MUTO by BLU

This is a great graf film. The interactions between the paintings and actual objects is great. Sound was really well done too.

skull head

This is a video of some pretty good stencil work I came across on youtube. It's worth taking a look at. Skull Head is pretty bad ass and the video includes a lot of his work. Plus the Adam Sandler song... you just can't go wrong with that.

drips

I spent a considerable amount of time testing how paint actually moves when sprayed in excess for a particular shot in the film. Although I had never really paid much attention to the paths drips decided to travel, I assumed that drips would always go straight down.

But, that is definitely not always the case. Drips have a mind of their own. They travel in almost any direction they want.

down time

Since I am waiting for a new computer to arrive I decided to do some painting. Tracking down music rights just wasn't filling the time.

research... ha

stuff

I went to the Red Cat the other night to see the best of the Platform show. It was pretty good. There was an amazing motion graphics film by Josh Raskin called I Met the Walrus. I highly recommend it. But this piece was outside in the lobby.




Since I don't drive anymore I've had a chance to survey my surroundings a little more closely. It's amazing how much stuff is all over the place in my neighborhood. I just never noticed it when I was driving.

map_zoom_star

In certain areas of the film I felt that it was better to create some sort of visual representation of what was being spoken about. In this shot I pan and zoom around the city as Paul talks about certain landmarks and their relationship to each other. The shot ends at Freedom Plaza to show just how close it is to everything else downtown.

Pinker Tones

A nice roto video

tests

I compiled this video for a presentation that I gave to the animation dept at USC. It shows a number of tests that I had been working on since the fall of 2006. The video is broken up into 5 sections - rotoscope tests, background tests, interview tests, examples of footage from the first shoot and a test assembly showing my first attempt at bridging the city and skating footage.

skate art

When I began doing research for my film I wanted to look at the root of skateboard art. The best source for this was a book of skateboard deck art called Disposable by Sean Cliver. It has everything and it's really amazing to see just how far deck art has progressed.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with skateboard art. I'd collect all the ghetto stickers. I used to beg my mom for any new Powell Peralta boards when they came out. I think I was finally lucky enough to own a McGill and a Lance Mountain sometime in my youth. My favorites were the Ray "Bones" Rodriguez boards. Even as a kid I was really attracted to the high contrast images with the sparse use of color. It's a simple visual tool that I still use today in a lot of my artwork. In Pepperland I'm adding small amounts of red to certain shots. Sometimes for purely aesthetic reasons but in some cases it's simply used to bring the audiences attention to something in particular.

Looking at the history of skate art also helped me with my decision to use punk rather than hip hop in my film. Punk, metal, hardcore and hip hop all have strong roots within skating. But in D.C. its always been more about the hip hop. I'm just a slightly reformed punk making a film so I'm sticking with what I know. Plus I did some tests with various types of music and for pacing purposes punk works much better. It moves a viewer through a 9 minute flick quickly. I was pretty happy when I came across these Misfits boards because I'm working on getting the rights to Where Eagles Dare for a section of the film. I'm also hoping to get rights to 2 Fugazi songs. I'd really like to get some homegrown music in the film. I know Ian McKay is still really involved with the local music scene so I'm hoping the subject matter of Pepperland will help get the rights to the Fugazi songs.

Cliver, Sean. Disposable. Ontario: Concrete Wave Editions, 2004. 14-197.

interviews

I wanted to get interviews from 3 different generations of skaters in the Washington D.C. area for the film. So far I have interviews with Paul McElroy from what I refer to as the middle generation and Rob Spousta from the new generation. I was also hoping to get Chris Hall and Shawn Sheffy from the original crew and Sam Wientzen from the new school click. But when I started editing together the interviews I realized the film was getting too long. In order to have multiple interviews I needed time to establish each individual as a character and give the viewer a reason to listen to them.

So I had to make a judgement call and it changed my film quite a bit. I decided to drop Rob's interview even though he gave me a really great one. I couldn't add more interviews and it didn't seem to make sense to only have 2. So now the story of the film is told by a single interviewee, Paul McElroy.

Paul began skating in D.C. in the early 90s and was a incredible resource when I first began planning this film. I really lucked out when I got an interview with him. It was over Christmas break of 2006. I was supposed to head back to the west coast the day before classes started but Paul and I were finally able to link up and do a sit down. The only problem was that I had to reschedule my flight back and I ended up missing a couple classes. But it turned out to be the right decision because he was able to provide me with a great interview and all the information I needed to make this film.

Paul McElroy

Rob Spousta

film title?

I figure most people would assume this film is called Pepperland because of the black and white texturing that I've chosen to give it. But that's not the case. A good portion of why I'm making this film is because I'm homesick. I love D.C. and I miss it more than you can imagine. I truly feel that it is one of the greatest places on the planet. After I moved to Los Angeles I began to refer to D.C. as Nevernever Land. But I realized recently that Nevernever Land was not a very accurate nick name for it. Things have changed quite a bit since I moved. Places changed. People changed. I've changed.

When I was a kid my father and I used to watch the Yellow Submarine together on a regular basis and it's become a film that holds a lot of sentimental value for me. When I began to think about it D.C. was more like a Pepperland than a Nevernever Land. At least that's the way I see it. It's where all the good stuff goes down. It's where all the people that I get along with really well hang out and life just seems easier there. You can even call the cops the blue meanies of the situation because they came in and screwed everything up for a while. But it didn't last. It's back to being the great place that I remember.

So when I was thinking of a title for my film, Pepperland just seemed like the right choice.