My 2nd Music Video: “In January”

Happily, Jean and David liked “No Mind’s Eye,” and asked if I’d make a video for their longer song “In January.” (A shorter version had appeared on The Family Swan; the extended version was released on their 2003 album Janis Zeppelin.) I agreed, unsure of what I was getting into.

In April 2003 I moved to Bangkok, Thailand …

… where I spent the summer and fall wandering around, shooting whatever interested me. From those many, many hours of footage I selected material that I thought fit the song, and that also contributed (associatively) toward a larger whole. I remember showing a rough cut in September to a video workshop I’d somehow lucked into. The workshop’s instructor, whose name I’ve forgotten, was exceedingly helpful, and taught me several basic video-making principles that became part of my standard practice.

I continued shooting more footage (including some in the resort town of Krabi), then finished editing the project in early 2004—possibly even in January. (The opening footage, incidentally, was actually shot in a January [2003] in Bloomington-Normal, IL.)

The final video premiered at the 1st Annual First Frame Film Festival (Bangkok, 2004), and was also screened at a Thai film program that I organized at ISU—but other than that, I don’t think anyone’s really seen it (this despite it being my favorite video I’ve made).