Guess the panic at the disco music video
That led to me directing a Major Lazer video, "Scare Me", starring Terry Crews. Diplo and his manager Kevin Kusatsu caught wind of the video and reached out to me. NFS: How did you connect with Panic! At The Disco and start making music videos with them?ĭermer: The long answer is Nekrogobikon.A goblin metal band I discovered in 2012 and made them a music video for their song "No One Survives" which also then birthed their mascot John Goblikon. I worked there for several years, learned a lot, and once I felt like I had built up my client base, I left and started my own boutique post house and brought on my wife, Becky, as our producer.
When I moved out to LA, I applied to every post house that had job openings and got a job at Company 3 as an assistant. When the concept of color grading came up in our classes, I jumped right on it. I did Photoshop retouching for years before film school. Ryan McNeal: I also went to Columbia College and while I was studying directing there I was coloring my own stuff. In my case it was Oliver Stone’s W and I interned under Phedon Papamichael ASC. After graduation, I was one of two students picked to do an internship on a major motion picture. I studied cinematography there for four years and was able to shoot on 16mm, Super 16mm, and my final thesis film was shot on 35mm. I was accepted into Columbia College and I studied directing as a major my freshman year, but I soon realized that I wanted to be behind the camera. As an immigrant and first in my family to get a higher education in The States it was kind of a scary thing telling your parents you want to pursue art, but thankfully they were very supportive. Wojciech Kielar: I don't know when I initially chose filmmaking as a career path, but I guess it happened in high school when we had to choose a major for college. That was my first entry point into making music videos professionally. So, there's this band called Futurecop! out in the UK, and I reached out to them and they were down, and we split the budget and made a music video. After that, being a failed musician and a guy who loves music, I thought the next best step would be to make a music video. I tricked a lot of folks and took meetings about buying the film that didn’t exist.
#Guess the panic at the disco music video movie
After school, I moved out to LA, got five internships, one turned into a job and I was an assistant to a producer and a manager.Īfter four years of being an assistant, learning the business and writing nights and weekends, my bosses were like, "You've got to make something that showcases the cinematic eye that we know you have, and what you want to be doing." So I made a short film…really, a fake trailer for the dumbest movie idea I could think of but played it extremely straight. I went to film school at Columbia College in Chicago, where my friends and I would make a short every month that we'd write, direct, star in, everything, and really cut our teeth doing that. I played in bands in high school, and I was always making sketches with my friends to promote the band and just for fun…the sketches were better than the music.
NFS: What was your journey to becoming filmmakers and working on music videos?īrandon Dermer: I'm a failed musician.