Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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29.8.06 Dead Letter Office

When you try to make a living as a writer/filmmaker/designer/
general chancer, you spend a lot of time hearing the word "no". And pitches, wonderful pitches, that you are convinced would be the greatest things ever, get batted away like pesky mosquitos by people with money. So it goes. You get over it and pitch more, better.

But I thought today I'd give you gentle strangers a peek at a few recent arrivals in my Dead Letter Office. Below are designs for a local band's demo CD label and cover, now unlikely to be used. They're only roughs, but I was quite pleased with them, as they were my first real projects on Illustrator. The CD label is based on an old Vocalion 78 label; the cover is from a handbill for Norma Shearer's 1926 film "The Devil's Circus".

I'm designing some posters for Flipron to go on the Underground, though, so at least the practice on Illustrator will not go to waste.

The below is a rejected pitch to the BBC for their New Music Shorts initiative. You can hear the track here; it's the last one, ZeroDB's "Bleeps, Bongos and Basslines" - the only one that really inspired me. Note that you'll need RealPlayer to stream the song. (Ah, Auntie, always at the trailing edge of technology.) I had to pitch my idea in 200 words. I managed it at about 280:

A Little Girl sits at the window of her council flat, glumly tapping a plastic Hula-Dancer Doll. Her Mum arrives home tipsy, running her car up onto the pavement below. A plastic Nodding Dog sits in the back window of the car. The Mum collapses on the sofa, dumping a bottle of vodka on the CD player. The CD player goes crazy - drunken stereo magic - causing the Hula Doll to grow and come to life.

The Hula Doll leads the Girl on a conga-dance out to a cornerstore to buy candy. Coming out, they run into burglars doing a bank job. They steal the Girl's candy as they run past. The Hula Doll kung-fus the robbers and takes their bags of cash. As the Cops arrive, the Mum's car pulls up, driven by the life-size Nodding Dog. Hula Doll and Girl, with bags of cash, pile in. Switch POV to the Cops, who give chase. The cops break into the council flat, to find nothing but the Girl glum at window and passed-out Mum, as per opening scene. Cops leave, grumbling. After, camera pans around to reveal the bags of money stashed behind the sofa. The girl smiles.

I'm very influenced by the absurdist humour of Buster Keaton, mixed with the hyper-coloured kitsch of modern J-pop film to make a silent-comedy short that, like the ZeroDB track, is ultra-modern but has wry nods back to a vintage style. The Hula Doll was suggested by the song's 1950s/tiki longe beats, and the cops from the "siren" tones beginning around 3:33. The drunken CD player was inspired by the skips at 1:00.

The way I make music videos is I listen to the song about 5 times before I go to sleep, then lie in bed and think up strange stories. The video is entirely inspired by the pacing and sound of the song, but it never illustrates the lyrics, and it never shows people playing their instruments - it's always a short narrative story in counterpoint to the song. This approach seems to be working, as I'm filming for Maxfield this coming weekend, and Kunta Kinte the following two weekends. Up for two other paid short-film gigs, too.

Londoners: A film I am involved with is looking for singers, preferably male, to sing on-camera in a chorus/church scene this Thursday (31st); we also need non-singing extras for a library scene. So if you sing, and/or can look like a student, get in touch with me soon.

( 1:35 PM )

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