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Toxic Holocaust "Acid Fuzz" (Adam Avilla, dir.)

I approached Joel Grind of Toxic Holocaust to do a music video and it lined up perfectly with his new album "Chemistry of Consciousness." The concept was, "Something demented and evil." So I ran with that.

The animation is all hand drawn and animated frame by frame. I used after effects for some inbetweening, for the slower shots and for overall compositing. I went through several reams of animation paper which is pretty intimidating and worked from about 9am to 4am every day for 2 1/2 months.

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Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band "Bad Dancer" (Ben Dickinson, dir.)

Never let it be said that Yoko Ono doesn't practice truth in advertising. The octogenarian shakes what her mama gave her with a who's who of NYC hip celebs — including Mike D and Ad-Rock, Questlove, Reggie Watts, Ira Glass, Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori — none of whom are likely to impress those fools on So You Think You Can Dance.

Blog

YouTube Music Awards Winners and Performances

As with all modern award shows, except for The Oscars, the winners at the first YouTube Music Awards seem like the least important element. That said, there were winners — deserving ones, especially since they were solely voted on by fans and not silly experts.

The biggest story of the show was the nontraditional set-up: The barriers between audience and the stage were blurry, and the performances were shot like "live music videos," complete with choreographed cuts, dialogue, scene changes and more.

It was incredibly ambitious, with seven distinct "live music videos," each as elaborate as a one-take music video, within the span of 90 minutes. When it worked, it was a beautiful thing — Lindsay Stirling's transcendent "Crystallize" is a great example — and you could argue that the freewheeling "let's make it work" ethos had enough excitement to overcome anything that feel short of what was envisioned.

But, if show creative directors Spike Jonze, Chris Milk and team seemed focused on deconstructing the typical live award show, YouTube seemed to gunning for more old-fashioned goals: An attempt to build an "everyone at once" live event, and a way to steer music video related traffic directly to YouTube without any VEVO involvement... That live audience 

Read More for the YouTube Music Award Winners and Performances:

News

VEVO Unveils Site Relaunch: Now with Director Credit Chyrons

It's VEVO 3.0 with the site launching a total revamp in terms of its interface and backend.

The homepage does away with the poster image style, in favor of something a bit more like a blog or Facebook page with lots of content featured as you scroll down... The player itself is different, with director credits displayed by default in the lower left chyron — mouse over that area and it'll appear — something I'm sure most production folks probably love.

Also new is a trifurcation of VEVO TV. Now instead of a one feed to fit all tastes, there are now three channels: Hits, Flow (R&B/Rap) and Nashville. That's right: No rock, since perhaps research shows that most rock fans are still on America Online (ouch).

Techcrunch has more on the under-the-hood imporovements — it's now built on Node.js instead of a Microsoft .NET stack — but let's all be honest: You all just care that director credits are now on-screen by default, right?

Best Of The Month

Best Music Videos of October 2013

No Miley. No PSY. No matter. Lots of good stuff this month, ranging from big pop to small experiemental stuff.

Listed in reverse chronological order, oldest to newest. I suggest you start with whatever you haven't seen — especially if you're Pop averse and prefer something more challenging, in which case I'll recommend Tyler The Creator, Atoms For Peace, Gesaffelstein and Mike Quinn as good entry points. 

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David Bowie Makes A Surprise Music Video for $12.99

The timing of this creepy new David Bowie video on Halloween is no coincindence, but the fact it follows so closely to the loss of his onetime collaborator Lou Reed is a great reminder to appreciate this generation of artists/musicians, because they're irreplaceable.

"Love Is Lost" — or, more accurately a "Hello Steve Reich mix edit" by James "LCD Soundsystem" Murphy — was actually shot last weekend at Bowie's apartment using his own camera and props. The cost? Just $12.99 to buy a thumb drive to store the video.

News

Spike Jonze and Chris Milk Directing "Live" Videos for YouTube Music Awards!

How can the YouTube Music Awards get cooler? They already have an artist line-up that boasts Arcade Fire, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Avicii, M.I.A., Tyler The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and more. And, music video legend Spike Jonze is the creative director for the show... 

Well, how about if Spike Jonze is actually orchestrating live music video shoots/performances instead of the typical staged award performances? And what if equally esteemed director Chris Milk was also involved in this ambitious feat as co-creative director?

You'd say it would pretty awesome, yes? Well, that's the case

Spike spilled the beans to NME:

"We have a whole handful of directors, we’re mixing the music video film world in with the live broadcast world and trying to make live music videos ...We have this big warehouse so instead of it being in a theatre where everyone’s performing their song to an audience we’re going to have sets all around the warehouse and each artist will have a different set. There are different ideas, some have narratives, one of them doesn’t really have the artist in it. We're trying to take the music video format and produce it live. I’m doing an Arcade Fire for a song called 'Afterlife'. I’m loving the album and that song. Chris Milk and I are helping Lady Gaga. I was involved in choosing the artists. The whole thing has been spontaneous. It’s pretty fun. It’s soul-making and very by the seat of our pants."

A live music video isn't without precedent: Death Cab For Cutie collaborated with director Tim Nackashi for a live/conceptual "You Are A Tourist" clip, and the MTV VMAs have nudged into a similar zone, especially at the 2008 edition which took advantage of the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot for performances like Pink's "So What."

But, this sounds like it could be on a whole different scale...

See Also: Our original post on the YouTube Music Awards Nominee and Performance Line-up