NEWS: Lanette Phillips Becomes Mighty 8

Executive Producer Lanette Phillips has announced the launch of her new music video company Mighty 8, in partnership with production companies Hydraulx Filmz and Paydirt.

The Mighty 8 roster includes directors Josh Forbes, KROZM, Lorenzo Fonda, Moh Azima, The Brothers Strause and renowned DP Shawn Kim . Select credits are listed after the jump.

Video clips can be found at Mighty8.tv

Josh Forbes, director

• The Fray "You Found Me"
• Sara Bareilles "Love Song"

KROZM, directors

• Cut Copy "Ghosts"
• Midnight Juggernauts "Shadows"

Lorenzo Fonda, director

• various spots (MTV, Converse)

Moh Azima, director

• Sunny Day Sets Fire "All Our Songs"
• Lenka "The Show"

Shawn Kim, director

• Death Cab For Cutie "I Will Possess Your Heart" (co-director)
• Fields "If You Fail We All Fail"

The Brothers Strause, directors

• 50 Cent "Get Up"
• Usher "Love In This Club"

BOOKED: Anya Marina - Josh Forbes, director

Off Anya Marina's Slow & Steady Seduction, Phase II, co-produced by Spoon frontman Britt Daniel and Louis XIV guitarist Brian Karscig...

• artist: Anya Marina
• song: "All The Same to Me"
• label: Chop Shop/Atlantic
• director(s): Josh Forbes
• production co: Mighty 8
• rep: Lanette Phillips

SHOT: Lenka - Josh Forbes, director

• artist: Lenka
• song: "Trouble Is A Friend"
• label: Epic
• director(s): Josh Forbes
• production co: Winch + Pulley/Mighty 8
• rep: Lanette Phillips

SHOT: The Submarines- Josh Forbes, director

Director Josh Forbes (left) with The Submarines...

artist: The Submarines
song: "Submarine Symphonika"
label: Nettwerk
director(s): Josh Forbes
production co: Hero Films
rep: Lanette Phillips
producer: Annelise Dekker
DP: Hiro Murai

SHOT: Man Man - Lex Halaby, director

Werewolves in love, half the cast of any/every Judd Apatow movie... director Lex Halaby looks to have a winner on his hands with this recently shot video for Man Man.

Pictured in the picture: Actor Martin Starr as the big werewolf in the back, actress Charlene Yi as the lady werewolf, SNL cast member Fred Armisen (center), director Lex Halaby (far right) and, last but not least, Man Man singer Honus Honus (lower, right).

artist: Man Man
song: "Rabbit Habits"
label: Anti/Epitaph
director(s): Lex Halaby
rep: Lanette Phillips
producer: Lauren Bratman | DP: Brett Pawlak

photo by William Bradford

SHOT: The Offspring - Lex Halaby, director

Offspring singer Dexter Holland and director Lex Halaby on the set...

artist: The Offspring
song: "Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?"
label: Columbia
director(s): Lex Halaby
production co: Circle One Films
rep: Lanette Phillips

SHOT: Metro Station - Josh Forbes, director

Director Josh Forbes strikes his best Lost Boys pose on the abandoned carnival set of Metro Station "Seventeen Forever" with guest star Miley Cyrus. She doesn't look impressed.

artist: Metro Station
song: "Seventeen Forever"
label: Red Ink/Columbia
director(s): Josh Forbes
production co: Winch+Pulley/Ghost Town Media
rep: Lanette Phillips Management
producer: Stephen Buchanan | DP: Marc Ritzema | editor: Ryan Bartley

SHOT: Amy Studt - Paul Minor, director

artist: Amy Studt
song: "Nice Boys"
label: 19 Recordings (UK)
director(s): Paul Minor
production co: Streetgang Films
rep: Free Agent UK / Lanette Phillips Management

IN DEPTH: Jakob Dylan "Something Good This Way Comes"

This optimistic acoustic gem from Jakob Dylan serves as the perfect soundtrack to this meditative video about the underlying similarities in everyplace, everything and everyone. In this case, it's an unyielding and fixed horizon — be it natural, or artificial — forming a surprisingly straight horizontal line running through every shot captured in this ten day journey through America.

Josh & Xander, directors: "We think about still photography a lot in relation to our work, and we’ve always wanted to do a non-narrative road-trip project that was more like a book of photographic stills than anything else. The idea was to use a graphic constant, in this case the horizon, to bind the images together, but other than that, to basically go out into the world and approach the video in a completely experimental and free-form way, as if we were shooting stills for a book. We were interested in creating a filmic portrait of America that was by its nature fractured and idiosyncratic, and that would only be tied together by the fact that we found/chose to shoot certain shots, and that those shots were framed in a certain way to a certain song.  The experiment of the concept was to go out and react to the world photographically, without much preplanning, and have faith that in the edit, we would be able to find/create an internal logic for the video from all of these moments that somehow made sense on a visual, thematic, and emotional level. To be honest, we had no idea whether or not it would work, so we have to give a lot of credit to Columbia commissioner Bryan Younce for supporting this project on pretty much blind faith.

We shot for 10 days, all over CA. Originally, the idea was to go cross-country, but we realized early on that with the price of gas these days and the limited time to deliver forced us to stay pretty close to home. That being said, CA is an infinitely weird, diverse, and mysterious place. We never felt like we were missing out on things to point the camera at. The people you can meet and the moments you can find with no money, no crew and a little bit of enthusiasm are pretty limitless.

We used an Arri super16 HS camera, mostly on the new Canon super16 zoom lens, though we also brought a set of master-primes for some of the interior and low light stuff. We barely lit anything, but for the few scenes where we needed something extra we had a small kino and a set of LED lights. We had a great crew to whom we’re infinitely grateful for roughing it out with us for a string of 20-hour days, grungy motels, and the most disgusting roadside food imaginable. The grading was done by Marcelo Aprile at Riot, who did a beautiful job nailing the look we were after, and managed to keep a smile on his face (and ours) while we were nit picking over every photographic detail for what turned out to be an epic 4 day telecine session.

We normally cut our own videos, but in this case, we worked with Akiko Iwakawa at Final Cut, whose contribution to the project was huge. With around 10 hours of footage and seemingly infinite options that we had become emotionally tied to (in the most unobjective way, of course), someone had to bring the hammer down and make sure the thing got delivered on time, and Akiko really rose to what was, by all accounts, a serious challenge. It was definitely not an easy edit and it was tougher than it normally is to leave some of our favorite moments on the cutting room floor, but such is the nature of the beast…

The online and effects were done at Method, who we work with a lot. One thing that was interesting about finishing this project, is the amount of digital manipulation we ended up using to help clarify the horizon-line. Probably two-thirds of the shots in the video were significantly painted in the flame in some way or another to make the horizon more defined, accurate, or simply to make the shot look better.  We were laughing at the simple truth that there just is no 'real' anymore".

--> watch "Something Good This Way Comes"

Jakob Dylan "Something This Way Comes" (Columbia)
Josh & Xander, director | Jenna Felling, producer | Streetgang Films , production co | Lanette Phillips, rep (US) / Alexa Haywood, rep (UK) | Max Goldman, DP | Akiko Iwakawa, editor | Marcelo Aprile, colorist

BOOKED: Scars On Broadway - Joel Schumacher, director

To be directed by Joel Schumacher, a feature director whose credits include The Lost Boys, Batman Forever, Flatliners and St. Elmo's Fire. Schumacher previously directed the Bush clip "Letting The Cables Sleep" plus music video tie-ins for his Batman movies, including Seal "A Kiss From A Rose."

artist: Scars On Broadway
song: "World Long Gone"
label: Interscope 
director(s): Joel Schumacher 
production co: Alturas Films 
rep: Lanette Phillips Management

SHOT: Miranda Cosgrove - Jesse Dylan, director

iCarly star Miranda Cosgrove on the set of "Stay My Baby" with director Jesse Dylan and his daughter/co-director, Mae Mae. More details via a MySpace - Behind The Scenes... 

artist: Miranda Cosgrove
song: "Stay My Baby"
label: Columbia
director(s): Jesse Dylan
production co: Form
rep: Lanette Phillips Management

BOOKED: The Fray - Josh Forbes, director

artist: The Fray
song: "You Found Me"
label: Epic
director(s): Josh Forbes
production co: Winch+Pulley
rep: Lanette Phillips Management

BOOKED: The Urgency - Josh Forbes, director

artist: The Urgency
song: "Fingertips"
label: Mercury/Island/IDJMG
director(s): Josh Forbes
production co: Winch+Pulley
rep: Lanette Phillips Management

SHOT: The Ting Tings - Keith Schofield, director

artist: The Ting Tings
song: "Be The One"
label:  Columbia
director(s): Keith Schofield
production co: Streetgang Films
rep: Free Agent UK / Lanette Phillips Management

SHOT: CSS - Keith Schofield, director

Director Keith Schofield (third from left) with CSS...

artist: CSS
song: "Move"
label: Sub Pop
director(s): Keith Schofield
production co: Twentyfour-Seven (Barcelona), Streetgang Films
rep: Free Agent UK / Lanette Phillips Management

SHOT: Royworld - Vince Haycock, director

artist: Royworld
song: "Brakes"
label: Virgin UK
director(s): Vince Haycock
production co: Streetgang Films
rep: Free Agent UK / Lanette Phillips Management

WATCH IT: Brighton Port Authority "Toe Jam"

Black bars blotting out the naughty bits have largely been replaced by the kinda/sorta/not really more subtle practice of pixelating whatever shouldn't be seen on TV. The black bars were cooler. Remember the old R.E.M. video for "Pop Song 89" where frontman/video director Michael Stipe decided to use exceedingly obtrusive black bars to make a "tits are tits" statement for topless equality (or something)? Director Keith Schofield takes things to the next level and has way more fun with these relics of censorship in this clever clip for producer Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook's new musical endeavor, Brighton Port Authority. Styled to look like an odd artifact from the porny '70s, "Toe Jam" spotlights a group of randy guys and gals who strip down for a bit of harmless fun. The black bars that are strategically placed to cover anything with the potential to offend may be a buzzkill if you were hoping for some cheap thrills, but fear not: The black bars are way more thrilling. The gang arranges themselves in various (chaste) positions that allow the black bars to form everything from shapes to letters and even a recreation of a classic video game. As if that's not enough, the song also features vocals by David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal, while the video has what may be the greatest cameo yet by the impressively endowed Cook. --> watch "Toe Jam"

BPA "Toe Jam" (Southern Fried)
Keith Schofield, director/editor | Marisol Aragon, producer | Streetgang Films, production co | Free Agent (UK) + Lanette Phillips Mgmt (US), reps | Brett Juskalian, DP | Caviar -Belgium, post production

SHOT: Bettye Lavette - Lex Halaby, director

Shot in soul legend Bettye Lavette's Detroit hometown...

artist: Bettye Lavette
song: "Talking Old Soldiers"
label: Anti
director(s): Lex Halaby
production co: Refused TV
rep: Lanette Phillips Management

PROFILE: Aggressive, directing/fx team, Refused TV

Don't let the name put you off. The creative duo of Alex Topaller and Dan Shapiro — aka Aggressive  — is mostly just tenacious about pushing themselves and some overclocked hardware in order to create striking videos. And they're nice guys. But, Aggressive is a better name than Affable for a directing team, so you can't blame them for going with something a bit harder.

The Aggressive vibe is a high-tech fuse of live action and CGI that belies their roots as a VFX team. The latest and greatest is a stellar new clip they did for Kerli "Walking On Air" that's on its way to hitsville.

Aggressive have also directed videos for Bloc Party, Megadeth, Juanes and several other diverse artists. Visit their feature-packed site whatisaggressive for high quality links and Making Of Specials.

name: Aggressive aka Alex Topaller and Dan Shapiro
company: Refused TV
title/job: Director & Visual Effects

first video: The first real music video we did was for Hoobastank "Born to Lead." We had just made the long-shot decision to push Aggressive from VFX into directing, so we were looking around for a production company to take us in. Through a series of fortuitous coincidences we met up with Cathy Pellow of Refused TV and hit it off grand. We shared the same hands-on, punk rock, "screw convention, we just want to make awesome work" attitude. She took a chance on us, and before long, we were writing on the Hooba track. It was an ambitious video: Fully green screen, sci-fi robots, epic landscapes, and an army of wild fans. (It awarded on Alex's birthday... maybe a sign?) Through the chain-smoking, coffee driven nights that followed, we pulled out all the stops, literally drawing every shot of the video into a shot-by-shot animatic (it's become our standard procedure since then). We had done live shoots before, but never on such a large scale, and since our previous CG experience never taught us cool terms like "AD," "DP," "grip," or "back to one," we boarded the plane to L.A. with our notebooks stuffed full of Wikipedia "How to Direct" pages. It was an incredible, whirlwind Hollywood adventure for two friends from Jersey... We were introduced to some of the amazingly talented people we'd work with on almost every video afterwards, like DP Damian Acevedo, and our producer JP Fox. The band was super cool to work with, there were dozens of screaming Hoobastank fans running around with sledgehammers smashing appleboxes, and we all had a blast headbanging on the biggest green set we had ever seen. Of course this was followed by two weeks of all-nighters with our PCs back at the studio. But, that's just how we do things... --> watch Hoobastank "Born To Lead" (YouTube)

strangest video: While we get ourselves into bizarre situations as a course of habit, the award for strangest video has to go to Black Label Society "Concrete Jungle." Since it's a fully animated video (Zakk Wylde is a big A-Ha "Take on Me" fan...), there was no live shoot. We did, however, need to get reference footage for the timing of our traditional animations. We ended up staging an impromptu renegade mini-DV shoot in a tiny trailer backstage at Ozzfest in Randalls Island, NYC. We spent hours waiting, hanging backstage and in the sweltering crowd watching metal. Finally, at the very end of the day Zakk Wylde and the band jumped in to do the shoot. They had just finished up a hardcore 2 hour set with BLS and Ozzy, so everyone was revved, drenched and stinking of sweat. So there, in this tiny trailer near a beer stand at Ozzfest, we had this legendary guitar god rock out in front of a cheap foldable bluescreen to playback from a $20 boombox, while the rest of the band downed celebratory Heinekens behind us. It was surreal. After 15 minutes we got exactly what we needed. Zakk gave bear hugs all around, and as a token of BLS appreciation, we received a case of beer as a gift that we triumphantly lugged all the way back to our studio along with our lights, camera, etc. --> watch Black Label Society "Black label Society" (YouTube)

what's next: Well, our heads are still spinning (very gratefully) with the response this latest Kerli video has been getting, and we've got a lot of exciting things on our plate for the near future. For one, we are expanding Aggressive into a one-stop creative shop for commercials and broadcast design as well as music videos. We just moved into a gorgeous new studio which will serve as home base for all of our post production/VFX needs. And as always, we're busy coming up with new video ideas for the tracks that come our way.

SHOT: Ingrid Michaelson - Josh Forbes, director

artist: Ingrid Michaelson
song: "Breakable"
label: Secret Road Management
director(s): Josh Forbes
production co: Winch+Pulley / Ghost Town Media
rep: Lanette Phillips Management