Johnny Vegas Short film November 19, 2010 live streamed on Johnny Vegas tv and Johnny Vegas Radio
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Sunday, November 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Napoleon Demps Official "Whipped" Music Video
Checkout New Music Video by Flint Blues Artist Titled "Whipped" directed by Samo and shot by Digital Alchemy.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
That's So Detroit; His True Aim
This guy has been documenting Detroit life and movement for 60 years - and he's not done yet
PHOTOS: BILL RAUHAUSER
Sweeper in alley behind J.L. Hudson - "I was walking down an alley around J.L. Hudson building when I saw this guy sweeping. He was the only person around. He stopped and looked up when he saw me and I took his photo. I think the lightbulb makes the shot."
PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 8, 2010
On a recent Thursday afternoon, four generations of College for Creative Studies (CCS) photographers — more than a dozen current students and their teachers, as well as past students who are now teachers — meet at the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography to eat pizza, and mine the mind of 92-year-old Detroit photographer Bill Rauhauser.
With a smile as warm as his cardigan, which is as white as his hair, Rauhauser is the last man through the door. He takes his time. The lensman is a star of sorts, but he could be some retired Midwestern grandfather. His work, however, from 1950 on, speaks volumes, with its sensitivity and storytelling. It's devilish in its contemporary coolness.
With time to spare before he takes center stage to speak, Rauhauser makes his way toward familiar faces in the room.
The DCCP's economical sampling of Rauhauser's photos show the skill and breadth of his work, as does a recently published, plainly titled collection, Bill Rauhauser: 20th Century Photography in Detroit (St. Paul's Press), which might've better been suited with a sexier name, such as Street Shots and Streamed Lines: Detroit Photography Godfather Bill Hauser Sets the Bar.
The biographical forward by writer Mary Desjarlais tells of a man who grew alongside the history of contemporary photography in Detroit, transitioning in innovation, and turning a hobby into a serious art medium. She sets the scene for several hundred of Rauhauser's mostly stunning prints.
But to see them large on the wall is a treat.
As the only gallery in the region dedicated to showing modern photography, the DCCP is a fitting location for the Rauhauser exhibit and talk. Director and chief curator Kyohei Abe — one of those CCS students-turned-teachers — founded the gallery for the same reasons Rauhauser founded the Group 4 Gallery on Indiana, south of Grand River in Detroit: to have a home for photo art where Detroit photographers can exhibit.
Soon Rauhauser is seated on a plush couch, telling his tale. He explains how a leisurely photo club spawned the Group 4, which, in 1964, was one of the first in the nation dedicated solely to exhibiting photography of art. Some students turn back to look at Abe, visualizing the connection, maybe realizing that, some day, the baton could be theirs to carry. With that baton comes a responsibility that Rauhauser hopes isn't lost on a generation raised in the digital age:
"See, there's there's photography as art, but there's also the art of taking and making a photograph," Rauhauser says. "You have exciting new technology, what with digital cameras and Photoshop and all of that, which is fine, and when you're older there will be even more advancements in technology, which is OK if you want to do that sort of thing. I'm not telling you how to make art, but the basic rules of photography will always apply, ... and what the camera shoots will always be true. The true negative never lies about what was shot; only the photographer can lie."
His advice is absolute and unsolicited. As with his photos, his aim is true.
Rauhauser is like a living legend; he's self-aware — there's lot of wisdom — but he's eternally humble as a student of his craft. He has maintained a prolific and methodical career as a photographer and educator, but you wonder if his modesty got in the way of his notoriety. That's not how he sees it.
"Ten minutes into the first class I taught and I knew that this is something I was supposed to be doing," he says.
Rauhauser is and always has been a photographer first.
When Rauhauser tells his stories, he begins with the one about trading his father's prized stamp collection to a friend at Cooley High School for an Argus Model A camera. He's told this before, and I'm sure he beams each time he first mentions French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, his greatest inspiration, whom he discovered in 1947.
Rauhauser himself would be "discovered" in 1951, when photographer and curator Edward Steichen, whose 291 Gallery (at 291 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan) is credited with blending photography and fine art with painting and sculpture. Steichen visited the DIA on a speaking engagement to promote photography and hype an upcoming show at the Museum of Modern Art called Family of Man. That's where Rauhauser met Steichen, who invited all photographers in attendance to submit work for the MOMA show. Out of the three Rauhauser sent along, one, "Three on a Beach," was exhibited with the work of 272 other photographers representing 68 countries.
The show traveled North America and took a years-long global journey. To be included in that show is one of Rauhauser's lifetime honors. In 1998, the DIA requested Rauhauser's work for their permanent collection, which today contains more than 343 of his black-and-white photos. "Color," Rauhauser says, "is pretty to look at, but ultimately rather distracting."
Rauhauser concludes his talk as any teacher might, with a short lecture about entering the world with vigor, integrity and, in this case, a camera that's set and ready. But first, and somewhat anticlimactically, he posits a sentiment regarding art school curriculum. Only one-third of a photographer's education, he says, should pertain to the art and science of photography, while two-thirds should be spent studying history and literature so that photographers have a sense of societal context. What he calls "the second frame."
You can see Rauhauser's background in architectural engineering in his photos. He sees naturally occurring angles and environmental irony. For instance, his photo of a man at the State Fair who's holding his face and standing in front of a painted ad featuring a another man holding his face in a very similar pose captures the synergy of components that truly compose a photo and suggest various narratives. A comprehension of chemistry brings the negative into something positively finished. It's as if the right side of Rauhauser's brain spasms in analysis, mellowed only by a purely creative exercise in street-walking snapshot anthropology. Photography is always on Rauhauser's brain. He estimates that he still shoots thousands of photos a year, one at a time.
"In the moment, when it might be there, one shot is all you need. There's no reason to snap five or six, or even two," Rauhauser says. And it's not because of his sense of economy as it pertains to the price of film. "The shot, the moment was there or it wasn't there." The success of a photograph, he believes, is the result of intuition. And his is uncanny.
As it's written in the book, Rauhauser often references Baudelaire's flâneur, an idea perhaps best characterized by the theorist Walter Benjamin: "The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense job to set up house in the middle of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite." Through the camera's lens, Rauhauser has documented Detroit, as well his travels to cities such as Chicago (frequently) and Seattle, as flâneur.
"Back then, before everyone had cameras and camera phones, you could be invisible, you had that power. You could be within a few feet of someone and snap a photo. Imagine that. People are highly sensitive today to the presence of a camera. It's harder to capture a genuine moment, to disappear."
But that doesn't stop him from trying. As Rauhauser heads for the door to leave, he pats the camera that slung across his chest and coat, the same way an aging detective might the gun under his jacket. "Got her right here." Rauhauser smiles. "Every single day."
As I hold the door for Rauhauser, my last question, half-kidding, is if he considers his days spent with his camera, his hobby-turned-profession, some sort of obsession.
"Obsessed?" he responds, with a strong handshake and a soft laugh. "Obsession might not be the word I'd use," his hand holds mine in pause. "The word I'd use is necessity.
"
"
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Detroit BeatZ
Monday, December 13, 2010
Detroit Native Christos Moisides Second Unit DP on DETROIT 187
Christos' film career began in Detroit, Michigan in 1992 serving as a motion picture camera assistant on numerous national and regional commercials. Graduating with a film degree in 1996 from Emerson College in Boston, Christos continued his film career in Los Angeles. While working on such Studio feature films as, Minority Report, XXX and numerous IMAX films, he was elevated in the Independent world to camera operator and director of photography. In 1998, Christos and business partner Darren Campbell established Colony Films, with Christos producing and photographing their first feature film, Second Coming. Continuing his photographic success, he has accumulated an impressive list of productions behind the camera and producing music videos, concert films, documentaries and commercials. Christos has shot National and International commercial campaigns for companies such as General Motors, Mercedes Benz, Aldo Shoes and Dunlop Golf as well as music videos for national hip-hop and rock artists.
DIRECTOR Anthony Garth
If you don’t know this guy Anthony Garth, chances are you’ve seen his work. The chrome-domed director was a bartending fixture at the Magic Stick from 2000 to 2006, and he still does the occasional shift there. He’s also directed many winning music vids for a checklist of Detroit stars — the White Stripes, Eminem, Obie Trice, Proof, Bizarre, the Sights, the Electric Six, the Detroit Cobras and the Von Bondies among them.
After studying photography and film production at Oakland University, Garth split for Los Angeles in 1996 for film work and returned a couple years later because he completely understands Detroit’s haunted aesthetic beauty. By 2001, he’d earned a few huge, door-opening gigs; he shot the White Stripes’ eerie “Hotel Yorba” vid and co-produced Eminem’s 2002 tour documentary Eminem: All Access Europe.
Such beginnings made Garth an in-demand director; he has since shot more than 40 music clips and has helmed some major ad campaigns, including the Chevy HHR and an upcoming Pure Michigan tourism campaign.
Between shoots, Garth scans locations in his grandfather William’s 1980 Cadillac Fleetwood. Now, this Fleetwood is a fetching beast, to be sure, one that slurps up fuel at a whopping 11 miles to the gallon, but it’s a Caddy that makes an impression. Garth motors around Detroit like an alcoholic surgeon who owns this town, baby. The filmmaker, you’ll note, knows a thing or two about choosing locations. Hence Dearborn’s Ford-Wyoming Drive-In here, where, as a tyke, Garth’s family would pull out the lawn chairs for classics like E.T. “An ’80s Cadillac, a hat from Henry the Hatter and the Ford-Wyoming Drive In-Theater,” Garth cracks, “what else does one need in Detroit?”
Friday, September 10, 2010
DIRECTOR: HYPE WILLIAMS
Life and work
"Hype" Williams was given his stage name by writing partner Muse One, who taught him the ins and outs of the graffiti culture. He was also mentored by "Fargo" in graffiti. Williams began his film-making career when he left Adelphi University in Garden City, NY, and joined with fellow graffiti writers Mike "Muse" Alexander and Ricardo "Phyz" Springer to create SOTA (State of the Art Productions). Other notable SOTA members include San Diego, Ca graffiti kings and two time Emmy award winning artist, Ken "Quasar" Thompson and Chris "Sake" Kinney. Under that umbrella SOTA created logo and album cover designs for many hip-hop artists of the time. Their big break came when they began working with Classic Concepts Video Productions. Lionel "Vid Kid" Martin & VJ Ralph McDaniels used SOTA for art direction in many of their videos and created Hype's first opportunity with the "Filmmakers With Attitude" moniker (FWA), which was Hype's first video company.
Williams is notable for creating a number of music videos for hip hop and R&B artists such as The Notorious B.I.G. ("Warning") & ("One More Chance"), Craig Mack ("Flava in Ya Ear"), LL Cool J ("Doin' It"), Nas ("If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)", "Street Dreams", "Hate Me Now"), Missy Elliott ("The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", "She's a Bitch"), Busta Rhymes ("Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See"), TLC ("No Scrubs"), Kelis ("Caught Out There"), and Jay-Z ("Big Pimpin'"), Aaliyah("Rock The Boat") and is currently working with Kian and Christina Aguilera. Williams has also worked with non-hip hop artists such as Coldplay ("Viva La Vida"), Hoobastank ("If I Were You"), and t.A.T.u. ("Gomenasai").
In 1998, he directed his first feature film, Belly.
Awards Williams has received for his video work include the Billboard Music Video Award for Best Director of the Year (1996), the Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video of the Year (1996) for Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah," the NAACP Image Award (1997), the 8th annual MVPA Award for Black Music Achievement (1997), MTV Video Music Award in the Best Rap Video (1998) category for Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video (1999) for TLC's "No Scrubs", and the BET Award for Best Director (2006) for Kanye West's “Gold Digger”.[2]
In 2006, Williams was honored by MTV with its Video Vanguard Award, presented in honor of his achievements as a filmmaker.[1]
[edit]Style
A signature style used by Williams throughout the vast majority of his videos, shot mostly with cinematographer John Perez, a new yorker educated in SVA, with a surprisingly 'anonymous career', which includes hits like Clinton's bus campaign into the presidency, was the Fisheye lens which distorted the camera view around the central focus. This was used by the tandem Williams/Perez in "Gimme Some More" by Busta Rhymes and "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by Missy Elliott; however, it was dropped by 2003, when he experienced his lowest level of production activity since the beginning of his career as a music video director.
Another "signature style" involves placing shots in regular widescreen ratio, while a second shot is split and placed in the upper and lower bars. Videos that use this style include "Diamonds on my Neck" by Smitty, "I Ain't Heard of That" by Slim Thug, "So Sick" by Ne-Yo, "In My Hood" by Young Jeezy, "Check On It" by Beyoncé, "Snap Yo Fingers" by Lil Jon and many others.
Since 2003, Williams has adopted a signature style combining a center camera focus on the artist or actor's body from the torso upward and a solid color background with a soft different-color light being shown in the center of the background, so as to give a sense of illumination of the background by the foreground subject. This has been displayed in "Gold Digger" by Kanye West, "Digital Girl" (Remix) by Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé's "Video Phone".
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