5DmkII

Update
Time goes by so fast, when you´re busy! I can´t believe that it´s already been so long since the last update. There´s lots of news so let me just jump right in!

Black Devil Disco Club
During the summer I got in contact with French electro legend Black Devil Disco Club's, Bernard Fevre. His remix album Magnetic Circus was coming out and he was looking to have videos made for the tracks, after some deliberation we agreed that I would do the video for "Magnetic Devil", a fantastic melancholy psychedelic track that sounds a bit like one of my favorite bands Boards of Canada.

Because of a strange coincidence, my original idea for the video had to be scrapped. Another filmmaker was working on a video for another track off the same album and had come up with much the same elements in his video. It was late summer before I was ready to shoot the first footage for the video. I had a beautiful actress to work with and we were very lucky to shoot on one of the last sunny days of the summer.

I did a rough edit on the video, but I felt that there was something lacking. I was not yet satisfied with the mood of the footage, I decided that the video needs a bit of a rough edge, something to make it a bit more dark. The track has this very subtle mix of sweet melancholy and something that is darker and more intense, so I wanted to reflect that in the images. In early October we shot additional footage and currently I am working on a new edit. I feel that there is just one more element missing and I'm hoping I'll be able to incorporate this and finish the video soon. Here's a screencap from the October shoot:


Distel
Earlier this year I shot a promo for my friend Distel. We were both very happy with the result and decided that we would shoot a full length video for the track "hxxx" off his upcoming album. Because of the mood of the track we decided that we wanted to film the video in an abandoned building, preferably in a ruin. After some searching we found a hotel that had been abandoned since the 1970's. It stands in the middle of a forest, alone, no roads leading up to it. We spent a day filming there, risking our lives under collapsing ceilings, treacherously unstable floors and lots of debris, broken glass. I'm still working on the edit, after the video is cut, it will need quite a bit of work with regard to coloring and effects, but I'm very excited about this one. It is going to be one crazy video! Some photos of the location and a preliminary screenshot:



Heroes For Ghosts - Behind The Scenes
I finally got ' round to editing and uploading the behind the scenes video for The Gathering's Heroes For Ghosts. It brought back great memories of the fun times we had shooting in Norway! The Gathering have a new album out called "Disclosure". If you haven't heard it yet, pick it up fast, because it's great! Here's the announcement and the two videos:



Upcoming Videos
At the moment I'm talking to The Gathering about doing another video to promote the new album, so that is something that might happen before the end of the year, depending on scheduling and budget. I really hope we'll be able to make it happen, because the album deserves a push! Also I'm still talking to my friend Robert Rodèlle about doing a video and I'm pretty sure that before long this will happen. I love his music and I think my images would fit perfectly. With a bit of luck and persistence, we'll be able to start filming before the end of the year.

Portfolio
As you may or may not know, I´m also a musician and photographer, and this summer has been quite productive on all fronts. So I decided that it would be a good idea to create a comprehensive online portfolio behind a very simple url: http://marcusonline.info. Here are two photos I took this summer and a track off my album The Oxytocin Party (free torrent download):

Update
Don't you just long for summer, when it's this cold? =)

It's been some time since I've updated the blog, that's because I've been very busy over the last months. In my regular life, I have a job and in October, that job changed. I now have to travel up to 4 hours every day back and forth from work. It's a fun job, but the traveltime kills me (and much of the things I plan to do).

I haven't yet found a good solution for mobile blogging to Drupal, so as long as that's not possible, the updates to the site will be sporadic, probably... However... That does not been that I haven't been filming. No sir. Let me tell you what's going on.

The Space Between
In my last post I talk about the auditions for our new short film The Space Between. Well, after a few more rounds of auditions we've finally managed to cast all the actors for the film. We needed three male and two female actors, preferably from various countries, to make it an international cast. Well, we succeeded in that! We have actors from Ireland, the United States, the Netherlands and Brazil.

Up first is a last overhaul of the script, writing the shooting script and then rehearsals can start. I hope we'll be able to start rehearsals in March and I would love to start photography in May at the latest. Not that there's really a rush, but I'm excited to get started on this. I'll keep you posted!

Distel Promo
My friend Distel asked me to shoot a promo for his upcoming Ultra performance. I loved his idea for the promo, so one Sunday afternoon we set up in my bathroom and started shooting. Strobe lights, a TV set to white noise and a part of the stagedesign used by my old band IndusTree were all packed into the tiny bathroom. Have a look at the result here:

Zeno & Rodèlle
Zeno van den Broek, a soundsculptor and visual artist, for whom I've previously filmed one of his performances, has asked me to help him with a new art project, where he will present his paintings. He's asked me to film the paintings and make it an almost tangible experience. I was excited at the concept, so I told him I'd do it. Unfortunately real life got in the way a bit and we haven't yet had time to discuss details, but I'm hoping that we will soon be able to make some plans.

In the last couple of months I have been talking to another artist and sometime collaborator of Zeno's, Robert Rodèlle. Robert and I have been discussing doing a musicvideo for one of his tracks for quite some time now, but unfortunately we haven't yet had the chance. I consulted on his latest musicvideo (see below) and since we've been talking about what we want to do for his next video.

There's an idea floating around to push the boundaries of decency as we might let ourselves be inspired by one of Marquis de Sade's lesser known works. I'm really excited about the prospect of working with Robert on this. Hopefully we'll be able to find time this summer. Have a look at Robert's latest musicvideo:


Last thoughts
I've been talking to my friend Marko Martens about entering a film into a national filmcompetition, mainly because I want to work with him on a project. We're not there yet, but I'll keep bugging him.

My friends from Hong Kong, Robot Entourage, are working on a Zombie film, for which they've asked me to do the soundtrack. I've asked my friend Distel to help out and one of the tracks is close to completion. I'm still waiting to see the footage (and frankly to find some time) to start on the rest of the soundtrack. I've seen stills and from what I can tell it'll look amazing. I'll see if I can show you a still sometime soon.

Last night I submitted two videos to the Vimeo Awards competition. Unfortunately I couldn't submit Heroes for Ghosts, because it was too long. I did enter these though: in the category "experimental" I entered my sci-fi short 9 and in the category "music video" I entered Distel - onde, the promo I shot which you can see above. So fingers crossed and wish me luck! =)

Well, that's it for now. I still plan to do a series of articles on the shooting of the Heroes for Ghosts musicvideo, so watch out for that. Now I'm off to enjoy my Sundayevening!

Since I'm running Adobe's Premiere Pro as a part of Production Premium CS5.5, I bought an nVidia Quadro 4000 to make sure I take advantage of the CUDA technology and Adobe's Mercury Engine. My platform is a Mac Pro 8 core 2.4GHz with 24GB RAM, which came with an ATI Radeon card that is not supported by Adobe. Apple does not allow upgrades in their custom-built [sic] towers, I had to buy it separately and install the card myself.

I'm shooting DV and HDSLR footage, for which Premiere Pro CS5.5 is a great solution (especially when reading the horrorstories about FCPX) for native editing of both. I shouldn't complain about performance when I can edit HDSLR on this system as if I'm cutting DV footage on a slow pc, but still I'm kind of underwhelmed by Premiere's and nVidia Quadro 4000's performance on this very pricey Mac. But more about this in a later post.

Now, Apple updated OSX to 10.6.8 last week, killing my Quadro's multiple monitor capabilities in one fell click of the magic mouse. After some quick (and admittedly frantic) googling I found out that nVidia had posted new drivers for the card itself and CUDA support. I was surprised that there was no way I was informed automatically about the updated drivers, I think I registered my product with nVidia. Ok, fine, I'll be Dora the intrepid explorer and find out this kind of essential info unguided.

With both drivers freshly installed, I fired up Premiere and started setting up a new project for a little homevideo I did for one of my closest friends of his 7 month old daughter playing and gurgling. I checked all the settings and suddenly discovered that there was no hardware Mercury Engine support. nVidia's forums were no help. I found one post of somebody describing the same problem, but no replies from either nVidia or anybody else. So I posted as well, describing the problems I am experiencing. I kept on searching because I wasn't holding out much hope with regard to the forum and found nVidia's Customer Care Twitter account. I tweeted my troubles at them like a young bird begging for a worm from mama bird.

Today I found out that there is no e-mail when you get a reply on nVidia's forum. Nice. So I didn't know that more people are experiencing the same issues. I did get a tweet back stating "We are working with Adobe to determine the cause of this.". No timeline, no info on how they'll publicize a solution. I'm kind of worried by all of this. nVidia is talking to Adobe about their card not being recognized in Premiere after an update by Apple's OSX. Somehow that just seems wrong. I'm starting to think that maybe, after much deliberation and finally, after years of doubt, deciding upon a Mac Pro, I bet on the wrong platform. Please prove me wrong and get this fixed a.s.a.p.?

The video for the new The Gathering track Heroes For Ghosts

is LIVE NOW!
on The Gathering's Youtube Channel!!

Check it out and let us know what you think of the video!

An easy URL to remember the video is http://tinyurl.com/heroesforghosts ! =)

Less than 24 hours to go... Before the video goes live!

I'm done, I've finished, I've completed it, it's a wrap! The video for the new The Gathering track Heroes For Ghosts will be released tomorrownight Wednesday 15 June at 23:58 CET on The Gathering's Youtube Channel. I hope you will check it out and let us know what you think of the video!

Keep an eye on this website, because in a few days, I'll post a story about the "making of" of this video and tell you what crazy adventures we went through to get all the shots! I'll also talk about what equipment I used, why it is sometimes better to shoot from the hand than from a stabilizer and how it feels to risk your camera hanging over the bow of a speedboat at 40 knots! ;)

Update: Above post stated that the video will be released on the 16th of June. This should of course be the 15th of June!

Since I got back from filming the music video for The Gathering's new track Heroes For Ghosts (free download!), I've been working almost non-stop on thinking about, structuring, designing and editing the video... And I've loved every second of it! Not only because I love what I do -make films-, but also because I LOVE the track! It's hypnotic, it's got drive, it's ecstatic and it's beautiful. And I think the video will do it justice.

Editing can be a very lonely job and you have to be careful not to become too myopic. There´s a risk you run that you won´t be able to look at the work objectively anymore, after a while. I was very lucky to be able to discuss my work with two kick-ass filmmakers, one in Hollywood, the other in Hong Kong. Their feedback and perspective were invaluable, so thank you Joe and thank you John for taking the time to watch an early version and giving me feedback!

At this point I'm about 90% - 95% percent done. There's some minor adjustments I'd like to make and then it's ready to go live from my end of things. So hopefully it won't be very much longer now! Stay tuned, folks!