Rina's blog

Posted by Paul Devlin

This is the Director’s Cut of the music video for CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” which has never been released publicly as far as I know.

This was back in the day before it was easy to do special effects with Avid Plug-Ins and Adobe After Effects.  To get this look, the Director, Claude Borenzweig, came up with the unique technique of layering different shapes over the same sections of video, all Black and White. The different layers were passed through isolated Red-Green-Blue channels of an old-school Kaleidoscope effects box.  When the layers overlapped, they created all sorts of surprising, unusual colors and shapes which were further manipulated. Clever concept and a great look.  

But the record company was very conservative and forced Claude Borenzweig to pull back on his bold experimentation with the process. He found that frustrating.  So after the project was completed and delivered, he came to the boutique edit house Chromavision where I was working as a video editor, with the raw tapes.  He wanted to make his own version for his Director’s reel.   My instructions were to re-create the process and go wild with it. Which is exactly what we did.

Take a look at this version and then compare it to the original and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Posted by Paul Devlin:

I spent a lot of time in the Republic of Georgia making Power Trip. Like the main character Piers, I fell in love with the place. I think this excerpt makes that clear. The montage element gave me a wonderful opportunity to use a whole bunch of gorgeous footage I collected that wouldn’t fit elsewhere. And the track is perfect – Georgian music was a delightful discovery for me and many of the viewers of Power Trip.

This section is an essential digression. It invests viewers in the people and the country, providing an emotional connection to both Georgia and the main character Piers. Now they care so much more about everything that takes place after, making the movie much more impactful. Enjoy.

Power Trip DVD
Power Trip Trailer

Posted by Paul Devlin:

As part of our Artist Share fundraising effort, we documented the BLAST! filmmaking process by creating regular production updates for our Participants.  This is one of my favorites, a journey to Chile. Adventuresome filmmaking meets adventuresome science.

BLAST! DVD
BLAST! Trailer

Guest post by Taylor Mali!

Like many great slam poems, "The Wussy Boy Manifesto" is steeped in self-righteous indignation, which is the highest scoring emotion in slam. Poems that essentially say, "How DARE you judge me for who I am!" provide the perfect vehicle for the perfect mix of pride, anger, and (as we have here) a little humor. Actually there's more than just a little humor here; BPE stays clear of anything dark or controversial (except for his colorful language) and keeps this very light. Some might say too light, but I enjoy it for what it is. Had the crowd been bigger he might have had a tougher time with what seemed to me like a "false ending" at 2:01 ("I am Wussy Boy. Hear me roar."), but poems were generally so much longer back then that I guess no one would have expected a poem to end after only two minutes. Lastly, notice and appreciate the quality of the video and audio! This definitely isn't Mums the Schemer shooting Saul Williams from the front row with one camera!

SlamNation DVD   SlamNation Trailer

And check out Taylor Mali here!

Posted by Paul Devlin

While making The Vestrymen music video for their song "Backyard" I came up with a concept for another song, “3 Kings,” that we could shoot quickly and inexpensively to sneak in a 2nd video for their album, Ruby Ranch Meets the Plastic Hassle. We shot some Super 8 film of singer Matt Davis on the beach, and the sky made a perfect blue screen to mix in some fun mountain footage I had already been shooting. Then I added some of my travel footage from around the world (and also borrowed from a friend, Douglas Carver). The Tarot reader is another friend, Janine Waldron. The Vestryman’s record company, Vertebrae did not cover the cost of the video, so only this excerpt was completed. This is the first time it has been released.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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Crossfire Choir came to me with this video completely envisioned.  All the shots were written out, we dressed up the Court Tavern to look like a set, they brought costume changes and after the shoot they diagrammed how they wanted it edited. I was happy to have the band so invested and well-prepared and enjoyed the collaboration. It’s probably the most polished of all the videos in Rockin’ Brunswick.

After I finished shooting that summer of 1983 in New Brunswick, I returned to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for my junior year. I brought all the Rockin’ Brunswick raw footage with me (old style 3/4” tape), and used the University’s equipment to learn how to edit video. It was a huge project and took months. And I have to admit, my course work in English Lit suffered a bit.  My passion was shifting to filmmaking. And I was developing a skill that has sustained me ever since.

I’m thankful to everyone involved in Rockin’ Brunswick, and gratified that these posts are inspiring some happy nostalgia so many years later.

That's our final episode of Rockin' Brunswick.  We hope you enjoyed it, and we ask you to support the film by purchasing the DVD here.  Also, check out this big article on Rockin' Brunswick that just came out today in New Jersey's Sentinal newspapers

Stay tuned for more web series from us as we launch The Eyes of St. Anthony, and CutTime in the coming months!

Posted by Paul Devlin:

Science can be a rich experience, not just because of the work itself because of where the work can take you. When I was a kid, my family traveled all over the U.S and Europe, following the research of my physicist father. Great adventures.

That’s not to say science is not also hard work. The grad students worked for months at the isolated Esrange Space Center preparing the first launch of BLAST and waiting for the weather to clear.  But every once in awhile they would get out and have some adventures too. And I went along.  

Experiencing the culture of Arctic Sweden through the eyes of the grad students I hope will inspire other young people to explore the adventuresome elements of careers in science.

BLAST! DVD
BLAST! Trailer

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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Crossfire Choir was a great band, incredibly tight and self-assured.  That’s well-represented in this impressive, funky new wave track.  They were all over the dark florescent look and mixing in the trails from the old 3-tube camera.

Watching their rise, it seemed inevitable that they would make it big, and that’s how I positioned them in Rockin’ Brunswick.  They became the favorite band of CBGBs in New York City, toured with some of the top bands of the day – Culture Club, Thompson Twins, Midnight Oil - and, according to their MySpace page, “the band agreed to a two-record deal with Geffen Records that was rumored to be one of the biggest deals ever offered to an unknown act at the time.”

But that page also describes a harrowing, rock and roll story of a band that should have made it but instead stumbled and fell. There were a lot of rumors swirling around New Brunswick about what happened.  The one I heard was that a band member insulted a record executive’s wife and that’s what sunk them.

Who knows what really happened.  But as their reputation rose, they definitely got cocky locally.  I remember keyboardist Eddie Freeze spitting beer out into the audience as part of the show.  One night the audience got fed up, and spat beer back at him.  “Hey! This is expensive equipment!” was his reaction.

But Crossfire Choir always treated me well, and headlined a spectacular show at Rutgers University for the premiere of Rockin’ Brunswick.  I’m still a fan!

Stay tuned next Thursday as we conclude Rockin' Brunswick with one last song from Crossfire Choir!

Or you can get the DVD of Rockin’ Brunswick, here.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

I have worked on 4 Olympics – 3 Summer Games with NBC and one Winter Games with CBS. Tough jobs, but also a lot of fun.

I was hired away from NBC Sports to work at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, on Olympic Features.  I edited dozens like this one for the Nagano Games.   Then I traveled to Nagano, Japan as Supervising Editor to shake out the edit rooms on-site and train incoming editors.  

Producer Sydney Trattner arrived in Japan early to finish up her features.  So we had plenty of resources available that would soon get tied up on other jobs. That allowed us to add some fun graphics to realize her “fairy tale” theme for this feature about one of the best downhill skiers of all time, Katja Seizinger.

While in Nagano, CBS Sports won their bid to regain broadcast rights for the NFL.  When I got back to New York, my old Olympic edit room was re-purposed for the NFL Today and I wound up freelancing for both CBS Sports and NBC Sports at the same time for many years....

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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The Groceries were really a Princeton band rather than a New Brunswick band.  But we found a way to sneak them in Rockin’ Brunswick anyway, because they were so popular.  

Robin Gamble and Martha Haney lent us equipment for Rockin’ Brunswick. They were friends who ran a company called Video-a-Go-Go, which pioneered music video projections at live shows even before MTV became popular. Martha shot footage of their friends The Groceries at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ and various other locations and I edited it.

Richard Auguste Morse led The Groceries. Later he sought out his musical roots in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  He wound up running the storied Hotel Olofsson, frequented by prominent visitors such as Jonathan Demme.  Richard’s current band RAM was featured on the soundtrack for Jonathan Demme’s movie Philadelphia and he has a successful musical career in the Caribbean, releasing 5 CDs with RAM.

Stay tuned next week as we return to Crossfire Choir!

Or you can get the DVD of Rockin’ Brunswick, here.