Video Profile 3

Another entry in the Køge Handellskole video profile series. Annette Finnsdottir, visual artist with work presented at the Copenhagen Museum of Modern Art. I was impressed at the interactivity of her work, particularly her mixed media approach with a very strong Web 2.0 influence. We've all seen films shot on Second Life, but I don't think there are many artists out there who get the interactivity that Second Life and the Web 2.0 in general offers and its implications to art. Cutting edge stuff, indeed.

As always, I directed, scored, edited, lit, filmed and did sound production on the piece. Enjoy

Video Profile 2

Hello world. This is one of the videos in the series I shot for Køge Handelsskole. As you might remember from an earlier post, its purpose was to showcase the students and teachers of the particular institution. I tried some grungy editing on this, not too OTT, just enough to make it a bit more snappy and take it away from the typical talking-heads style of documentary.

My subject was Sanne Snejbjerg, history teacher and probably the sweetest person I dealt with during the project. As always, part of my filming technique was to take the camera somewhere out of sight and distract the subject with some chit-chat. What I am interested in is the personality of whoever it is I'm filming. Make them laugh, make them think, make them wonder, that's how you let the person inside shine.

As always, I did the directing, editing, scoring, sound and hauling around of equipment on this one.

Enjoy.

Video profile

Yo!

I just finished (as in, directed, cut, and scored) a series of video profiles of teachers and students of Køge Handelsskole (college) in Denmark for use on their new website. It's one of the projects I enjoyed the most, because of the interaction between me and my subjects.

I approached this in a very rough way, inspired by Hillman Curtis' digital video work (go here for his website) and Wim Wenders' work in "Buena Vista Social Club" (, in that I steered away from a talking heads-only kind of mini documentary. What I was most interested in was the individual person's personality and that, to my experience, does not come out of asking formal questions to someone. It comes out of taking them out for a drink and talking to them until your throat bleeds and your vocal cords rip. Alas, I did not have the time to ruin my talking capacity, so I resorted instead to asking some basic questions, then asking something completely unrelated to the interview, but something I knew they were passionate about. I took the camera somewhere at the back of the room and let it roll while me and my subjects talked, argued, joked around, etc. I even let them direct a segment of the interview (hint, it's the part with the posters).

I can't post everything here, it's in excess of 20min, but I'm posting my favourite one. Thomas Christensen's video profile. Thomas is many things, a graphic artist, digital video producer and director, film buff and a great photographer amongst others. He's teaching visualization at Køge. Please ignore the fact he's talking in Danish (unless you speak Danish yourself) and enjoy the imagery.

More posters

Here is a poster I did for a presentation in India. Not much to say about it, lots of the decisions were dictated by the established style of Køge Handelsskole. What I am proud of though is the image on the top of the poster. It's the second of a series of posters I did for the presentation, the theme being "Projecting one's imagination onto clouds". Everyone has watched clouds pass by and imagined things, animal, faces etc etc on them. So, I made the connection between this activity and the advertised programs, the concept being that a person can shape the world based on that person's imagination, just as a person can see whatever it is they want on clouds by projecting their imagination on them.

Køge international brochure

Here are some select pages I designed for Køge Handelsskole's international brochure. The green circular thing is a futuristic menu that I thought fitted well with the school's philosophy of making the future, as opposed to waiting for it to happen.
I wanted a computer menu theme to fit in with the online nature of the degree on showcase here (multimedia). The thinking behind the specific design was breaking away from the current style of rectangular computer menus towards something that looks more like a media player, with different operations (like "OK", "Continue", and the text) presented in a different circle. I'm a huge fan of asymmetrical design and I tried to get this approach through to the design of the different "branches".
Check out also the green page above with the letters for background. I like using script and fonts to visually get a message across, so I had fun with that one.