twist. Enjoy!

On Oct 10, neo-nerd rock band Weezer played at GM Place as part of their new Troublemaker Tour. I had the opportunity to shoot the piece for VancouverIAM, which is how I found myself headed down to the venue that afternoon to meet up with the musicians.

I always find these gigs interesting, partly because you meet everyone else on the music-interview circuit. As the host, Matt Anderson, and I arrived at Gate 9, we joined the rest of the group awaiting their turn. There were reps from MuchMusic, Urban Rush, Electric Playground, and others.

I also chatted briefly with Nardwuar, one of the scenes most interesting interviewers. Apparently, Snoop Dogg can’t get enough of him. And I’m told Nardwuar was the only press Jay Z would take when he was up at Pemberton this past summer.

Anyway, back to Weezer. Turns out the band was split between the outlets, so we interviewed the guitarist, Brian Bell. Which turned out great because he gave us interesting, thoughtful answers about a variety of topics, including:

• the definition of a “hootenanny”
• why he loves playing in Japan
• and what is was like working on the massively popular Pork & Beans video

All in all, a great interview. Enjoy!

Last Tuesday I shot a segment for VancouverIAM involving an interview with Aaron Lewis, the frontman of the metal band Staind.

You may not know this about me, but I dislike being on camera. I much prefer to work behind the lens. So I enlisted the hosting help of Matt Anderson (of Naked Bike Ride fame) who is quick on his feet and has rock star hair.

While waiting behind the scenes in GM Place, I met a girl working with Much Music who was also waiting for their interview with the band. Turns out, she recognized me from my appearance on MTV Canada way back when I was trying to get on Survivor.

But that’s a whole other story.

Anyway, Aaron Lewis turned out to be a great guy, and all-around chain smoker. I think Matt did an excellent job as host, asking unique questions different than the same old same old.

As videographer, I think I hid well the fact that my legs were going numb from hovering in the crouching position too long (that’s just how I sacrifice for the shot).

These types of interviews can be challenging in the editing process, as there wasn’t much b-roll to mix up the visuals. To compensate, I trolled around the web, “borrowing” a few clips of Staind’s previous videos and vlog updates.

Also, you’ll notice how I cut to black and white during the interview to mix up the monotony and almost fake the effect of having two cameras.

All in all, I think the interview turned out well.