To visualize the music should be a gift destined to few people on this earth…
To succeed in perfectly representing an idea, as a note, is deliberately difficult.
It is because it implicates so many things: first of all sensibilities, mind and artistic sensibilities. Follow from the knowledge but, above all,” visionarity”. To visualize the music is to be visionary. Well, David Dean Burkhart knows that all, and a sudden in his life has decided to put to the service of the same music all his talent. He has done it after having listened “Take Ya’ Dancin” of the Say Hi, he has done it with the found footage. The found footage was born mockingly, in Russia during the 1930s and it is characterized, initially, to be an economic expedient. It consists in an assemblage of old tapes, and every other kind of films The found footage, that can vulgarly be represented as the cut&paste of the cinema industry it arrived in Italy with Pasolini and Giovannino Guareschi.
The history of David starts in Ohio instead, to Rootstown, a place, based on the 2000 census, of few more than seven thousand souls. And it continues on the other side of America, in California, where the artists find the necessary humus to their careers. There David met the found footage, in the video of the Board Of Canada, and he joined it with his musical tastes, made of indie rock, new electronics and chillwave. The greatest part of his jobs, in this field, are the un-official, realized by DD for the simple visual, and auditory pleasure. Other times they changed in real collaborations, as in the case of the Ra Ra Riot. It doesn’t change however the style. Never mono-thematic, at times ironic, other dreamlike, to a footstep from the vintage. The jobs of Buckhart have, intrinsic in themselves, the ability to hypnotize, even if only for four minutes and two seconds in average.
How do you select the track with which then you edit the video? Do you rely only on your taste? Or do you choose melody that match well with the images that you want to use?
I find music I like through social media and blog sites. I search the internet for new music every day.
Do you select first the track, or when you see a movie, a documentary, or whetever you keep to make your video, this affects so much yourself to say “ok, now I will choose a good track and edit a video on it” ?
I usually get the idea for the video while listening to a song and then I go out and try to find footage that matches my idea. I’d say for 90% of the videos I make, a song triggers a certain idea in my head. I think, “This song could be good with this type of footage,” and then I start from there. Another thing I like doing is watching old films on mute while listening to new music. In awhile the movies and music will (serendipitously) line up perfectly and I’ll make a video out of it.
I would like to ask you something a bit particular: Do you really see entirely all the movies, clips and documentaries you use? Or sometimes maybe you like the light, the photography, the setting, the colors, and you choose to see it, cutting and pasting the scenes you liked?
No, there are plenty of times that I’ll use footage from something but not watch the piece in it’s entirety. If the footage really interests me though, I’ll make a note of it and try to go back and watch it later.
Is there an artist, or a movie director, that definetly influenced your works?
There are tons of filmmakers I love and admire (Kubrick, Polanski, PT Anderson, David Lynch, Edgar Wright – to name a few) but none of them have directly influenced my editing work. When I produce into shooting my own vidoes, I’m sure their work will inspire me greatly.
In one of your videos, you used an italian movie “Cicciolina, Amore Mio”. Why did you choose an erotic movie for a music video?
I’ve used clips from erotic films on multiple occasions. I think that particular song was about love and obsession, so the footage I used showed a boy fantasizing about his dream girl. The footage just happened to be from an erotic film. But in general, I think music and sex are two things that go together perfectly.
A lot of (almost all) your videos had scenes form the past. Is there a particular explanation for that? Are you affected by the gold age syndrome (ahah)? If yes, where would you have liked to live?
My love of old footage stems from the fact that I’m an extremly nostalgic person. I love thinking about past eras and how things have changed over time. And I love old home movies that show real people living their daily lives. It’s lovely to watch footage of people from the 1950s, laughing, smiling, and enjoying their lives. And it’s also a bit haunting to know that many of those people are no longer alive. I really like the VHS asthetic of the 1980s-1990s too. That relates to a more personal nostalgia because that’s the time period when I was growing up. I can still remember a time when VHS tapes were a normal part of my life. So using old VHS footage is something I love doing. For me, it’s warm and comforting.
Around the web, often your name is drawn near the word “genius”. What’s , for you, a genius?
I’m not sure. But I defintely don’t consider myself one.
Everyone of your videos tells a story. Are you afraid that, in some ways, the beauty of your work could overcast the song?
Oh I hope not. My goal is to compliment the song, and hopefully provide some interesting imagery that people can watch as they listen to the music.
As artist, I think you see a lot of beautiful things all day. What’s the one that has broken your breath, since you started?
Well right now I live on the beach , so I am inspired by the outdoors and hearing the waves outside my window as I stay up all night editing videos.
How much of your life is there in your works? Are you used to put your life in your work?
My personal nostalgia for the past is what inspired me to start making these videos. I think a lot of the people who like my videos (no matter what part of the world they’re from) share that same trait with me (a longing for the past). It’s a very universal feeling. Watching a piece of old footage can be interesting, inspiring, beautiful, and haunting (sometimes all at the same time). I guess by finding this old footage and presenting it to people (by packaging it with new music that I enjoy) I’m hoping to elicit some of those same feelings in them.
I know you’re from California, and that the people from Cali sometime they see the world differently. Is this influenced your works?
I’m originally from Ohio (I moved to California a year and a half ago). California has brought a lot of joy to my life but I don’t think it has directly influenced my work.
Last curiosity: My favourite video is the one you made for Lone’s “Jaded”. How did you think it, and how was it developed?
Just like every video, it is what I imagined when I heard the song. The music had a classy, timeless sound, but it also reminded me the music that played during some kind of an SNES boss fight. So I decided to combine the two (overlaying 1950s fashion videos on top of a classic video game). I thought the juxtaposition between the two very different types of media would be fun.
Have you ever take something from the vaporwave?
I like vaporwave because it has similarities to found footage music videos. They are both taking an old idea, something forgotten about, and reworking it into something new. That’s why so many vaporwave videos use re-edited vintage footage (to match the re-edited vintage music).
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