In San Diego

I'm in San Diego furiously producing away getting ready for my next video.

I'm going to start guest blogging fairly soon at Giant Robot the whole process. So unless it's marginally personal, I'll be over there for the next month. I intend to try and write about my entire experience making this piece. So in the words of Alan Patridge... "Join me. Why won't you?"

Marta Tura fooled me.

Updated this to reflect upon the fact that the entire video appears to be a hoax; mostly shot in Spain and the girl is an actress. Or actually, we don't know ultimately. I have to retract what I said about the video's quality given that it turns out to be artifice disguised as reality beyond the confines of the piece. That's cynical and heartbreaking.

I'm just starting to wonder if in this viral marketing age how many more questions of authenticity will be raised now that we have sufficient technology to fake the sensation of amateur filmmaking.

The bright spot: often times you see a video with a similar idea and you get crushed and realize you have to lose your imaginary child. Someday I hope to get to make my version, but I'll put money on no one ever allowing that.
_

When I was sixteen (probably after watching Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World) I scrawled in a notebook "make a movie around the world for real". I think we're getting to a point where the technology - actually presaged in the film as it contains some of the first hidef imagery ever put on film - can actually make that happen.

The story goes that this fan of a Dutch band in a really small town in Argentina who works in a shoe factory had been sending fan mail to this band for ages, and in an experiment they paid for her travel to watch them play a show in Holland while she filmed her trip. They chose her as she was the fan from furthest away. She'd never left her country before.

I don't really care for the song, but the first time I saw this clip (at 5am after an emotionally brutal week and one in which I've been reminded that I don't travel the way I used to) I was blown away. I love how you can see the girl fall in love with filmmaking.

I've had a similar treatment in my bag of ideas for years now, and I have to say it'd be hard to top this. There's a discussion going on at antville over whether or not this story holds up and is true. I agree that there's something we're not being told, but I do believe this woman's enthusiasm and excitement over travel is real, and if it really is that pure of a story, this is a great video.

Watch it here.

Watch interview with Marta here.

In memory - Niki Lexa

Niki Lexa was a fellow student at the London International Film School.

He passed away on June 7th. I found out on Wednesday. His funeral is in San Francisco, today.

Niki's death was completely unexpected and tragic. There are still a lot of questions as to what happened. My need to translate into narrative can't quite grasp this. Niki was neither self destructive or hedonistic. He was very kind and sweet and good natured. We are still waiting for an autopsy report but it must've been something completely from the ether.

I can't recall the first time I met Niki, but I remember we became friends when it came time to figure out how to make someone appear to get shot on film. Pyrotechnics and guns aren't so easily available in the UK. So after some coaching from Niki (who to this day I still don't know if he had completely come up with this solution himself or he'd just read it and was really smart) we constructed a nail trigger board and our squibs with condoms and micro detonators. That I bought, seriously, in the back of a car for cash money on the outskirts of London after a two hour train ride. Niki showed me how to put it all together. We bonded over wushu films and the Hong Kong cinema of the 90's, a neverending discussion of "did you see this completely over the top and brutal, beautiful shot"? His editing room in school had a gigantic Bruce Lee poster. Niki was the real deal; he didn't have a trace of irony or detatchment. He loved things earnestly. He was not into these things for kitsch - he could appreciate a good laugh over the silliness of something (like the way in Ringo Lam's "City on Fire" the police sketch artist draws a man in a ski mask and the cop is told to memorize the face) but he didn't fetishize or feel superior. This is, too, a school that was teeming with all sorts of delusional pretension the likes of which I've never come across. Only in other film student's experiences at their own.

We ended up collaborating a lot as the film school's go to guys for getting shot. I can't really relate this understandably, but at some point Niki put together an entire action movie in our school. I wish I had a copy to put online. It's ten minutes of ridiculous mayhem. He had full on machine guns in the school, people getting blasted through doors on pulleys, a model miniature exploding, an actual kung fu fight... Me getting blasted with a shotgun to the chest wearing a pink shirt...

It was the best time I ever had in film school. It was so over the top ridiculous and Niki wandered through it with ease, quietly smiling and directing without ever raising his voice.

I have a lot of great memories of him. I talked to our fellow classmate and friend Hideki today. Hideki got really sick last year and had a brush with mortality. Even though I had to break awful news to him, I could hear that Hideki was doing much better and had gotten a lot of strength back.

To Niki Lexa: we miss you.

Next video and for Dianna...

I am set to direct a video for The Album Leaf, for their new album coming out in September. The track is incredible. I've had a lot of frustration lately with the world of music videos, but the fact that this was a song that I really liked myself means that I guess I'm right - it's only when I really connect with the song that it's apparent to everyone else that it might work. I hope I do the song proud.

As for my novel... It might end in catastrophic failure but as I studied writing and literature in Ireland where they know English better than the Queen, they say, I've always promised myself I would do this at least once, even if it ended up nowhere. Part of it is a reaction to having to write for films (thinking how I'll direct the thing) always taking into consideration how I would actualize in physical reality the image. This reigns in my imagination a lot. Which can be a good thing. But I wanted to just take the brakes off and play with language and some really large ideas.

Originally I wanted it to be a graphic novel with Carson Ellis, but Carson's way too busy. Back then it was more baroque and simplistic, but had the same central idea. Walla happened to be around as I was discussing it with Carson and he suggested I read the Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials books as soon as I finished talking without skipping a beat. Two years later the thing continuted to gestate in my head, and become very not simple, and all this interior psychology to its characters exploded to me, and I didn't get around to those books until this last winter. And I wrote about them here I believe, I was so amazed by them. I was pleased to find that it wasn't what I was planning (sadly, it was better and more powerful and more brilliant than I could ever hope for) or thinking along the lines of, but Chris understood I think the way I wanted to write something revisionist about childhood fables and the ones that were handed to us.

Here's the first sentence as it is now. "Something chimed. She thought of the Angelus, prayers, alarm clocks."

The Narnia books piss me off something fierce.

Anyway it's going on the back burner for awhile. I have to get this video rolling. Seriously happy to have Rob Ryang and Tarin Anderson back on board. Wish us luck....

fireflies

Saw the first fireflies of summer last night in my backyard. I'm sure you all understand, having a backyard is exceedingly rare in New York. Mine is quite small. My building neighbor and now friend Claudia has been exceedingly kind in making it even better. She claims not to be so good, but she has a green thumb like the Incredible Hulk has one. She had the makings of an entire salad yesterday from there.

But anyways, fireflies. Green phosphorence at dusk has to be one of the most beautiful things in the world, and it's little things like that which keep me in love with New York. I mean it's this colossal frustrating fuckup of a city, with beautiful fireflies.

Here's something to check out this weekend in NY:

http://www.grny.net/2006/06/ends-and-odds-new-works-by-kozyndan.html

Kozyndan who a lot of you know from having done all the Postal Service singles and EP artwork are showing at Giant Robot. One of the best things about GR art shows is that there are always affordable pieces if you get there early enough.

Other things I'm up to this summer...

I'm writing a novel.
I'm giving my thumbs RSI with the blackberry. Mostly it's 200 messages a day to my friend Anne Ishii. She is the single funniest person I've ever known.
I'm missing my new friends, or at least wishing i could see them more Saelee and Souther who are guest blogging at GR this month.
Drinking.
Finishing up the Decemberists DVD. It's really happening.
Heading to Comic Con.

I stayed up til 7am the other morning writing a treatment to deadline. I actually liked this one. Fingers crossed.

Backyards, overhead flights, blackberries

I am alive. I moved into a new place, a few doors down. I'm now in a concrete floored basement with a backyard. It's pretty much the nicest apartment I've ever lived in. It's ludicrously beautiful. The backyard changes everything about living in NY, too. I now have a private expanse as there are no real alleyways in this city. At night I get to retreat to the little hush that rises off of grass instead of sodium lights and stoops.

For some reason it felt right, then, to change it up a bit. I'm holing up to write for a few months. I've written a ton of treatments for videos, all of them rejected to be honest. I'm starting to feel that being a video director is akin to being the guy in high school who all the girls want to be friends with. Substitute band for girl. I will continue to write treatments, and make myself available should the opportunity arise.

I'm reading a book about sea turtles, I fell utterly in love with the writing of David Mitchell (I blurb on his book Cloud Atlas in a tiny little thing in the most recent issue of Giant Robot). Haven't been watching so much. Made some great new friends.

I'm off to LA next week for Martin Wong's wedding.

I got a blackberry. Not only is that bad for me, it's bad for everyone I know. Yeah, sure, you can email me anywhere I am from now on. But that also means I can email you back. My hypergraphia is untethered now.

A foot of snow in the morning

My first winter in New York has been unseasonably warm and dissapointing for me with my dreams of Antarctic adventure. It's been chilled to the bone cold plenty of times, but hardly any snow. Unti today. Beautiful powdery drifts at least a foot tall, waves of snow cresting to peaks like sand dunes litter Park Slope. I got out and went for a walk, or a trudge. This is what winters should be like, for those who remain in the Northwest.

My street is a one way straight shot to the Hospital up at 7th Ave. A car was blocking the road and ambulances had to reverse back so I formed a neighborhood gang - including, no joke, two staff fighters training at the doors down martial arts academy - and helped this poor guy stuck in a crappy little barely turning over Nissan from 78 move his car out of the way. Except that somehow the group thought we could manage to execute a perfect parallel parking job. So I said "let's pick it up". And the native Brooklyners looked at me like I was deranged. But we tried, and attacked the car, and shoved it right out of the way. Ambulances can get through now.

We asked the guy what he was doing - delivering the NY Times. Talk about dedication. He's still sitting out in his car despite protestations from my and my downstairs neighbor.

Great morning. Only in New York can a 50 year old nurse with a dog in her bag, two Mexican guys, two staff fighters, a poet from upstate and her friends, and a few people tending to their own stoops band together to rescue a NY Times delivery guy.

Ever wonder why you do certain things sometimes? Ever blame it on mind control?

I often blame the 50s movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" for my insomnia - it was one of those movies they'd show late at night on television when the glow of a cathode tube can be spooky enough. But having the hero go insane at the end and scream at the camera "Whatever you do, don't go to sleep" did a reasonable head job on me. In actual life, though, brain parasites cannot alter our behavior.

Except for a new study shows that toxoplasma, a parasite found in cat crap that may affect %50 of the human race as it's a benign parasite that doesn't hurt the host... Is definitively showing signs of altering the mental behavior of rats.

There is a causal link between schizophrenia and women who are pregnant who carry toxoplasma.

That's right, there's a parasite present in %50 of the human population (%15 in the US) that is sourced in cats that has been shown to effectively control the minds of rats.

Sleep tight.

Link to creepiest news item ever.


Better detailed story here.

What's in a name

So I am now Aaron Stewart-Ahn. Formerly I was the not yet an artist of any note whatsoever named Aaron Stewart. Why did I change my name? Well, there's another director out there named Aaron Stewart. He's obviously more established than I am, and he's got, I believe, a year or two on me. When my first video got some airplay I received communications about my departure from my animation. Which was interesting, as I'd worked in animation but never done some. On one of those bored days, I googled myself and lo and behold, another Aaron Stewart. I called him, in fact, and had a surreal discussion with my doppleganger which took some convincing on my part to let him know I wasn't lying.

What's the first line of this other Aaron Stewart's bio? "Aaron Stewart likes cartoons. He also likes toys. In particular really old Japanese toys, but just about any toy will do." That could literally be the first line of my bio. Uncanny. Someday I think it would be either fun to collaborate with him, or it'd end up devolving into the last hour of Dead Ringers, but with more Mazinger and Macross toys to fight over.

Even recently I was getting Res magazine a photo and the art editor told me they loved my new animations.

Then there is the curious phenomena of googling yourself, which everyone should do, because you turn up some really interesting variations upon yourself. One Aaron Stewart is really quite a strong Christian and works with small scale multimedia and the church in Texas. He has blonde hair, if I recall. He's the anti-Aaron, the Yin to my Yang. I sometimes worry about this Aaron, as his portfolio mainly seems to be websites he has desiged for his family's business and a wedding. When I check on him I'm hoping for an upgrade to the website, a flourishing and an updated bio which indicates success. We also have quite opposite taste in fonts.

Another Aaron Stewart lives in New Zealand (we share a middle initial, too), and again, writes a scarily Christian blog. He is - a writer! He compares being without god to being like Gollum. This Aaron believes that this Aaron is like Gollum. Not cool. This Aaron, like myself, has ambition, arrogance - but always, always brings it back to the Bible. He wishes to be pious but he seethes with desire - he writes "Women that I find hot shouldn’t be married. thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, young man. yes yes, I know." This Aaron is my Jungian dark half. I've been tempted by women who aren't single. I didn't have prayer to ward off that feeling.

I continue. Here's the Aaron Stewart I never want to be. The nudist. He is a nude newscaster, so again, there is the leaning towards media, the need to communicate to a larger world. He wishes to be a fireman. He has the same unusual desire to help people I find myself burdened with sometimes. But he's nude on the Internet.

This Aaron Stewart draws a crude webcomic that I can't make head or tails of. He likes manga and anime. Again, like myself and Aaron Stewart, too. I can't find out much about him, though I find that once determining his Chinese zodiacal perfect partner, he states that he wants to meet one but with red hair. His comic appears to concern a red head. I sense a lot of Aaron Stewarts are lonely and have had girl troubles. I want to warn this one: the role playing games and the love of comics, they will deny you.

Another religious blogger Aaron Stewart. I suppose the name implies a lineage of Scottish piety, so I should expect it. I'm getting tired of Christian Aaron Stewarts, figuring they must all combine my arrogance with the power of expecting eternal life... But this one really startles me. He's thoughtful, his Christian work seems utterly devoted to mercy and he expresses himself in a kindly manner and he posts a link of a really rad picture of an owl. I realize I have some arrogance myself about my beliefs like my atheism, and for a moment I am humbled by a fine example of an Aaron Stewart.

All of us seem to have suffered for the love of women, and are thoughtful, and are writers and artists and producers and nude newscasters. We like anime and cartoons and animals and ponder the mysteries of the universe with a cocky certainty. We wish to help others.

So anyway, I decided to professionally add the Ahn to my name, which is my mother's maiden surname. I'm actually getting very used to it, proud of it even. And as I am completely both aspects of my mother and father and couldn't be myself without influence and traits from one or the other, it begins to fit well, like a piece of clothing that's adored, as if it belonged to me all along.