Hip hop video culture has interested me for as long as I could remember: the theatrics, the sense of crew, the flash, the grit – elements a prep school kid from suburban Pennsylvania doesn’t see day to day. This summer I was lucky enough to meet Kevin Lopez, a new director at Fifth Column, and work with him as he hustled and grinded away on hip-hop music videos. The opportunity to work with Kevin taught me about how with the right resources and the right people, a high quality product can be made with a good prosumer camera and some creative innovation.

While some consider the music video a dead art as it relates to television, social networks like MySpace make the creation of videos and music content absolutely essential. They provide eye candy in a world where visuals are undeniably key to getting your message across. They influence our culture and fashion (from Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” dance to Slim Thug’s Gucci shades.) With the right amount of ingenuity, some music videos can be huge viral successes, such as Ok Go’s YouTube hit “Here It Goes Again” A digital camera, one static shot, and 4 treadmills = over 43 million views.

We recently completed “Hot Pair Nikes” an impressive low budget music produced and directed by Kevin and edited by myself with Kevin’s help. Shot on a Panasonic HVX200 and a digital SLR, it is a great example of innovation in our field. Be on the lookout for the next six months as Kevin and I continue to develop innovative music videos. For now, make sure to check out our latest music video for EJoox of the Bronx, “Hot Pair of Nikes.”

The layout of this blog, the shape of your keyboard, the color of your ipod. These are all very specifically engineered arrangements of nature’s perceiveable colors and raw materials, in order to attract a somewhat primitive aspect of human rationale. We call it collectively, design – something that has potential to be incredible effective visually, and in turn financially favorable for those who are innovative enough to keep pushing conventional boundaries.

With the advent of prosumer-created motion graphics, made possible through accessible and inexpensive programs such as Adobe After Effects, it would appear as if there is an overabundance of design in the commercial world of film and video. In fact, it is now notable that agencies create incredibly flashy and motion design oriented ways of channeling info through video, simply under the notion that style is substance.

Much in favor of the lifestyle versus feature list approach to commercials, motion graphics can evoke human emotions that even the most expensive HD camera couldn’t capture. Take for instance YouTube hit “Did You Know 3.0″. Created by Xplane, an American design firm based out of Portland, the video is essentially a visualization of international and sociological statistics, based on world populations, technological trends, and their meaning for the future. The simplistic animation style and color scheme employed offers a unique and evocative feeling. It is in this manner that the style truly becomes the substance for the feelings and ideas this firm wishes to employ, overall more important than the facts and text that we most likely will forget the next day. What is important is that the style through which the content is employed, is lasting.

And while in the foreseeable future, as animated products such as “Did You Know”, as well as motion graphic infused commercials, will continue to flood the industrial output, it’s likely that this style will be more suited for a technology far more advanced and engrossing than video, something not completely bound by a two dimensional screen. At the speed we’re moving, it’s coming sooner than later.

Recently I had an interesting conversation with Devon White, consultant and adviser. While I’m still learning about the fascinating work that Devon is doing in what he calls the “human operating system,” I was struck by a fascinating concept which borrows from hypnosis called “looping.” Now I do not pretend to be an expert in either hypnosis, NLP, or the budding field of neuroscience. However, the concept of looping does fascinate me as it holds some very profound connections to both advertising and psychology.

The concept roughly breaks down as such: looping is a device used in film that takes a viewer through a series of changes in locations, characters, visual movements, and ideas. This is done in order to “blast” the viewer with a plethora of emotionally and intellectually charged stimuli. The purpose of this shotgun blast of places, things, and ideas are designed to overcome the audiences’ sense of perspective. The looping of different elements in rapid succession overwhelms the mind and loosens an individual’s preconceived prejudices. Now this loosening of the viewer can strip an individual of their preconceived notions about a brand. In essence, the effect of looping brings the viewer to a neutral state. You might ask why an advertiser would want to neutralize their viewers? Simply put, once the viewer reaches this plateau of the senses he or she will accept the final and singularly delivered message from the advertiser.

The embedded clip from Microsoft’s People Ready Campaign (JWT) demonstrates this concept of looping by leading the viewer through a series of animations that depict many different perspectives. The first 30 seconds propels the viewer through a series of loops, Coca-Cola, tough environment, North American, Australia, morning, economy, home…etc… However, none of these concepts have anything to do with Microsoft’s product features. Instead, the looping of all these elements loosens the viewer through overstimulation and then ties up the final message: Microsoft enables high performance, successful people in a turbulent, but opportunity driven world. The final message is delivered at a point when the viewer has been sufficiently stripped of their previous emotional state thus leaving them sufficiently accessible to take in a new message.

The Post Production suite, or Post Office, has been burnt to the ground, transplanted, transfigured, transformed, and eventually simulated into a self sustaining environment, equipped with heat, AC, and man-made sunlight (or the mojo, as Sean and Cordy believe). Suffice to say, I have grown undeniably attached.

Home to early morning riffs on the state of the election or which decade truly was greater (I still say the 90’s), or late night edits and inevitably McDonalds at 4am with Sean before a hearty 4 hour sleep on the futon – this room has bore witness to many great achievements. One of the greatest, perhaps, was a quickly suppressed one man revolution; the greatest in the history of the Column.

For anonymity’s sake, we will call this certain intern/rebel, Paul L, or if you prefer, P Libassi. Having been fed up with corporate takeover, he stormed the office one early morning this past summer, decked out in full on pirate wear, equipped with six homemade swords, two double barrel rubber band guns, and a thick set of shackles. With the intent to overthrow Sean, Cordy quickly grabbed the HVX to document the mutiny against his partner, as P roared in pirate language that “mutiny be upon the column”. Alas, the revolution was halted with the threat of no lunch – and another poor soul fed to corporate takeover.

In life, you have your creatives and your uncreatives. I like to think that we are more than just creatives – we are a creative powerhouse.