7.2019

Music Video: ba:zel, Situation

In April, I directed a music video for the Prague based band ba:zel: an electro-acoustic project by Ewelina Chiu and Daniel Vlcek that features piano, flute, heavy bass, a fragile soprano, and post-techno/dub/grime beats.

Armed with a 4K drone, cinematographer Tommaso Montaldo, Ewelina, Daniel, and myself, headed out from Prague to Trosky Castle: a gorgeous ruin about one hour from the city in an area known as Bohemian Paradise (Český ráj). After filming the castle and nearby rock formations for several days we headed east, where we filmed birds of prey in .

Check out links to ba:zel’s music and stay tuned for the release this fall of the video.
https://soundcloud.com/bazel-detritus
https://bazel.bandcamp.com

6.2019

Siro Creative: Midsummer

In June of 2019, I directed a commercial for a midsummer festival on the island of Seurasaari: a small forested district in Helsinki with wooden buildings transplanted from elsewhere in Finland.

During midsummer, thousands of people, both tourists and Helsinkians, attend the island’s traditional festival, which includes bonfires and dancing.

Many thanks to the project’s producer, Eeva Jousi, and everyone at Siro who put their talents and energy into this commercial, which will be released in 2020. Very excited for the final piece.

3.13.2019

Music Video: Stare, The Envlps

On March 13th, I released a music video I directed for one of my favorite bands in the Czech Republic, The Envlps: an Indie pop / synthpop duo from Prague.

While I’d met with the band members in 2017 and discussed some inspiring ideas, the shoot was unfortunately delayed due to a combination of costs and scheduling. But unable to get their amazing song “Stare” out of my head, literally, I finally began to experiment with collaging a few clips from my favorite film noirs. Feeling a match, I continued to collage, eventually cutting up 22 film noirs created between 1941 and 1958 and co-edting the final piece with Martin Schumet, who brought his own inspiration to the piece. In the end Ajay Kulkarni color graded each clip, working with three colors that allowed us to both transcend the copyright issues and bring out the theme even more. Very grateful for this collaboration and a very special thank you to Ján Tompkins: our godsend assistant editor who cut up the originals. To date, “Stare” is one of my favorite video creations. It is the product of passion, collaboration, and vision.

https://vimeo.com/322658575

12.2018

Siro Creative: National Museum

In December of 2018 I joined the Helsinki based creative agency Siro, as a commercial director. My first project was to create a short video for the National Museum of Finland’s exhibition “Man Matter Metamorphosis – 10 000 Years of Design,” which opened to the public two months prior.

https://www.kansallismuseo.fi/en/exhibitions/10-000-vuotta-muotoilua-ihminen-aine-metamorfoosi

The show, which was conceptualised, curated, and designed by Florencia Colombo and Ville Kokkonen, was described as follows: “What is design other than rethinking man’s relationship to the material environment? Where do objects come from? In what ways will objects and the environment change? The exhibition 10, 000 years of design – Man, Matter, Metamorphosis challenges us to take a closer look at our relationship to objects and the environment.” The video was a pleasure to direct thanks to Siro producer Jukka Karhula, our editor, Kari Lamsa, and composer Justin Simon, whose music brings the piece to life.

11.23.2018

PFS Masterclass:
The Film Inside Your Head

From November 20th to 23rd, I teamed up with filmmaker Martin Schumet to co-teach an intensive four day workshop at Prague Film School which focused on getting second year students to pre-visualize their thesis films.

Rather than traditionally pre-visualize scenes using storyboards, photographs, or floorplans, we asked our students to use their cell phones to film three short exercises, over the next three days, with three different goals in mind. The exercises were as follows:

1. Make a 1 minute film that shows the experiences and discoveries that a character makes, be they related to objects, spaces or other characters.

2. A character enters a space they have never been before. Make a 1 minute film about that characters’ experience. How do you communicate what a character feels, hears, smells or tastes?

3. Make a 1 minute film that communicates absence, ambiguity, fragmentation, or some other larger concept (like God, time, or fate) through presence.

After spending our mornings watching examples and breaking down each category, the students spent the rest of each day in groups co-authoring a simple narrative, shooting, and editing the captured materials, which sometimes included sound. The results, which we screened and discussed each morning, were fascinating.

While I don’t see cell phones replacing real filmmaking equipment anytime soon, I do think they should be seen as the equivalent of the painter’s sketchbook: an invaluabe tool for testing your ideas. To use them in this way reminds us that making films cannot be learned on paper; nor in a classroom; nor by reading books or watching films and talking about them. Making a film is a collaborative experience that involves a continually dynamic set of changing circumstances, which is why filmmakers get better by making films, even on their cell phones.

11.16.2018

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar:
Spirited Away

From November 14th to the 16th production designer and scenographer, Sebastian Soukup, and myself facilitated a three day workshop at the Bauhaus University Weimar, as part of an architecture class taught by Professor Heike Büttner. Titled “Spirited Away” the workshop focused on Delusionist architecture.

To connect our two mai themes - dreams and space - we facilitated a series of interconnected rituals and conversations where mind, body, and awareness practices doubled as approaches to understanding the qualities of space, including architectural space, virtual space, cinematic space, meditative space, sleeping space etc. In each case, we questioned how space can be used to tell stories: light, sound, colors, materials, textures, and time being aspects of this medium.

While some of the rituals were presentations, with slides, video, and musical accompaniment, others were group exercises, for example an observational walk around campus inside a cardboard box which was later repurposed as the walls of a tea house. Guest facilitator Hiroki Mano then served tea and led the students in a short meditation. The workshop culminated in an independent project, completed by each student who presented their work using a cardboard box, the medium par excellence. A heartfelt thanks to everyone involved as the workshop was endlessly inspiring. Please see the video below.

https://vimeo.com/31325565

10.2018

FAMU

In October of 2018, I began teaching a directing course at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, otherwise known as FAMU.

It was honor to teach at the school where some of my favorite directors had attended. My course, titled “The Language of Cinema,” was as follows: “This course will focus on mastering the basics of film grammar, with an emphasis on visually translating scripted ideas into short, narrative exercises, to be shot with a cell phone.” While it did seem taboo to ask students to direct one film per week, using a cell phone, in a program that prides itself on its devotion to 16mm, I also found that it worked. Teaching students the basics of film grammar, for example how to create montages, how to introduce a space using only close-ups, how to shoot a photoboard, etc. with a cell phone is an invaluable tool to play with, as their short films proved to me.

The students screened their first assignment, Smartphone Lumiere (a one-minute film inspired by the classic Lumiere Brother’s films), next to a piano where they were allowed to score the film live or invite a performer to do so. In some cases, our class improvised sound and music as a group, using whatever percussive instruments were available. Some examples:

https://vimeo.com/293835430
Directed by Raff Fluri

https://vimeo.com/294178730
Directed by Oksana Sanytska

In another assignment students were asked to watch Bezúčelná procházka (Aimless Walk), from 1930, directed and photographed by Czech filmmaker Alexander Hackenschmied.
Using a smart phone they were asked to film their own one minute version of Bezúčelná procházka, using all of the shots we had learned thus far (WS, MS, CU, ECU etc.) following at least once (in no particular order). Here is an example, titled Derive, by Rene Kmet.

https://vimeo.com/299336263

5.2018

All is Lost

During my last year as a full time directing teacher at Prague Film School, in 2017, I was approached by a group of students in the acting program who asked me if I’d be interested in directing a film starring them.

I smiled and asked if they had a script. “No” came the answer. “Do you have an idea?” I asked. One of them, Juan Raúl Díaz Fábrega (whose name is actually much longer) spoke up and said “What we know is that Max and I want to fight with swords!” “We also want to wear armor and ride horses,” quipped Max. Freudian, I thought. “Do you have a budget?” was my next question. “No” said Juan “But we can get one.”

From this conversation was born “All is Lost,” a medieval drama that tells the following story: When a Marauder takes over the country, sets fire to the castles, and kills their lord, two doomed knights set off on horseback to join the battle against him. They don’t get far.

While a year passed before we could complete the film, principal photography was finally wrapped in the spring of 2018. Written by Aaron Labaree, the film stars Juan Raul Diaz as Sir Mattius, Max Hruska as Sir Theodore, Issy Stewart as Leah, and a handful of others. With an original score and sound design by Kirk Pearson, “All is Lost” will be released by the end of 2019. My heartfelt thanks to the entire team of PFS students that made this film possible, especially Felipe Corvello, whose beautiful cinematography is stunning throughout.

3.15.2018

Kasting Kafka

On March 15th, 2018, a press release went out from the Goethe-Institut, Prague that read “Casting 10 Kafka look-alikes for “KAFKA’S SON.” The casting was for a real scene in a feature written by Aaron Labaree that is now in development.

Making the casting a live event that audiences could attend, was the brainchild of Jakob Racek, at that time the Cultural Programmer at Goethe-Institut Prague. Along with the press release, silkscreened posters, designed by Kaori Mitsushima, went up around Prague.

We advertised the following:
No acting experience necessary.
All ages, races, genders, body types encouraged to audition.
Kafka wigs, props, costumes, and make-up provided at audition.
Audition material will be provided.
Preference given to actors who “feel” or “look” like Kafka.

For a full synopsis of the film go to the website.

After the media in Prague described Kasting Kafka as one of the top ten events in Prague that week, the Goethe-Institut was flooded with visitors, including those who wanted to play Franz Kafka alongside those who simply wanted to witness the spectacle, which included judges holding up paper Kafka masks as performers took to the stage. It was our version of The Trial, only playful. The casting was captured by director Martin Schumet, whose coverage of the event will be released as its own short film this coming fall. Česká televize (Czech Television) also covered the event and invited myself and the best Kafka lookalike, Marek Lentvorsky, to the studio the next day.

https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/1097206490-udalosti-v-kulture/218411000120317?fbclid=IwAR1ZKNZJj7m535mfIWTzbFDjKzWMC8kU4LVLxzC8_0NwAdWL0nG5iG2u8Zo

A very special thanks to the judges (Jakob Racek, Ingrid Arnold, and David Woodard), director Martin Schumet, the production crew, producer Kristyna Milaberska, and wardrobe & hair and makeup team: Koko White and Kaori Mitsushima.

1.25.2018

VRwandlung

On January 25th, a virtual reality adaptation of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” that I conceived and directed, opened in Prague.

https://vimeo.com/246502816

Produced by the Goethe-Institut Prague and Shahid Gulamali, the exhibition’s success led to press coverage in The Economist, Stern Magazine, and elsewhere throughout Europe. Thanks to this initial success, the exhibition began to travel in March and has been to over 35 cities worldwide, with more invitations monthly. As part of my tour I presented and taught workshops on VR and AR in Helsinki, Minsk, Riga, Sofia, Leipzig, Kiev, Frankfurt, Madrid, Tokyo, Hamburg, and Prague. While that tour continues, it could not have been realized without the talents and energy of the 30 plus people who made that piece and exhibition possible. A short video tells that story.

https://vimeo.com/266836375

A very special thanks to producer Shahid Gulamali, assistant director Emily Rogers, sound designer Eli Stine, composer Joseph Minadeo, installation supervisor Ján Tompkins, the animators (Vojtech Kiss, Natalia Peterková, and Ondrej Slavík) and teammembers 4Each and Achtung4K, especially Eduard Fischer, Vojtech Jankovsky, Patrik Michalu, and Patrik Velek.

Main website: goethe.de/en/uun/akt/21150235.html
Instagram: instagram.com/vrwandlung/

1.7.2018

MomenTech

In January, 2018, the NYC based trio I belong to, MomenTech, was invited to create a site-specific piece that responded to two novels by the late Nigerian author Amos Tutuola, based in part on Yoruba folktales.

The final piece, "THREE GOOD CREATURES TOOK OVER OUR TROUBLE—THEY WERE:—DRUM, SONG AND DANCE," was presented on January 7, 2018, at a private home in New York City's Chinatown, as part of the “First Person Plural” performance/conversation series, which takes place in domestic settings around the city. For more information on this piece, which could be called a participatory artwork, a group exercise, a collaboration, a game, or a ritual, go HERE.

For more information on MomenTech - a multiplatform experimental production studio devoted to transnational progressism, post-humanism, neo-nomadism and futurism - go HERE.

MIKA JOHNSON

WORK