Fellow Art Lovers:
I sincerely hope you value my new rap video on YouTube –
“Six Foot Tall.” I can honestly tell you that I put a great deal of thought and
effort into it.
This is a little bit of the story of how it came to be.
Of course, painting is my profession, and I’ve been bending
your ear a lot about my art these last few years. But, like a lot of folk, I
get a bunch of ideas, and once in a while I feel driven to express them. This was the case of my first rap video,
“Head Held High.” I’d been upset for a long time about the human toll of gun
violence, and then one day the story just came to me. When I feel something
strongly, most often the words or the brush strokes come fast and furious.
A little more than a year ago, lightening struck again with
“Six Foot Tall.” The concept came to me, and before I knew it, I had the lyrics
and I had a group of paintings to illustrate them.
The two things lacked were he music and the resources to
actually do the movie.
Last summer in France, I was talking about this with a
friend, Denis Vaucelle in Normandy. Among other things, Denis is a musician and
a composer. (You can hear his work at
http://my.zikinf.com/vaucelle-piano)
He proposed to compose original music for the video, and once we got started,
he also recorded my voice and completed the soundtrack in his studio.
Okay, so I had the soundtrack, but what about someone to do
a lot of video footage and then put the whole package together? Especially when I don’t have a lot of extra money
to spend. Well, I didn’t find the right person under those conditions. So, I decided to take a big gamble
and try to do it myself.
The easy part was shooting footage in several Philadelphia
neighborhoods, and then a fellow painter, Jim Stewart, drove me around to shoot
more footage from his car. I thought I could take footage of myself rapping by
simply using my camera on a tripod, but the results were unusable; thinking
about the equipment, I spoke like a robot, and because of my camera adjustments,
I constantly succeeded in cutting off the top of my head. Then, another art
colleague, Anne Saint Peter (www.annesaintpeter.com) shot me rapping and
walking in the street; I want to thank her for her ideas and artistic sense.
The biggest challenge was putting it all together.
Since I’m not a spring chicken, I had to learn iMovie to do
the work on my Mac. I watched tutorials and played with the program on my Mac.
But I have to admit that the greatest help in the actual production of the
video were the explanations I received from the experts at my local Apple store
in one-to-one sessions.
You might be asking yourself: If he’s a painter, why do a rap video on gun
violence? The short answer is, I simply have to. Something pushes me. The issue
is an important one, a real life-and-death issue, and if I can help people
become more sensitive about the issue, or some other issues I find important,
why not get my two cents in. Also, rap videos are another way for me to share
my paintings. And finally, painting, rap videos or writing fiction are ways for
me to touch and communicate with more people.
Thanks for listening. If you like what you saw, please share
my rap video with a friend. And if you have the time, please tell me your
impressions.
If you haven’t seen “Six Foot Tall,” below is a direct link
to it, and also a link to my YouTube channel.
Links:
