NPR’s “All Songs Considered” Article : Second Stage: Oldboy Records, ‘Cold And Bright’

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“Over time AITAN’s music skillfully developed lyrics and melody alongside story lines. This propelled a debut video that has compelled MTV and VH1 to ask if his music video was a short film.” – 102.7 KIIS FM weekend mixtape

Aitan – “Nothing Without You” Video

“Combining Rachel Goodrich’s smokey vocals and Louis Bolivar’s grainy production the video for Goodrich’s “Fire” makes me think of the opening credits for the next Coen Brothers modern western.” – theyaretheimitators.com

He’s Back !!!:
Jason Aaron’s back! The latest collaboration with Jason takes us to the streets. Negative influences surround Jason as he walks down a desolate street in Downtown L.A. The concept originally stemmed off some light paintings online. The ghosts that appear on the video where supposed to be animated light paintings. After unsuccessfully achieving the look via light paintings, we resorted to a more traditional approach. Every Ghost seen in the video was animated traditionally (cell-animation style) via Photoshop. This painful process took roughly 3weeks to do but in the long run was a lot easier to accomplish than the original light paintings.

A Fully Computer Generated Spec:
This Spec lingered around in my mind for the longest time. Once I had the chance to realize this concept, it took no time to make. Most of the video is shown as a one take shot and it was. It was clean render from beginning to end. No compositing or fudging of image sequences. The Spec was rendered in Maya using Image-based lighting and with polygonal objects emitting light (to give it that showroom look). The project took roughly around a week to accomplish (models made before hand by collaborative friends or myself ). Rendering took around 80 hours. Enough techno babble. Enjoy !!!

Volkswagon Beetle Spec. “Mr.Sandman”

The “Unofficial Video” turned Official?:
In my awesome attempt to break into the Music Video biz, I attempted a numerous amount of times to get in contact with rising Artists. Royksopp was one of them. Since they were “unavailable” the treatment I sent out never really got anywhere. This was one of those songs I just had to do a video for even though it would be unofficial. I waited roughly 2 weeks till shoot because the concept mainly revolved around a rainy scenario. Filming needed to be done quick and efficient (Los Angeles isn’t really known for torrential downpour). Luckily it managed to rain for about 3-4 hours, giving me enough time to get all the shots I needed. All that running around in the rain left me completely soaked from head to toe and left me with a nasty cold afterward. Miraculously the slow-mo camera (which was just as soaked as I was) did not malfunction.

The debut of the Space boy, JAS0N AAR0N:
When I first met Jason Aar0n and pitched him the space concept, we both already knew that things weren’t going to be easy. I personally believed that his video should have some pop qualities while he kept pointing at Mgmt and Beck. The biggest dilemma wasn’t our disagreement but how the video was ultimately going to accomplished. The whole video was going to be shot in Blue-screen. That would give us ultimate flexibility to manipulate the scenes and feel of the video. The backdrops where supposed to be all done in 3D imitating the reference film 2001 Space Odyssey. Budget,time and whatever else you could possibly think of came into the equation and forced me to make the decision of compositing Jason onto Stanley Kubrick’s flick. This is one of those situations were you actually are glad things happend the way they did.

Tree/Soundz is truly Miami’s “Sweetest Secret”:
I remember running into Treesoundz via Myspace one night.  After looking thru 7,452 myspace music pages, Treesoundz seemed to really stand out. I found their tunes quite refreshing. Two weeks or so have past since then and while visiting my folks in Miami, I decided to drop them a line. They (Treesoundz) were really eager to get something started (it helped to show them some old fx work, otherwise they would have said hell no). We met up for lunch the day before the initial shoot to establish some sort of game plan. This being my first music video attempt, I really wanted to gain the stamp of approval from the indie rock kids.  If you dont know by now, indie bands are probably the hardest people to please. Im serious. Nothing impresses them. Nothing. Anyways, they were sold on the picture frame concept. Because of the nature of things, the video was broken up into a three day shoot (due to the bands schedule,work,life,etc). Day 1 was strictly for Teresa, Day 2 was dedicated to just the duo Kent (music producer) and Teresa, and the final day was the live show. Each day we roughly had 2hrs with them. Luckily every shot was pre-planned and figured out in advance The effects took roughly 4 weeks to complete. Shout out to Circuitree Records, Kent & the lovely Teresa.

Jogging around town and avoid getting run over:
One of the greatest things to ever grace the Indie-Film world was the Nikon D90. Bulky cameras made it near impossible to film certain scenarios. Since the bulk is gone, I decided to hit the streets with the ever so tiresome concept of someone jogging for an athletic brand. With the played out concept in mind, the only thing that would separate this jogging spec from the others would be some good ol’ cinematography. Things start off smooth. We would setup, film and move on. Once we got to Hollywood, it all changed. While filming a jogging sequence thru the crowd, I rode my skateboard to match the joggers speed. I almost collided with a group of  foreiners twice. That seemed to have pissed off security, so we booked it. We began to head toward the city. The Downtown L.A. shots proved to be very challenging. I had a friend (Schiller) take the wheel while i hung out of the passenger window to get shots. In between almost falling out of the car, colliding with a post, and the jogger (Mike) almost getting run over, we managed to make it to a bar in one piece.

Game Stop Spec = Mall Trouble:
This is what started it all. What began as a simple Spec shoot ended up taking a turn to the worst. Security and Management at the West Side Pavilion Mall didn’t want to have any of it. We ended up getting kicked out. We went going back to confront Management only to give them the “Puppy look” and start to sob in front of them. We mentioned something about our college credits being in jeopardy. We walked out with a Permit. Success.
This GameStop Spec stars Kevin Kraeer, a procrastinating gamer that decides to run to the videogame store in hopes of catching the new game title that just came out.

Game Stop Spec [guest appearance by Kevin Kraeer]