Here’s an alternate logo-free cut of the TV ads I created for the Kinanda Arts Festival late last year (December 12th). The ad was shot at the Uhuru Gardens Memorial Park, and it stars members of Ma3 (the band). They created the music on the set, which was nice to witness.

I remember not being happy with the initial footage we shot, until an accidental underexposure gave us the idea to turn all the characters into silhouettes, just like the statues in the park. This is probably the first proper TV ad I’ve shot, and it was art directed by the ever-fresh Mbithi Masya.

I was going through my archives, and I found the original files I used to create the album cover for Just A Band’s first album, “Scratch To Reveal”. I still meet people who ask me how the arm was done, so I thought I should post these bits and pieces up.

The arm belonged to my good friend Leni, who’s always game for random shoots, bless him. He’s very skinny, so his arm is worryingly bony. The wrist-band is an old (and very dirty) prop I bought for a shoot I did long ago.

Then I took a couple of photos of cables bunched up together – Firewire, USB, whatever…

Then I chopped the arm photo in the middle, and roughed up the ends using Adobe Photoshop’s Displace filter and lots of dodge/burning to make the ends look like they were ripped apart.

From there, it was a matter of placing the cable photos in the middle section, followed by lots of dodging, burning, cloning and scaling to make the light, shadows and placement look realistic.

Ta-da! Album cover! I’ve since been accused of being morbid, which is only half-true.

Also enjoyed shooting the 32 very nice (and very flexible) kids over at the Africa Yoga Project, run by Paige – the calmest person I know on this planet.

- which stands for Eyes. Lips. Face. I like that name. Anyway, did a quickie shoot for them on Wednesday.

It’s been a long time since I designed anything – I’d been under pressure to make the album cover for Just A Band’s new album – 82, and match the tone of the new music (much lighter, more accessible? You’ll decide). After many ho-hum tries, this is the version that everyone in the band seemed to like at first sight. So, here we go. It’ll be out on the 17th of August (I hear), and the printing is less DIY this time, so it might look better. Fingers crossed. Feedback welcome as always.

More thumbnails follow:

I shot this one sunny afternoon at the Arboretum with the help of Nynke Nauta, using a script that was written by Lisa Forsberg (who also directed “Laazizi”, Sauti Sol’s first video).

The boys are always fun to work with – it really was a sunny day, with very loose shooting, the dancing kids just happened to be passing by and they came up with that dance on the fly.

Here’s the first video from Just A Band’s coming-soon second album – 82. Shot it two weeks ago (had fun using a dolly for the first time – the Kenya Grip Company, very cool!), quickie edit and grading.

What say you?

The good people over at African Digital Art asked me a bunch of questions and here’s the results.

Thanks for having me, guys…

Here’s something a little different from a PLUS shoot with Kevin from Classic Models. People seem to like him.

Finally finished editing the Stan video (see “It’s A Wrap”), and here it is:

It’s a pseudo-homage to all the sci-fi dramas with hokey computer interfaces I watched when I was tiny and impressionable (read geeky jokes about computer usability representation in movies here and here – I only broke a few rules, ha!), and it’s my first time to actually TRY and include some sort of mini-narrative within a 3 to 4 minute promo.

Does it work? You tell me – feedback is always welcome.

Big thanks to Lisa Forsberg and everyone at Penya Africa for throwing ideas at me over a 3-day shoot (whew!) and to Stan, Wangeci and the rest of the cast for being cool about wearing costumes and running around looking serious.