The Official Judgement Day Site » Music Videos

The Artists Behind the Visuals

stringmetal — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:11:24 +0000

When Rob Crow first invited us to come on tour with Pinback he mentioned not only that we would be allowed to use their projector but that he was “excited to see what we come up with”. Pressure was on! Luckily we we know some incredible video artists who have been extremely generous in lending us their talents. For anyone who’s been looking for info on all of the crazy video art going on behind us on this tour with Pinback (as well the homecoming show 5/13 at The Uptown in Oakland), here’s a look at the men behind the screen:

Riki Feldmann:

Specialty: Photography, Audio Engineering, Live Improvisational Video
Website: www.rikifeldmann.com
Recommended: New Idria, After the Fire

I can’t really say enough about this guy. He’s on tour with us right now helping us set up and running the projections. He also filmed and produced a few of the videos we’re using (the ones with the sweet nature shots) and even stars in one of them. If that weren’t enough, he engineered Peacocks/Pink Monsters at his recording studio Nu-Tone and has engineering our next record. Last but not least, he’s my favorite photographer. All of those sweet Judgement Day photos? He took’em. His specialty is abandoned ruins.

Luke Judd:

Specialty: Video Installations and Live Improvisational Video
Website: http://rumspringawords.blogspot.com/
Recommended: “Revelations” – Judgement Day
Contact: slowcollapse@gmail.com

If you’ve ever been at a sweet underground warehouse show in Oakland with crazy live video projections you’ve probably seen Luke’s work. Dude works with a lot of our favorite bands: The Burning of Rome, Foxtails Brigade, Devotionals, Silian Rail, Saything and many more. We’ve worked with him a few times now and it’s always a pleasure.

VJ odbol (aka Tyler Freeman)

Specialty: Inventing
Website: www.odbol.com
Recommended: “Finis Omne” – Judgement Day

Odbol specializes in designing interfaces that bring the body closer to the machine. The first time I saw this guy in action he was creating live video for BATTLEHOOCH with a nintendo Wii controller. Awesome thing is, that’s not even his craziest invention. VJacket and DrumPants are just as fun.

Mike Mayfield

Specialty: Animation
Website: www.youtube.com/MikeLMayfield
Recommended: “Song of the Sad Assassin” – Why

We were so incredibly lucky to have Mike do the animation for our Violin Hero video last year. Dude is a total pro animator, working on big network cartoons like American Dad in addition to creating his own awesome shorts. On Violin Hero he went above and beyond, syncing the animation up flawlessly to every note of the music. “I totally played along with a Guitar Hero controller multiple times while I was working on it to make sure it had the same feel, similar intuitive timing, etc, even though I felt like a total dork doing so!” Right on!

John Snapp

Specialty: Video, Editing
Website: www.youtube.com/poorbailey
Recommended: “Jingletown Blues” – Poor Bailey

John is the bass player for one of favorite East Bay bands, Poor Bailey and he releases a new video for them every week or two. He’s also made sweet videos for Audrye Sessions.

AWK:

Specialty: 16mm Found Film
Website: N/A
Recommended: “All in Vain” – Judgement Day

AWK raids thrift stores for used reels of film and rebuilds them into dark collages of doom. You can see his work on many of the Dark Opus music videos.

Violin Hero: 7 Months in the Making

stringmetal — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:58:08 +0000

About a year and a half ago I was walking around in the the toys isle of Walgreen’s when all of a sudden this awesome idea popped into my head: Violin Hero music video! I wasn’t sure how to do it but I really wanted to make this video. It would need green screen and animation and those are two things that I knew absolutely nothing about, so I started looking around for directors. I have a lot of friends who make films because I have worked for them as a composer. I talked to a handful of people who seemed interested, but then I found Zzalgern0n (as far as I can tell that actually IS his name – one name, like “McLovin.”)

Not only is Zzalgern0n an awesome, hi-energy, internet-savvy director, experienced with both green screen and animations; he has also beat Guitar Hero on Expert! It was clear that this was the man for the job:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pre-production

There was quite a bit of pre-production on this project. Comic-book artist Brandon Redenius designed a Violin Hero logo and box. Zzalgern0n made a disc. My girlfriend Laura Weinbach from Foxtails Brigade made illustrations for the start screen and song-select screen. For the song-select screen we also consulted with musicologist Baker Peeples to come up with a list of the most shredding violin songs of all time in ascending order of difficulty.

Trisha Gum, who made the clay sculptures for Dark Opus now works making miniature sets for stop-motion tv shows on cartoon network. She built a miniature set for this video out of mostly cardboard and paper:

Production

Zzalgern0n wrote a very ambitious treatment for this video which included locations like Egypt, Japan and Hell. Obviously it was out of our budget to film on location, so we had to do what we could with the magic of special effects. On the first day of filming we built a sweet makeshift green screen in Lewis’ old bedroom at our parents’ house, where we filmed some violin students (thanks Keith and Sierra!) After that we went over to a couple of our aunts’ houses and filmed our cousins there. Lewis and I have 25 cousins of all different ages on our mom’s side (I am the oldest), and we have been making movies with them since we were little kids. It was awesome to carry on that tradition in this video!

For the band footage we went to LA, where Zzalgern0n’s friend donated the use of a real green screen studio. It was super fancy with all kinds of different lighting tools. I couldn’t believe that we got to use that place…. so awesome! Rebecca Fierro did costumes and makeup:

After that, Zzalger0n wrapped up the rest of the filming on his own in LA. He got a ton of awesome people to be in the video. Watch for hilarious cameos from:

Paul Rust (I Love You Beth Cooper)
Matt Braunger
Josh Fadem (30 Rock)
Josh Perry (Retarded Policeman)
BJ Averell (winner of The Amazing Race)
Matt Cornell (Extreme Elvis)

Post Production

This is where the real fun began. Zzalgern0n had literally hours of footage to condense into a 3-minute video. This was truly a monstrous task, but he did it! The final step was animation. For this we turned to Mike Mayfield (The Cleveland Show). To help him out, I did a colored transcription of the Cobra Strike cello part:

see how that works?

________________________

Monday!

We premiered the video last weekend in LA and the response was off the Richter Scale! It’s going up on YouTube on Monday, February 1st and when that happens we need all of your help posting it everywhere! Here are some tips for posting:

-Join the Posting Day event on Facebook – http://tinyurl.com/postingday

-Post a link in your Facebook or Myspace status

-Post the link on Twitter and (if you’re into this kind of thing) call it #ViolinHero

- Email a link around your office or school or any kind of club you are in

Forums and Blogs:
If you have a blog or you post regularly on a forum, post a link there. If you really want to help us out, you could even sign up for some new forums and post there. These are the kind of sites that would be good:

-Band forums: metal bands, experimental bands, indie rock bands, classical composers anything!

-Music Blogs: again, any genre

-Sites that Post Amusing Videos: Digg, VideoSift, Fark, BestofYouTube etc

-Video Game Forums and Blogs: after all, this is a guitar hero spoof

-Comedy Forums and Blogs: We have so many awesome comedian cameos in this. Comedy fans will be interested.

-Any Other Topic You Can Think Of!

We worked on this video and we would love for as many people to see it as possible. With your help, we will make that happen. Thank you!

-anton

Dark Opus: THE MOVIE

stringmetal — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:23:27 +0000

This is the final chapter of the Dark Opus story; the chapter where it comes to the big screen (if you have a big computer screen). You can now “watch” the whole record uncut with videos from 5 different artists. Here it is: Dark Opus: THE MOVIE Post it! Share it! Blog it!

European Tour Part 2

stringmetal — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:05:50 +0000

Here is a video of all of the best footage I filmed on our trip. I think it is a pretty good representation of our tour:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Germany

As soon as we hit Germany, our casual European vacation turned into a full-on, epic rock tour. Dredg are heroes in Germany, and every night we played to over 1000 people. This was definitely the biggest week in Judgement Day’s life so far, and it went incredibly well. For all of the German shows we were also joined by another cool band called The Parlor Mob, from New Jersey. They fit perfectly into the bill with excellent musicianship and a sound vaguely reminiscent of classic Led Zeppelin. They seemed to be excited about our band as well. Their sound engineer Tony liked us so much that he ended up doing our sound for free, which made a huge difference for us.

The Prank

A few days before our show in Berlin, Dredg got a memo from the Berlin police department saying that they were looking for “Dradg” for questioning about some “property damage”. Everyone in the band got really paranoid, so Drew Roulette (bass player) came up with a brilliant prank:

On the night of the Berlin show, he hired 2 actors to dress up like German police, come on stage in the middle of the set and arrest Gavin and Dino (singer and drummer)! It worked perfectly: Gavin and Dino were scared shitless!

Drew wanted all of the fans to think that the arrest was real for the first few days, so after the show we posted this video, which cuts off just before the prank is revealed:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Three days later we posted the full, uncut version:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last Three Shows

Our last big German show was in Hamburg, which is a total party town. It’s kind of like the German Las Vegas: there are tons of bars and clubs, and gambling and prostitution are legal. There are transvestites and prostitutes walking around everywhere and sometimes they try to grab you. Lewis, Drew and I walked down the main prostitute street to check out the craziness and it was interesting. The clubs in Hamburg stay open all night so we celebrated our tour properly, drinking and dancing until 5am.

Two days later we played in Christiania, an anarchist commune town in the middle of Copenhagen where drugs are legal. The club there was awesome. It looked like a viking tavern – totally metal. The crowd was small so we decided it would be a good opportunity to practice for the Dark Opus 5th Anniversary show. We played Dark Opus all of the way through and it went way better than any of us thought it would. We got an awesome review from that show; one of the best live reviews we’ve ever gotten. You can read it here but it might give away a couple of surprises for this Thursday’s show.

The last show was in London, a city that I love. We played one of our best sets of the tour and the next day we flew home.

Summing it all up…

My friend let me borrow a Flip video camera for this trip, and I did my best to film cool stuff with it. I edited all of the footage together into a music video that I think sums up our tour well. Here it is – my official Dark Opus video for Pitfires of Hell:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music Videos Controlled by a Nintendo Wii??

stringmetal — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:04 +0000

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

Click here to view the embedded video.

_________________________________________

FLIGHT II

Click here to view the embedded video.

FINIS OMNE (grand finale!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch all of the Dark Opus music videos on our Youtube Page

All of Dark Opus to Have Music Videos

stringmetal — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:12:20 +0000

It is hard to believe that it has been 5 years since we released Dark Opus but come mid November it will be truth – our first foray into violin, cello and drums string metal will be half a decade old. We have a new record coming out early next year, which means we probably won’t be playing many Dark Opus songs live at our shows anymore. We don’t want to forget about our first record though, so instead or retiring it we’re going give it a proper celebration by posting music videos for every song. We will be releasing a couple of videos a week for the next month or so and they will all be available on our Youtube page and on our blog. We think this is super cool for 2 reasons:

1. Every song will now have sweet visuals by different artists.

2. You will be able to watch the entire record for free on Youtube.

On November 19th, after all of the videos have been posted, we are going to have a big Dark Opus 5th Anniversary and video release party at Annie’s Social Club in San Francisco, where we will play the whole album straight through and project all of the videos as we go. Booya!

Here are the first two videos:

INTERLUDE & INFERNO

Click here to view the embedded video.

An energetic edit of live footage filmed at Cafe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz, CA in 2005
Directed and Edited by Dave Kluger. Shot by Dave Kluger, Sam Bolleto, Andrew Keating.

REVELATIONS

Click here to view the embedded video.

A collage of found video footage, passed through digital filters.
By Luke Judd

Animated Flier

stringmetal — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:33:02 +0000

We made a sweet animated flier for our show at Thee Parkside on Thursday. Thanks to Ting for the concept. Check it out: If you want to see it with sound and music by the main support band Wendy Darling watch the youtube version:

OUT OF THE ABYSS

stringmetal — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:35:25 +0000

The video is up! The premier last night at Madrone was great. Thanks to everyone who came out. I hope that you had as much fun as we did. Here it is:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dr0d-Rk-jo

Help us out. Vote for this video on the following sites:
DIGG IT
REDIT
__________________

Crew Credits:
Director: Travis Jones
Special Effects and Editing: Adam Rygiol
Cinematography: Dustin DeVoy
Camera Operator: Charlie
Producer: Anton Patzner

Zombies:
Adam Davis
Joe Anderson
AJ Juncker
Alicia Marie Campbell
Colin Buckley
Garrett Grant
Max Rygiol
Clara Voigt

Two Days in a Dusty Basement Covered in Baby Powder and Chocolate Sauce

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:48:39 +0000

I just saw a close-to-final cut of our music video for “Out of the Abyss” and I have to say, all of our hard work has paid off. The zombies are totally frightening and we do an awesome job of destroying them with our rock. I’m really excited to put it out and I think that people are really going to like it. So I thought I should maybe explain a little bit about what we went through to make the video happen.

The guys in charge were Travis Jones and Adam Rygiol, both recent graduates of the San Francisco State film program. Travis’s original idea for the video involved mythical birds, magic teleportation worm holes and one scene with three helicopters. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to make that one. Since we are all poor and paying for it ourselves, I thought we should try to keep the budget to around $200. Travis came up with a new idea: Zombies. It was perfect. You really can’t go wrong with Zombies, plus Travis and Adam are total experts. Adam is currently on a mission to watch every zombie movie ever made… That’s serious dedication. I personally think I would probably have trouble sitting through 5 minutes of “Zombie 4 – After Death” (although “Zombie Vs Ninja” sounds like it could be pretty cool).

We found a great location to shoot the video: the basement of It’s a Grind, a sweet coffee shop on Nob Hill. The owner was really into the video and was totally supportive. The basement itself was dark, dusty and completely epic. Perfect.

I called a bunch of friends to see if they would want to come and be zombies for it and everyone that I talked to was super into doing it. The only requirement that we had was that everyone involved with the video had to have seen “Night of the Living Dead”. I actually had never seen it myself. It’s pretty sweet and it’s public domain, which means you can stream it for free if you want.

Finally the weekend of shooting arrived. The first day was mostly just shooting the band. Travis had this idea to cover us in baby powder in between every shot so that there would always be dust flying everywhere. We went through a whole bottle of baby powder on the first day alone and I’d say that about 80% of it probably ended up in our lungs. We had to take breaks every 30 minutes or so to go upstairs and get air and I couldn’t help but notice the patrons of the coffee shop staring at us as we came out of the basement in costume and make-up, covered in baby powder. Whatever. It was nothing compared to what they’d be seeing on Sunday.

Sunday was Zombie Day. Everyone came with their own costumes and our friend Alicia Campbell handled the make-up. We had some dope-looking zombies including a bearded zombie, a hole-in-the-head zombie, a dangling-arm zombie, and bride and groom zombies. For blood, since the video is black and white, we used the old chocolate syrup trick, the same trick Alfred Hitchcock used for the shower scene in Psycho. Since we used up our whole bottle of baby powder on Band Day, Travis brought two bottles for Zombie Day and in case you didn’t know, chocolate sauce + baby powder = big sticky mess. Our trips up to the coffee shop that day were much funnier than the first day. Our friends were all nonchalantly ordering coffee in full zombie make-up with chocolate sauce dripping down their faces. It was pretty bad-ass.

Finally, after a a few hours of zombie moshing and a few more hours of throwing bloody limbs around, we were done. It was a good two days of hard work but I think it was totally worth it. Hopefully everyone else who worked on it feels the same way. I can’t wait to show it to everyone.

-Anton

The video premier party is:
Wednesday, Nov. 28th at Madrone
500 Divisadero St. (@ Fell)
9 pm, 21+, $5
with performances by DJ’s Nick and Ant, Hippie Grenade and Judgement Day

If you want to see Riki Feldmann’s epic photo’s from the shoot you can find them HERE

What kind of zombie would you be?