My 1st Music Video: “No Mind’s Eye”

I don’t talk much about it these days, but I used to direct music videos. Some of them are up at YouTube. Maybe in the coming days I’ll see about putting the others up. In the meantime, here’s the first one I ever made, a collaboration with my pal Elf. We made it for Mecca Normal in January 2003:

The song’s from their album “The Family Swan.”

What had happened was, Tim Feeney and I saw Mecca Normal in Urbana-Champaign. We adored them (it was easily one of the five best concerts I’ve ever seen), and invited them to come play Bloomington-Normal. They agreed, and Tim and I helped arrange a concert at ISU. Jean and David stayed with Tim, and one night while we were out eating sushi, I asked them about their music videos. That conversation led to me proposing to direct one for them. The result is what you see above.

Elf and I took the video footage from Alexander Hammid’s 1950 educational film “Angry Boy,” which is in the public domain and available at the Prelinger Archive. Hammid was of course once married to Maya Deren, one of my all-time favorite filmmakers; he helped her make such classics as “Meshes of the Afternoon.” He passed away in 2004, and I regret that I never got the chance to meet him, or show him our video. I highly recommend that you watch his original film, which despite its mundane script is very beautifully directed and shot.

I went on to direct one more (much longer) video for MN; I’ll try posting it later.

Update: This video did get released on KRS’s Video Fanzine #3.

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