The New Venue

13.November.2000 Video Computer System If you haven't seen it yet - now's your chance to experience the music video for the Brazillian band "Golden Shower" - it's the story of a guy trying to get to a performance. And it's a love story. And it's a video game. And it's garnering cult-status on the Internet. WINNER - the MTV Brazil Video Music Awards - Best Electronic Music Video Music by GOLDEN SHOWER Video by Carlos Bela Guilherme Marcondes Mateus de Paula Santos Mario Sader 3D Matrix Pitfall FX Alfredo Hisa Produced at Lobo Filmes Stills from "Golden Shower" Interview with the filmmakers. New Venue: Most online film sites are from the U.S. Is there a sense of an "international" web cinema? Or is video on the Internet a matter of America versus the world? Golden Shower: Due to this very nature of the www, we don't see ourselves as strangers in a foreign land or anything. This may sound as a cliche, but in the Internet you have no boundaries of country, people or whatever. Once our video hit the web, it didn't matter where it came from, since its appeal seems to be universal. New Venue: What is the appeal of digital filmmaking? Golden Shower: First of all the simplicity of the whole process. It takes only a few people to accomplish a good result, not to mention when you do everything on your own. Also the variety of styles and techniques the digital medium has to offer, that can be mixed in every wacky way you want. New Venue: What is... um... Golden Shower? Golden Shower: Golden Shower is Markus Karlus and Kevin Rodgers, an electronic music duo from Sao Paulo, Brazil, who works according to the will of a computer virus also called Golden Shower. This virus was hibernating inside a Macintosh 128k since 1989, and was inadvertently awakened by the two friends in the late '90s. The sole purpose of the Golden Shower virus is to revert the world to what it used to be in the '80s, starting by taking over the world of pop music. And Markus Karlus and Kevin Rodgers are the tools to that purpose. The VCS clip won the MTV Brazil Video Music Award for best electronic music video last August, but it really started to become a hit only from the moment it was posted on the web. New Venue: What is your inspiration for this video? Golden Shower: It's a tribute to all the classic Atari 2600 video games of the early '80s. We tried to join together as many traditional game themes of that era as possible in a linear storyline, so we have this character who goes through all kinds of perils, such as jumping over sharks and battling alien starships, in his way to a Golden Shower concert. New Venue: Where does the style originate? Golden Shower: The whole thing started with the Video Computer System song, which was made entirely out of original Atari game sounds. Then the concept of the video came out naturally, as the idea was to do something in that style, very low-res, big pixels and sharp colors. But with a few quirks, as with the fast editing and that 3D sequence in the middle, that prevent the video from being just a collection of old game scenes. New Venue: What tools do you use? Golden Shower: Everything (except for the 3D sequence which was modeled on Maya) was made on a Mac, Starting with the song itself, for which Golden Shower used Logic Audio to sequence all the sound bites that were captured by a microphone pointing at the TV set speaker while an Atari game console was running. All the video artwork was based on a lot of screenshots we took from Stella, the Atari emulator. And all the animation and editing was done on After Effects. New Venue: When it comes to movies or animation on the web, what would you like to see more of? Golden Shower: We think that it would be great to see web movies that don't look like web movies. Movies that you could as well imagine being presented on TV, projected on a screen, and so on. New Venue: What's the next project? Golden Shower: Golden Shower has just finished its official web site, and now they plan to start writing songs again. If an idea for another video comes up, they'll certainly call up Lobo Filmes to do it. New Venue: Where else can we see your work? Golden Shower: www.goldenshower.gs www.lobo.cx View this movie. You can find out about other digital flicks in the New Venue Archives.