Torche - "U.F.O." Info, Production Photos, Credits

Torche - "U.F.O." from Andrew James Cox on Vimeo.

 The idea behind the video was to do an updated version of kaiju giant monster / robot movies. I watched Godzilla: Tokyo SOS  on Netflix streaming a year or so ago and was kind of enamored with the kitschy effects. I didn't have that much experience with Adobe After Effects, so going into the project knowing I wanted it to look sloppy made things less daunting.

I started the video on my own, without any solicitation, for an entirely different song by an entirely different band (Daughters' "The Theatre Goer"). But it was taking too long and that band broke up before the record dropped, so I switched it to the Torche song.

I did pretty much everything I could myself, with help from family and friends. I drew all the designs and storyboards while listening to the song on loop. There were originally five monster designs, one of which was a giant space squid that would appear while the first four were fighting, and take them all on. I had to simplify for my own sanity, though, and ended up with just the robot and the pudge monster. I made the robot out of old boxes and packing tape from the Hydra Head shipping room, and learned to sew to make the monster costume.

I bought a bunch of green fabric in the fashion district for the green screen. All of the monster and robot green screen stuff was shot in my parents' driveway and backyard in Pasadena, CA on a Sony HDR-HC7 camcorder. The last shot of the video is my brother and mom holding the green screen, and is pretty much how all of the footage looked originally. The backgrounds are photos I took of downtown Los Angeles, and the fleeing crowd (of my friends and family) I shot in the warehouse district in front of my wife's old art studio (which is also where they filmed the Soloist, almost every crime drama on TV, and M.I.A.'s "Born Free" music video).

After shooting everything on weekends over a few months, I sat at my computer for hours upon hours doing the effects on my days off . An eight hour day usually yielded 15 seconds of finished footage. From conception to completion the whole thing took about 9 months. Thankfully the band liked it and I didn't have to find another song to cut it to.

If we had done everything by the book as a real production, the budget would have exceeded ten grand easily, but I think I ended up spending about $140, including the wrap bbq.



Torche - "U.F.O."
from their record Songs For Singles (Hydra Head, 2010)

Directed by Andrew James Cox - www.andrewjamescox.com
Produced by Akina Cox - www.akinacox.com
Effects Consultant - Wesley Belak Berger - www.wesbb.com

Cast / Crew
Casey Cox
Robin Cox
Amaris Cox
Austin Cox
Henry "Hank" Linek
Hanson Linek
Brian Linek
Audrey Gertz
Laura Marchetti
Ares Meyer
James O'Mara
Jesse Rueter
Niko Solario
Mark Thompson
Atlantis "Attie" Thompson
Morrow Willis
Lyandre Woods

Filmed in Pasadena, CA, and Los Angeles, CA

Pinkie

Pinkie

12"x9"

crayon and ink on paper

Squiggle Monster

Squiggle Monster

12"x9"

ink and whiteout on paper

Elysian Park Museum of Art at LACE

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I did a piece called "Piñata Pulley" in conjunction with the Elysian Park Museum of Art in a group show called "Diversions". Now a couple pictures of it are in a slide show at LACE as part of the EPMoA Visitor Center, which is up through December 19, 2010. There are still cool things happening all the time at EPMoA (like last weekend's scavenger hunt!), so keep checking back.

From LACE's site:

LACE is proud to present Elysian Park Museum of Art (EPMoA) running 13 October – 19 December 2010 as a part of its PUBLIC INTEREST initiative. A constantly evolving association of artists and curators involved with EPMoA have created site-specific performances, installations, and actions that consider the fractured geography of the park — its unmapped trails, picnic areas, a stadium, a police academy, highway onramps, radio towers, squatter communities, and parking lots — with the goal of creating a cohesive investigation into the contemporary function of a museum, a park, and public spaces in general.

Since October 2009, the EPMoA has existed as a curatorial workshop, initiated through Telic Arts Exchange’s Public School Project, and as a public forum encouraging participation from a diverse and unaffiliated section of the park-using community. Through a series of monthly meetings in the park, participants have worked together to address issues of how to implement creative actions within the parameters of public fair use of Elysian Park, as well as raise questions about the relevance and significance of this project within the overlapping contexts of art history, local politics, and public engagement.

The LACE galleries have been transformed into the park visitor's center complete with artifacts, benches, and foliage. The installation documents and recreates past and current EPMoA actions inside the park. Representatives of both the curatorial workshop and the park-using community will take part in the selection and presentation of documentation (sound recordings, photography, video, illustration, re-enactment, written description, etc.)

Additional performances and site-specific interventions allowed by fair use of the park are scheduled to occur inside Elysian Park during the course of the exhibition. Public events at LACE include performances, a class in museum studies and a guest speaker series to discuss the role of a museum, the ecology of the park, and more.

Stay up-to-date on activities happening in Elysian Park itself, visit the EPMoA website at www.epmoa.org

Black Metal Jesus

Black Metal Jesus

12"x9"

ink on paper

Wolverine 80's

Wolverine 80s

11"x8 1/2"

ink and crayon on paper

Edit: Replaced bad cell phone picture with a scan

Torche - "U.F.O."

My directorial debut has premiered on Pitchfork.com !
See it on their site here, or watch it below. I'll have some behind the scenes / making of info up here soon!