I had a blast meeting the ATL folks and seeing some new faces. Rich Homie Quan and Propain killed it.
Studio82 shot some video of first friday. Here is a recap.Sure its a DSLR Camera, but thats some seriously clean 14 bit imaging.We have been testing / pioneering the new 14 bit systems offered to various dslr firmware. What does that mean? It means higher quality video and a more cinematic feel to everything. Here are some still shots. 
This motion graphic was a commission from Akon and developed for his rebranding of "Konvict Music" to "Konlive Entertainment".  Its hard to make a mention of my past with out the name Mr. Boomtown. I first met him on the set of "Pourin Up" a Pimp C video he was directing in Port Arthur. Before I knew it the Houston rap scene had exploded and we traveled the country making a ton of videos. Overwhelmed with videos, I helped with post production and began to edit many of the larger budget videos. It was fun and challenging. Our biggest and most creative video was probably the Bun B, Rick Ross, 8 Ball, MJG, David Banner video for "You're Everything." I was like, “Wow, Donny can we really create this?” Here is an article from a Mr. Boomtown video on its making:http://itsdonnamarie.tumblr.com/post/8031124336/mrboomtown-interview-donnadaily-net Mr. Boomtown: Hands down… Bun B. His video “You’re Everything” is by far the best video, I feel that I’ve directed. The reason is because the effects in the video, the concept and all. I credit that to my writer at the time, who is now my visual effects person. He built the sets and everything. His name is Donny Hall. Let me just give an insight on that… we almost lost that video. We sent in a treatment, it was on some typical south, rolling through the hood. But it was real gritty, you know… old school 1970’s Lincoln, rain trickling down the window with Bun in the back seat performing his verse. He’s seeing this gritty hood. You’re seeing reflections of the hood on the windows. But that’s not what they wanted. That’s not what Rap A lot wanted. So the commissioner hit me back and was like, “Look we’re gonna give these other kats out here in Atlanta this job if you don’t come on wit it.” When he told me that, I was like “Wow.” So I contacted my writer like, “Donny, we gotta go left field with this one. We gotta come up with something that hasn’t been done before.” We started juggling ideas. They’re paying homage to the south so let’s create a concept where the CEO of Rap A Lot Records, James Prince, is sitting down with Bun and a few other kats and he’s showing Bun this scrap book. This scrap book is paying homage to the south. Each one of these pages, and it starts off with UGK; it takes you through their lifespan. We take it into the minds of Bun B, Rick Ross, David Banner, 8 Ball, and MJG. We created these memory rooms. And each one of these memory rooms, it’s just a narrow room where they were either just sitting down on a sofa or chair or standing up. The whole room, from wall to wall, is just newspaper clippings and magazine clippings. It was like everything that was going on in their mind and it symbolizes everything that they know about their particular part of the country. Each one of these walls had everything about those areas. I mean old school articles even. And we would have some of the pictures coming to life. I was like, “Wow, Donny can we really create this?” And he was like, “Man let’s do it. If you can make the budget happen; let’s do it. I’ll make these walls and create 5 different rooms.” And he did it. We should have documented him and his people building the set. They started late in the evening and went all the way through the next morning, because we had to start shooting that morning. I would peek in and see newspapers all over the floor. Then seeing it the next morning I was like, “This is gonna be the shit.” If the song was number one in the country, I promise you the video would have been number one in the country. It did actually make number 4 or 5 on the MTV top 20 countdown. That’s my favorite video by far.  Our collaborations have millions and millions of online views and I'm glad that we still cross paths on big projects. It's been a long road of over 10 years. We came from the bottom and now we can finally work on and do wherever creativity takes us. Back in 2010 this video got 20 million views. We have come a long long way.
Here are some of my favorite videos. I was lucky enough to meet Mark Armes in 2004 when he volunteered to help come out and film on a "no budget" WW2 reenactor film. He looked like a scruffy hockey player, but his personality and vision was something different and special. When I saw him breakdancing on the pavement of the Krogers parking lot, I knew we would be friends. He helped connect me with Free Press Houston, and some of the most creative people i have ever met like Tim Dorsey and Shelby Hohl. Soon after we were helping each other out on projects and expanding out experience. Funwunce is the brainchild of Mark Armes, a local filmmaker, animator and designer who's been active in the Houston scene for years now 
Mark was involved with the University of Houston film program where he learned from his mentor Pat Coakley. I watched as film makers like Michel Gondry would help shape the style and feel of Mark's work. We made the jump to some major label Houston Hip Hop, working for local legends, the kind of people we listened to growing up in Texas. When Mark started working with Rick Darge out of Los Angeles, his projects got a bump in quality while maintaing the ethos that makes his work special.
Mark, the skater kid who became an inspiration.To this day we still mess around with projects together. I got to say, I'm proud of him. I believe in him. And I hope we can work and learn from each other for years to come. 
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AuthorDonny Hall is film maker and junk collector who fights for your right to party. Archives
December 2016
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