Producers to Watch: Ava Lowery - WWJD

As far as I know, this is the video that started it all for 16 year old Alabama web video activist Ava Lowery. She founded the website Peace Takes Courage and this was one of the early videos she posted as a very simple flash based slide show. The video began to be a viral hit after she submitted it to The Huffington Post as part of a monthly contest. It drew the wrath of angry Bush supporters, some of whom sent death threats. Word got out about this through the net-roots and it brought defenders in the form of Cindy Sheehan, Air America Radio and the liberal blogs who all saw her as both an inspiration and a sympathetic character who shared their beliefs. She has been one of the few web video producers I know of that have been embraced by the netroots in this way.

She has since had major media appearances where she talks about her work and, at times, seems to completely baffle them. She has been amazingly prolific. Her website lists at least a hundred more videos, many of which now incorporate combat camera video footage and are immediately promoted by various netroots outlets. There is a good Buzzflash interview with here HERE.

Producers To Watch: Lasse Gjertsen

Lasse Gjertsen isn't your typical YouTube video creator, he's actually good... scary good. The quirky young resident of Larvick, Norway (age 22) has, for the last year, had his videos seen online by scads (think: 10,000,000+) of webizens. And he keeps getting better at it, that's the scary part.

In the first video he posted, he edits a series of beatboxed drum beats, and in the editing style of Acid or Ableton Live, put it all together through editing, a compelling, creative short video called HYPERACTIVE.

A self-professed electronic musician, Lasse then created his first huge, and I mean HUGE, viral video by filming himself playing on a drum kit and then on a piano. Editing the footage to the note and the beat, he sequenced an experimental movie called "Amateur", which has been viewed over 4.8M times. Lasse's self-admission on the video is that he can play neither the drums nor the piano. He sure fooled us.

Now if that impressed you, his latest video (in 2 parts) shows what he's been doing since he learned Adobe After Effects and teamed up with Cellist Giovanni Sollima to edit his playing of Sogno ad Occhi Aperti in stunning style, layers and musical tracks. He said the piece took 5 months to edit, and I think it was well worth the wait.

Watch Part 2

I think Lasse is a great example of how the Internet has allowed for creative minds in obscure parts of the world to not only expand their craft online for all to see, but also allows us to watch them grow as artists over time. The level of creativity that keeps growing in this young man is very inspiring to me as a videographer. And for an artist, he has some fairly strong views on the commercialization of his work, check out his own position on using his talents for advertising:

"To All Advertisement Companies: ...A long time ago I promised myself never to do commercials. That's because I don't think it's right to push (usually unnecessarily) products on fellow human beings, and I'm not very fond of advertisement because it's annoying and nothing more than annoying, and in my eyes a evil way of marketing. I also consider myself a true artist, with a conscience and a soul, and I would not feel good at all if I used my (so called) talents to promote a commercial product. I know I might get a lot of money from it, but I would feel awful if I made money in such a dishonest and cynical way. In fact, I see no difference in doing a commercial than sucking an old, fat, rich white guy in a suit's little dick and getting paid for it. I will much rather starve to death than being a part of your huge corporate marketing empire, scouting the world for things you can claim ownership over so that you can make more dirty money, lowering the quality of entertainment, society and life in general for the rest of us. So if you ask me to do a commerical, you're offending me, and if you, like some companies have allready done, the egoistic human filth and shit as they are, use my ideas without my permission, and make money on it, I sincerely hope that you all get heart attacks on Christmas Eve and slowly and painfully die in front of your crying families, while everything is being filmed and put on youtube for all of us to feel better..."

I like this kid.