Kevin Bleyer (Emmy Award winning writer for the Daily Show) personally rewrote the Constitution of the United States and needed his author’s portrait painted in the neoclassical style. I’d never been to a life drawing class before but heard they involve nude models.

I just happened to be passing through the Maitri AIDS hospice in San Francisco with some friends and an iPhone 4. About a half hour later, they had a brand new video explaining the routes of transmission for HIV.

Shot on New York’s Lower East Side. The band’s live shows are amazing but I thought capturing the Tall Black Girls in a blizzard would really fit their look so our shoot schedule was dependent on an Act of God. Inspired by early 80s concert fliers (and because there are times authenticity beats gimmicky computer effects), I printed out over 4,000 individual pages, halftone versions of every single frame, twenty four for each second, which I then went back and rephotographed to craft the final music video.

The first single by this Brooklyn-based quintet. The look is lifted from a toy camera I picked up ages ago.

The official, original music video for the iTunes #1 Alternative Song of 2008. For the band’s second video, they called with six days notice and asked for a line-by-line visual retelling of their lyrics shot entirely in the dark with a wall of fire behind the singer. I made this instead. Rolling Stone called it one of the Top 20 Music Videos of 2008. In rotation on VH1 and MTV2. After earning a couple million views on YouTube, the record label pulled it to reshoot and retcon a remake (by a different director) but a lot of fans remained outspoken about preferring this one, so here’s the oringinal!

The first official music video for these LA-based rockers. Home made by me and the band. I aimed for full HD (on a budget), unheard of in 2007.

I came out from short-lived book trailer retirment when a publishing house gave me carte blanche to promote their self-help book for the undead. I had never attended a flash mob before but I liked the idea of staging my own. I just needed 100 flexible people who liked gauze. Fortunately, a well-timed New York Times write-up quoted our invite, which read, “Bring a Yoga Mat, Dress Like a Zombie” ...we had no idea how many real zombies would attend.

I am a sucker for a good movie trailer as much as a good mash-up but if the publishing industry is resorting to such flashy tactics as producing “book trailers” then maybe people aren’t reading nearly enough. That’s why Rudolph Delson and I decided to ignore the actual content of his novel and sell “the idea of a book” instead.

A few years before the iPhone, Sony was developing a portable media player of its own. This was to be the first of several spots promoting its Kinoma video software. It depicts an alternate reality where you entertain yourself by dragging around a couple guys to act out all your favorite songs and movies. (It is the same alternate reality in which you are personified by supermodel Jenny Shimizu.) Co-directed with Rodney Ascher.