I've always been a big fan of taking old songs and completely turning them on their head. Having no adherence to the fine tradition of the original version. Rearranging them and taking a different approach to them.
Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.
We can see an anthill or a roach or a flower or anything, but we have this frame where our mind recognizes an anthill and then moves on, without taking the opportunity to have the sense of awe that we could have if we really looked at it. The montage is about taking pieces of reality and rearranging them - creating new frames to make you have to stop and look at things in a fresh way. It's basically taking pieces of everyday reality and rearranging them to show people the magic that is inherent in all of these things already.
Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions.
I like mash-ups, taking contemporary songs and making them old... old songs, making them new.
I've always enjoyed taking pre-existing sound, songs I like, songs I want to share, and manipulating them and trying to do my own version. So just knowing there's that potential for that thing out there that I haven't discovered yet, really gets me motivated every day.
Really, we're just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on 'Instagram'.
But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.
We're just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on Instagram.
There are people - I think this is why there are so many commercial directors doing well in big studio movies, for whom it's not a personal choice - it's "What's the coolest, most effective way to make them laugh, make them scream?" It's a very calculated approach. And that's different. It's not better or worse. It's just a very different approach to filmmaking. That's always been the case.
I've always been a big fan of entertainment. Having cable gave me access to HBO, Showtime, and The Movie Channel. Constantly taking in all these films from different eras and different styles has really given me a good vocabulary in how to talk about movies.
There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.
The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.
And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on.
I've always been into taking my photos, cropping them square, putting them through a filter in Photoshop.
I've grown up in the film industry and I've been watching them, analyzing them, laughing at them, totally understanding them and getting their point of view, and, at times, taking up for them. So I'm part of it and it's part of me.
Most of my focus during the lockdown has been on taking care of my two kids. I want to take care of them, play with them and obviously entertain them because they are at home too. But it has been good to spend some quality time with them as well.