Lex Halaby directs music videos, mostly of the alternative/hard rock variety. These are some of them:
- Cobra Starship "Snakes On A Plane"
- Killswitch Engage "My Curse"
- Atmosphere "National Disgrace"
- The Frames "Dream Awake"
- Hoobastank "Inside of You"
And this is his Video Static profile...
name: Lex Halabycompany: Refused TV
job/title: Director
first video: My first video was for a small punk band out of Sacramento called Red Tape. I heard they were considering a couple directors, but I wanted to land my first job so badly I drove four hundred miles from Los Angeles to Sacramento to meet the band in person. The concept had some animated effects so I brought an animatic of the entire video, along with some concept sketches to help them visualize it. Fortunately the $100 of gas paid off and the next week I booked the video. We shot parts of the video in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. By the end of the project I logged well over 2,000 miles on my car, but I loved every moment of it. I recently heard that my animatic still exists on a post house hard drive. Apparently, my crudely drawn pictures are so hilarious that they decided to keep it on file… I wouldn’t be surprised if I found it on YouTube one of these days.
strangest video: Honestly, I think the music video creative process is strange to begin with, so this is a hard one. Besides working with Samuel L. Jackson on the "Snakes On A Plane" video — which was interesting, if not surreal — I would have to say the most bizarre music video experience actually happened in pre-production on a Killswitch Engage project several years back. I was scouting a burnt forest in a state park just outside Los Angeles with my DP. We were alone in the middle of the woods when we heard a rustle in some nearby bushes. We turned around to find a barrel of a shotgun squarely pointed at us. A Park Ranger began barking orders at us to freeze and drop to the ground. Needless to say we followed his directions carefully. We stayed face down on the ground for several minutes while he went through our bags and ran our IDs. Apparently he mistook my director’s finder for a poacher’s scope and thought we were illegally hunting wild game. After realizing we were just some "harmless" filmmakers he was embarrassed by his over reaction, so he compensated by writing me a parking violation for blocking the trail entrance instead. To this day I regret not getting his badge number.
what’s next: I have several projects in the pipeline for this summer that I can’t divulge until the ink dries on the contracts, so they will have to remain nameless for now. I did, however, just wrap a video for Meg & Dia that should be hitting the airwaves soon. It’s a mixture of animated photography and live action, so keep an eye out for that one. Speaking of photography, I’ll also be having my first photo exhibit this summer. Over the last several years I’ve shot a substantial amount of black and white photography in refugee camps all over the world. I try to stay as creatively diverse as possible and traveling to remote places gives me the perspective to keep my sanity in this otherwise insane business. And speaking of insane business, I have to run. My screenplay is feeling neglected.
