It’s been a crap week in London and Birmingham and Manchester. Where it all started was in Tottenham, a North London district, and one time home of Killa Kela, an artist I’ve been working with for the last few weeks. Super Massive Raver, my comedy project, has been sitting in development for some time now and we were asked if we could come up with something that showed a more contemplative, alternative face to the character and we’d been sitting on a speech from Hamlet that we like for some time. Couldn’t be more different to the manic, in your face craziness of our normal videos, right? After the riots happened we realised how poignant this soliloquy actually was and, just like that, decided to shoot something impromptu featuring Kela and SMR, to showcase SMRs excellent singing voice, and really show how we’d be able to give this character some shades of light and dark.

See if you can guess which camera it was shot on though?

If you like it, pleas pass it on, as I feel like it’s one of those rare moments when we’ve actually been to do something positive for a chance.

Thank you.

Massive credit due to KRIS THOMPSON for the incredible footage he shot.http://www.youtube.com/user/kristhompsonfilm

Technorati Tags: beatbox, damage, local, london riots, looting, stevie wonder, Super Massive Raver, tottenham

One of the very first pieces I shot on a DSLR was a mood piece that captured the time I spent in the Bahamas as part of the 14 islands film challenge. Thinking back it’s surprising how little I actually knew about the camera and how new and renegade it seemed at the time. Fast forward two years and I’m now going back to lands of cobalt blue water and stunning natural beauty, armed once again with my trusty DSLR. I may have upgraded from a 7D to a 5D but I don’t appear to have lost any of the enthusiasm for the equipment. The vibrant, responsive community that sprang up around the cameras has gone stale and there are now so many bloggers and ‘experts’ around it doesn’t really feel special anymore. Having said that, on a personal note, I’m still regularly gobsmacked by this genius camera that has not only served me brilliantly but has actually facilitated a huge career transition.

I’m heading out to the Maldives on Friday to help a new lifestyle blog ‘Putting on the lux‘ shoot some interesting, very creative, content and develop a new media channel. Without DSLRs and the blogging I put into the community, that would never have happened. The blog is about the ‘Lighter side of luxury’ but we’re covering all sorts of really great little stories and I have a licence to be very bold and creative with how I tell them and it’s really a massive privilege.

Follow our adventures and look out for some great DSLR shorts coming very soon at puttingonthelux.com and you can follow along on Twitter @puttingonthelux

I’m very lucky.

Technorati Tags: 5D, DSLR, maldives, mauritius

Some new work. Shot super fast, edited super fast, featuring two epic beatboxers, Killa Kela and Eklips. Full writeup over at Wide Open Camera should you be so interested…

Technorati Tags: beatbox, Brick Lane, Eklips, Killa kela, Redrock Micro, Zacuto

No, we haven’t forgotten about this project, we’re just juggling some other avenues for the crazy comedy nutcase and want to hold the Hong Kong mini-series back until we know what’s happening with that. We’ve got a feature film in the works and the chance of some TV appearances now so stay tuned. In the meantime, some more flavourettes. The HK episodes are looking great, can’t wait to share them with you all. Stay up to date with all the goings on at the SMR blog, we’re doing our first SMR live gig on Saturday night and we’ve just been confirmed to shoot the music video for the brand new single, written with Reeson, ‘Take it off’.

Big thanks as always to Blink Bid, Cambo, Vinten and Canon.

Technorati Tags: blink bid, cambo, Canon, comedy, DSLR, hong kong, martial arts, martin wan, robin schmidt, Simon Wan, Super Massive Raver, vinten

I’m serious about drama. Having done TV, music videos, lots of corporate and extreme sports videos, nothing compares to the challenge of drama and the endless creative possibilities it presents. In the UK the Film Council has been given its marching orders in an act of extreme self-mutilation by an over-zealous government keen to be seen as proactive. It seems devastatingly short-sighted given that we appear to be about to enter a golden age of British cinema. Big claim, but the democratisation of film tools is already seeing a younger, bolder generation of creative filmmakers come through in greater numbers than we’ve seen for a long while. There’s a lot more crap but the golden heart is beating strongly.

Virgin Media Shorts is an open film competition that celebrates short film, offering a great first prize, great support to filmmakers and an increasingly aware and savvy community to go with it. Put simply it’s now the biggest short film competition in the country. And yet, every year I completely fail to enter anything. It’s partly the 2’20″ time limit which does me in every time, and it’s partly that I always find myself too busy. Last year we wrote and produced a film for the competition and ended up with Please Hold, which now weighs in at over ten minutes. We missed that limit by a country mile. This year I wasn’t going to bother because I simply didn’t have an idea I thought would be strong enough. Then, ten days before the competition deadline, I had a brainwave. So we ended up putting an entire film together in a very short space of time.

These days I’m fully aware that what wins competitions is the ability to create a genuine emotional response to a film. More and more people are becoming adept at ticking the required ‘film’ boxes: nicely shot, use of the closeup, decent editing, music and picture etc. However, very few people seem to have that innate understanding of what makes a story a story, or indeed what makes great film great. For a long time I relied on whizz bang to see me through, pummelling my viewer with dynamic visuals and glossy craft. Now, I don’t bother with any of that. Not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I’m much more interested in a different kind of challenge: making people care.

Brighton is the latest in a number of short essais to develop this side of my sensibilities. And it all started with a simple idea: a father comes out to his son. I think the process behind how I went from this idea to the film we eventually made is pretty interesting and I’ll cover it in a separate blog. On the day we kept it really loose. I’d done a recce the day before and scouted some locations I thought would be good but half of them we didn’t end up using because while on the Saturday it had been grey and empty in Brighton, on the Sunday it turned out to be the hottest day of the year and everyone and his dog was in town.

There was no script, the actors were briefed on what we wanted them to do and how we wanted them to do it, then we just let them get on with it. We knew we were going to have to shoot master shots with minimal additional coverage and that was basically it. Three different locations, three different emotional registers, but the same scene. I decided to shoot it myself, on the 5D, using the Cinestyle picture profile, with the express intent of making it look as un-DSLR as possible. Partly because I’m sick of it, partly because I didn’t want that look, and also because I knew many of the other films in the competition would look very DSLR-like and we wanted to be a bit different.

As always I worked with my trusty co-director Gez Medinger, soundman Simon Wan, camera assistant Stephen Parker with Sarah Linstra our production manager. Big thanks to Leoni Kibbey for helping with casting and of course our cast themselves Henry Maynard (who’s becoming my Joe Pesci) and Andrew Macdonald, who were both taken to some pretty uncomfortable places during the shoot. I’ll dig into the whole process in a future blog in more detail but for now I hope you enjoy it. The 3’20″ cut is far superior but 2’20″ is a cruel mistress.

Big thanks as always to SmallHD, Cambo and Zacuto for their continued support.

Technorati Tags: brighton, cambo, cinestyle, closet, drama, film council, gay, gez medinger, henry maynard, leoni kibbey, robin schmidt, SmallHD, VIrgin Media Shorts, Zacuto

First, an apology for that crime against music that was the Artful Dodger featuring Craig David. Ouch. Secondly, why? I’ve been watching the West Wing recently, right from Season 1 because I missed it first time it was on and because, after watching the Social Network I was in the mood for a bit more Sorkin. Nothing very much happens, a lot of gobby people walk around a lot looking smug or anxious or both and everything’s so wonderfully verbose. The acting is great, you get the sense that everyone is really enjoying themselves and it all feels incredibly fresh, even now. That is all the way up until the point the titles roll, or you’re given that twee musical zap to take you into the ad breaks. Then it shows its age in desperate fashion. And why not, it’s over ten years old, from 1999 in fact, and the same year that rancid Artful Dodger song came out. In the show they’re using black Apple Powerbooks, and I remember that was the computer I had in my first job in a brand consultancy in London. We didn’t have flat screens back then, mobile phones were in their infancy and home broadband was way off. But you forget that. Somehow it gets lost.

Back then I was a young buck, I hadn’t even thought about a career in film at that point and I was a lot less cynical. Or was I? We tend to be revisionist in our view of history and it’s tempting to view life as one long journey of evolution, improvement, progress. Never look back, always look forward, the unknown possibilities of glorious potential are far more glittering and seductive than the partial failures of the past. By the way, if you are going to fail, do it gloriously – nothing worse than a damp squib. It’s one of my favourite things to do, revisit the past, review my old work in light of what I think now and I’m constantly reminded that it hasn’t been a voyage of progress and constant improvement. Sure, my sensibilities, technique, experience and skills have all moved forward but the fun spark that gave it all lift off is clearly written across all my idiotic creative meanderings from earlier on in my life. Comforting and yet somehow disappointing. It’d be nice to feel, yes I’ve really moved forward, changed, evolved and transformed, but maybe that’s the wrong way to look at things. Maybe it’s less about the brush strokes of a painter, creating something from nothing, and more about the crafted chisel of a sculptor – the art is hiding inside, you just have to cut away everything else.

Blah blah blah

When I was younger I spent a year in France, living with a host family, and going to school. It was my gap year, a time when most people sling on a backpack and get grubby in exotic places for the passport stamp and a tropical disease. I had my A-Levels already and three years at Oxford were on the cards, but I ended up sitting the Baccalauréat that year and am in the very unusual position of having two sets of senior school qualifications. Bizarre. During that time I kept an extensive journal. I never saw the connection to this blog till recently but scribbling inane mutterings about myself and indulging in auto-Freudian analysis is nothing new. I did the same thing when I worked at Camp in America and I’ve been doing it intermittently now for the last three years, the blog being the most public and refined iteration. When I dug up those journals and began reading about this eighteen year old who I thought would bear no resemblance to me. Identical in every way. Nothing has changed, I’m exactly the same person I always was. Now, I’m more self-confident and sure-footed but I haven’t changed a bit.

This year has promised so much and has begun to deliver. The dreams of so many years are now starting to be realised and that feels good. You can spend a lot of time trying to escape past versions of yourself, but I think the really strong filmmakers just have a better understanding of who they are and what that means than the rest of us. Embrace that and you ought to be onto something good.

Technorati Tags: aaron sorkin, apple, artful dodger, craig david, powerbook, retro, rewind, social network

My agent got in touch recently about an article that I might or might not have written on here about how to deal with burnout. I’ve sort of touched on this on a number of occasions because I’ve definitely suffered from it myself and it’s not very pleasant. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest.’ In my own case I hit the wall when running my own production company, piling everything I had into the wrong kind of work and psychologically building a bunch of problems that I’ve now put firmly behind me. The problem with being a freelancer and indeed with working in this kind of arena is that nothing is regular. Perversely I believe irregularity is the secret to keeping everything fresh but you have to keep it in balance. The boom or bust life of being a freelancer means we tend to over commit. It’s very hard to say no to work because one of those extended periods of inactivity could be just round the corner and we all know that you only real the effects of that 2 months later when the invoices have all been processed, you’re working your ass off but you’ve got no money. Depressing.

Freelancers are specialists, we ought to be better at our jobs than in-house people because we’ve got to be. That’s not always the case but one of the main reasons for going freelance is the opportunity to make more money and with that comes more responsibility, a more focussed day’s work and a much greater exposure to a varied diet of work. The problem with all of this is that, essentially, every time you walk into a new company you’re starting from scratch again and you have to rebuild the routine. Doing this repeatedly, week in, week out, saying yes to every job, quickly becomes incredibly wearing.

My own experience of burnout came as a result of working in a company, my own one, and I just talked myself into a place where I was chained to my desk, defining my life through work, getting up early, going to bed late. As long as I was doing something, I could persuade myself that I was being useful. I was trying to make a name for myself in music videos, without a huge amount of support from my co-workers (not their fault by the way, it’s a crappy industry and it really couldn’t sustain us for the amount of time required to make it work) and was cranking out treatments three or four times a week. That’s a lot of creative output without any real end result. I started to genuinely hate what I was doing and couldn’t take any joy out of it whatsoever.

The answer was to leave the company, go it on my own and experience some new things. Best move I ever made. In the last two years I’ve developed incredibly quickly, learning a bunch of new skills, working on some great projects, gaining way more confidence in what I do, and becoming very excited about the possibilities in front of us as digital technologies mature. I’m just as busy as I always was but I’ve managed to wrestle my life into balance. A year and a half ago was a very different story. I was taking on every single job I could, trying to earn as much money as possible, crowding out the fun personal projects that make all this worthwhile and chasing the buck. I was in danger of overdoing it and repeating the mistakes of my life at Chrome Productions.

After winning the Bahamas 14 islands film challenge I spent the prize money on a holiday and then didn’t really do much for five months. I shot an hour drama pilot and a short film but very little else. It was great. Since that moment I made a pledge to myself to take on only enough paid work to get by and leave plenty of time in between to unwind, recharge the mojo and bust a groove on the personal stuff. That’s been incredibly fruitful. I don’t direct music videos anymore, I have no interest in commercials. If I direct, it’s for me, it’s my stuff, it’s on my terms and that’s proving to be just perfect. But it’s not just about time. The other lesson I learned, bizarrely from writing this blog, was that other people can do so much work for you. I’m a preditor+, a snarling quintuple threat animal who’ll take an entire project, do it all myself, and deliver it back completed, taking all the cash along the way. I’ve had to learn that other people can and should help. Sharing the workload, retaining responsibility, objectivity and freshness, and kicking ass. It’s so much better.

These are all lessons learned the hard way. I believe that I’ve got the creative nuts to be a total badass and I’ve got a wonderfully broad skillet now but really my greatest skill I believe is an understanding of the appropriateness of a creative idea. Above and beyond everything else that’s a decision making skill. And it’s the one that’s now paying the bills. Managing a team of creatives and keeping them on the right path by making the right decisions is really the core competence of a director and it’s only now that I’m beginning to appreciate what that means. So, weirdly, I’ve begun a collection. A collection of talented people on whom I can rely. I should have done this a long time ago, but their energy and their talent keeps me fresh, keeps me alive to the possibilities in the work that I do. They’ve also opened my eyes to some really brilliant new creative avenues. I’m looking hard into bringing a ‘live’ element to film, combining it with my own love of music, remixing my skillset for a new kind of endeavour.

Burnout tends to be an introspective malaise, a bit like depression. It’s very hard to admit that you are burnt out. But the real solution to the problem is simply to lean on other people. Talk about it. This blog is more therapy than anything else. I don’t really give a monkeys whether anyone reads it or not. And for that reason it’s become an incredibly important part of my overall psychological well-being. If that isn’t odd I don’t know what is. For me, the solution to burnout was to reignite my curiosity by digging into new things, DSLRs, transmedia, blogging, 3D animation, comedy, drama. And it worked. Whatever your situation, as creatives, we have to be childish in our appreciation of the world, because that’s the only way we can keep our own fragile little spark firing. The good news is it doesn’t take much to get it going again, but you can’t expect to do it on your own, so don’t try.

Evolution is a necessary part of creative life. Final Cut X is a great example of this. A year from now I’m pretty certain we’ll see it as the most indispensable tool in our kit bag but at the moment everyone despises it. Personally, I needed to shrug off the old me and the battles I was trying to fight. Now, I’m starting to do the best work of my life, honest, interesting and uniquely me. I don’t doubt that at some point in the future I’ll look at myself and see all the old habits creeping back, but now I know exactly how to combat them. Change is good, embrace it, don’t be scared of listening to the little voice that says, there’s something interesting over there, why don’t we have a look. If you don’t have that voice then you’re not reading enough blogs, you’re not going to enough performances, you’re not being curious enough. I hate the phrase ‘think outside the box’ but it doesn’t hurt to look outside that box from time to time.

I’m #1 so why worry?

Technorati Tags: burnout, creativity, delegation, directing, fatigue, predator, psychology, talent, writing

El Skid Music Video Reel 2011 (weirdly, there’s not a single frame shot on a DSLR in there…)

I had the surprisingly fun task of smashing together a new reel for the WideOpenCamera boys yesterday and I flipped a new post for the site as well, inspired (or not) by some new videos I’d seen on Vimeo that day. I get so bored of lame videos now that I very rarely watch anything I get sent anymore and yesterday just proved to me that, while there’s many more filmmakers than there have ever been, there’s still precious few whose work is genuinely great. That’s not a bad feeling, far from it, if it were easier then it would have no value. The problem I have is with the mediocre being held up as a shining example and everyone copying it in the mistaken belief that they will suddenly look like a rockstar. No juice. Sorry. But that’s where we’re at.

Strangely my post yesterday coincided with Chris Jones (Guerilla Filmmakers Handbook) offering some honest words of his own. Chris rightly points out that the childlike openness and freshness that characterised our early moves in filmmaking can quickly be subsumed into a greater need to be successful, to find the formula that suddenly catapults you into directing Godzilla (don’t laugh, just google Gareth Edwards). He advocates honesty, honesty about what got you inspired in the first place, honesty about what you love, and honesty about who you are. I go on and on and on about this because it’s taken me forever to get it, to understand why I was going wrong. If you don’t know who Chris is then that’s a real shame. Eleven years ago I was working as a set tutor on a small British movie called Diggity. In between lessons I was either on set or I was careening through Chris’s book The Guerilla Filmmakers Handbook. That book inspired me to just get off my arse and make film my life.

Which brings me full circle to the process of putting together my showreel. This is just a music video reel, there’s all the dance film, drama, tv and commercial stuff I’ve done which didn’t even get a look in. I’ve actually really done a lot, I’ve had what most would consider a successful career to date. I remember when I had bugger all to put in my reel, and I was shooting as much as possible to scrape together two minutes to be proud of. The thing is, I look at my earliest work and see a freshness and intrigue that is completely absent from the majority of the work on this reel of mine. In the last 12 months I’ve taken Chris’s advice. I’ve reconnected with what I really care about, I’ve come to a point where I’ve ceased to care about the industry or what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I’m just going to do things the way I feel them, and trust to everything I’ve learned. I’d forced myself into a box I wasn’t comfortable in. Now, I’m broadening out into live shows, comedy, transmedia, the written word, music as well as film and it’s suddenly fun again.

Putting this reel together was fun, I had a chance to reassess where I was at a few years ago and how much I’d built, only to leave it all behind and regroup behind what I really value. It’s been a painful process doing that, and I often find I’m berating myself for not being further on in my career. The fact is, the music video industry sucks, I hate working on corporate jobs, I have no desire to work in commercials, and that starts to leave very little room to be a working director in. Drama and comedy are the only things I care about these days and I’ve had to retreat into editing, camerawork and graphics to pay the bills while I develop the fiction projects. I watch young directors starting to make waves with their work and I feel horribly threatened, pissed off and annoyed with myself. But this is just the pace of development in this industry. I watch their work though and see nothing to be scared of. They’re just making more noise than me. When the time’s right and I have the work in place then I’ll make some noise, but for now I’m content to keep working on my reel, being more honest, making work that I can actually be proud of. Much better.

Have a look at Chris’s blog, it’s spot on. Synergy seems to have had a hand in me writing a similarly themed post on WideOpenCamera. Right now, you can take your DSLRs, F3s, FS100s, and stuff em. Without honesty your work will be soulless and shallow. Not going to be a hater, but there’s a certain prominent blogger who could benefit from that advice.

Technorati Tags: bloom, chris jones, directing, el skid, filmmaking, gareth edwards, guerrilla filmmakers handbook, honesty, music videos, showreel

A few weeks back myself and Oli Kember shot with Boris and Sergey, two potty mouthed Eastern European puppets with a penchant for the theatrical. They are the proud employees of Flabbergast Theatre, run by Henry Maynard, an actor and compere who was also the star of my recent 48 hr short film. Henry’s a staggeringly talented chap and you can hear more from him on Wideopencamera here. I first became interested in puppets when I saw Henry perform Faeries at the Royal Opera House before Christmas and was just blown away by how fluid, expressive and entertaining the puppets could be. They’re operated in the Bunraku style, with three visible puppeteers but you become completely lost in the characters themselves and quickly forget that there are people actually moving them around. This is our first experiment in taking the puppets into film land as they’re normally very much a stage act. Strangely you actually have no idea how to frame the shots as there are so many subjects in frame. Concentrating on just the characters and not worrying if you cut off puppeteers heads is pretty much the best way. On stage you’re very aware of the actor performing the puppet and the interaction between puppets and puppeteers can be very entertaining, but with a film version it’s much more intimately connected to the puppets themselves. They have no facial expressions yet these guys are able to convey the most unbelievable amount through physical expression. It’s brilliant stuff and I’m looking forward to doing more. My career seems to be dragging me fast towards non-traditional methods of expression, filmmaking and storytelling and another big piece of work coming up involves creating a complete storyworld for a luxury brand in a way you’ve never seen before. Seeing how much great performers can achieve with so little on stage is so inspiring. We often agonise over every decision and the budget ramifications of those decisions, sometimes it’s nice to just let great performance do it all for you. Good fun.

Technorati Tags: black and white, boris, boris and sergey, bunraku, flabbergast theatre, henry maynard, puppets, sergey, short film, silent film, unrequited love

Chris Cunningham has always been one of my heroes. Along with Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek and Michel Gondry, he was one of those music video directors whose work you eagerly looked forward to. He hasn’t shot any music videos for a good long while now but his back catalogue includes the Aphex Twin masterpieces ‘Come to Daddy‘ and ‘Windowlicker‘, the Bjork ‘All is full of love‘ video, Madonna’s ‘Frozen‘, Leftfield’s ‘Afrika Shox‘ (unbelievable video) and my personal favourite, Squarepusher’s ‘Come on my Selector’. Cunningham only rarely shoots music videos these days, not surprising really given how far the budgets have shrunk. Last night I went to see Chris Cunningham live at the Roundhouse in Camden and was expecting to be blown away. But I wasn’t.

The show features remixes of other artists’ work, some original compositions and of course a potent visual element with three screens assaulting the senses with a dizzying mix of horror porn, flesh and danger. Cunningham himself shambles onto stage to hide behind a MacBookPro, long hair the only sign that this might in fact be the famous director. The crowd whistles, cheers, whoops and braces itself. Here be fans of the highest order. And it starts well, ambient noise accompanied by floating sci-fi lightscapes, reminiscent of Blade Runner, gently revealing themselves to be New York subway lights, passing through tunnels. The craggy face of what looks like a homeless man sings a dirge about New York, accompanied by thrashing drum hits and flashes of light. It’s a good beginning. It’s a remix of “New York Is Killing Me”, one of the songs he worked on for Gil Scott-Heron’s album ‘I’m New Here’. And it gets better. Next we’re treated to a nightmare vision of a young boy being pushed and prodded by invisible fingers, his body thrashing around to the manic drum and bass rhythms as the light bulbs in the ceiling of his room fire electric danger through his body. The action takes place to the menacing sound of a metronome thwacking relentlessly back and forth on the outside screens. It’s dark and disturbing, but as with all the best Cunningham work, there’s a sense of humour to it, and I found myself laughing. Again, so far so good.

But just when you think it’s all about to develop into something genuinely breathtaking, it just doesn’t. A pseudo dance piece featuring two naked protagonists evolves into domestic violence and ends in penetrative sex, Rubber Johnny, the lead character from his 2005 short film, makes an appearance and the ears are continuously assaulted and battered by the thumping, scraping, mashing music. I heard someone behind me nudge his companion and tell him to expect ‘audio rape’. That’s a pretty fair description. The problem with the show is that you can’t quite pin down what it’s supposed to be. Is it a DJ set, is it a film, is it something else altogether? It’s not quite clear. You can of course say that Cunningham is doing whatever he wants and that’s fair enough. As long as it’s good.

In isolation the pieces are extraordinary, but linked together as a show they demonstrate a mind-numbing repetitiveness and a surprising lack of creativity. To call it one dimensional is unfair, but Cunningham seems to have only two gears: thrash the shit out of everything, or sub bass drone. He revels in knitting the visuals so tightly to the music, every crackle, fizz, pop and slash cut with a razor by the images so that you sometimes wonder which came first, the music or the images. The Squarepusher video demonstrated this but it was breathtaking and so imaginative that it blew my mind. Watching last night it felt like he’d become so obsessed with that connection between the edit and the music that he’d gone too far. There’s seemingly no creativity, it’s just the same images repeated over and over again in the same pattern. Very quickly it loses its effect and, dare I say it, I actually got bored. It’s hard to imagine being bored while your ears are being pounded by one of the most extreme electronic soundtracks you’re likely to hear this year and your eyes are being drop-kicked by human forms being brutalised and punished, but I was.

The problem with the show is that it feels like its based on one idea that doesn’t know where to go. 45 mins is a long time to be subjected to the same thing over and over and I can’t help feeling he missed a trick to create a more varied journey. It’s peculiar, but he came across as a poor imitation of… well of himself. After 35 mins I was utterly utterly bored and I left. When you’re paying £28 to stand up and watch someone’s work you hope that it’s going to be better than that. More variety, more guile, more imagination, more ideas, is that too much to ask? Chris Cunningham’s videos left a profound effect on the way I appreciate the form and they are true originals, but he doesn’t appear to have moved on at all. Still the same fascination with the human body a la grotesque, and it all just feels a little bit old now. French director Romain Gavras is currently much more provocative and intriguing and if you’ve seen his video for Justice’s Stress, or M.I.A.’s Born free you’ll know what I mean. What happened Chris? What was he even doing on the stage, making sure the laptop didn’t go to sleep? The Roundhouse is an awesome venue and deserves a better use of the space than a triptych of screens. Oh well.

If I were to award stars the way reviewers do then this would get 2/5. Very disappointed.

Rating: **

Technorati Tags: afrika shox, all is full of love, aphex twin, bjork, chris cunningham, come to daddy, frozen, jonathan glazer, leftfield, madonna, michel gondry, roundhouse, rubber johnny, squarepusher, warp records, windowlicker