A Vertical History

When Elevator Moods, a series of short films shot from the POV of a surveillance camera, was selected to participate at Sundance, they asked us to make a short film about the project. True to form, we decided instead to make a fictitious history of the elevator as a dramatic space. The rest, as they say, is history.

Jumpman 23

One of my first projects as Creative Director at Agency.com was to launch Nike’s website for Michael Jordan’s Jumpman23 line of sneakers. I came up with a randomized navigation architecture, which only revealed three of the six available paths on the site at any one time, to make the experience more “exploratory.” This was definitely in the spirit of the web’s formative years.

Travis

When I first started building websites in the mid-90s, I was drawn to the possibilities of hypertextual narratives with multiple story strands. My collaborator David Turnbull and I imagined three alternate childhoods for Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro's character in Taxi Driver), using our own 8mm home movies as source material. Presented here in a faux Netscape window for that full Web 1.0 effect.

The Ship Song

I was doing a lot of work on music videos when I first moved to New York, and was the Production Manager for The Ship Song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The video was directed by John Hillcoat and the DP was Ed Lachman, so it was helmed by complete masters of their craft. My most challenging job was wrangling a gaggle of five-year old girls and their stage mothers. But the video turned out beautifully, and The Ship Song went on to become an all time fan-favorite in Nick’s catalog.

The Riptides

I joined The Riptides in Brisbane while I was still in college. The first time I ever went into a recording studio was to record Tomorrow's Tears, one of The Riptides' classic tracks. That initial experience in the studio was magical, and started a love affair that continues to this day.

Tomorrow's Tears — The Riptides' second single, and my debut in the band. Recorded in one day (along with Some Other Guy on the flipside).

Only Time — This version is from the Riptides Resurface live album (one of Rolling Stone's Top 100 Australian Albums of All Time).

Tombs of Gold — We recorded an album's worth of songs in the early 80s that never saw the light of day. They were finally rescued from the archives and released in 2014, and this is one of my favorite tracks from those sessions.