Whoowee! DavidJr.com has sure been busy since he won the Rik Cordero Creative Invite almost three months ago. He filmed the latest episode of Deranged Fan, an online musical series created by award winning producer Rik Cordero, titled “They Mostly Come Out At Night”, and was interviewed by KarmaloopTV.

We recently had the opportunity to ask David for some advice to give to the creative community on Talenthouse:

What do you do when you hit a creative road block?
If you hit a road block… can’t write, edit, shoot, etc…. just do something anyway, even if it “sucks” you can always edit it and it might get your adrenaline going to do something great.

If I’m stuck editing I sometimes listen to music WHILE I’m editing a video, even if the video has an audio track to it…. it’ll help push me to focus… kinda like a brain editing enema.

So if you’re stuck don’t just mope around, figure out creative ways to get yourself creating.

What advice can you give to actors?
I’m not an actor but if I were one I’d be doing a new monologue and putting it on the web daily. I know lot’s of actors who are great but they don’t show consistent work anywhere.

What advice can you give to aspiring directors?
If you wanna make films a budget or crew shouldn’t matter….. I’m glad I haven’t had to rely on anyone to make my videos. You just gotta be at the right place at the right time and have your work ready to ROCK.

What advice can you give to the creative community on Talenthouse?
Just put yourself out there and see where the velcro sticks.

DavidJr.com and Rick Codero on KarmaloopTV

What inspired DavidJr.com for this episode?
I figured out, “Well, what mostly comes out at night”? I was thinking maybe vampires and really utilized NYC at night, shooting in a way where it doesn’t look like there’s anyone on the street.

What inspires Rik Cordero?
I know a lot of directors, especially from NYC, like David who are constantly shooting whenever he’s inspired, and that’s what inspires me.

They Mostly Come Out At Night

Directed by DavidJr.com for the Deranged Fan series

The Art Department partnered with Talenthouse earlier this year to offer select artists TAD scholarships for the July 2010 Semester! The artists were asked to submit up to 3 pieces of their artwork to be considered.

The winner of the full scholarship ($45,000) is Alexandra Maramite from Romania. Her heavy use of lines and shapes in her submission pieces “try to reveal the essence of humanity and simplify it all together”. Alexandra has yet to decide whether she will study from her home in Romania, or on-site in one of the The Art Department’s locations worldwide.

The following artists will also be receiving scholarships —

Half scholarships at $22,500 each are awarded to:
Miguel Cabrera from Costa Rica
Tibor Pogonyi from Germany
Mathias Kollros from Austria
Timothy Rodriguez from France

Partial scholarships at $11,500 each are awarded to:
Manuel Larino from Spain
Tiffany England from Los Angeles, CA
Elizaveta Reich from Germany
Daavid Mörtl from Germany
Ken Khoo from Canada
Amrei Fiedler from Germany
Irina Troitskaya from Russia
Winnie Wyrm from Germany
Ryan Landry from New Mexico
Aneta Kordala from Austria

Congratulations to all of the Artists that were selected by The Art Department to receive these various scholarship opportunities!!! As a scholarship winner, each of these artists are invited to attend TAD’s online instructional courses, to give them an opportunity to hone their skills and network with other creatives from all over the world!

Designed and taught by more award-winning faculty than any other art school, TAD develops artists into their greatest potential and prepares them for successful careers. Options are available to learn exclusively online, in-person or a hybrid of both. TAD has schools in Austin, Berkeley, Kansas City, Richmond, and San Francisco for those interested in on-site study. For more information on TAD, visit www.theartdepartment.org

Metal-core band, The Devil Wears Prada, teamed up with us and invited all designers, graphic artists, painters and fans to design a new band T-shirt to be sold exclusively on their online store. They asked these artists and fans to come up with a design that best interprets what the band means to them. And they chose André Trindade’s Three-Eyed Wolf as the winning design!

André is very excited to be the chosen winner for this Invite.  He currently works as a freelance illustrator in Portugal and mostly designs t-shirts, posters and album covers for bands and clothing brands.

Be sure to check out The Devil Wears Prada at some major festivals this year like, Warped Tour, Rockstar Taste of Chaos and their highly anticipated “Back to the Roots” tour!

In honor of the release of “Stranger”, the latest track from Dr. Dog’s new album “Shame, Shame,” Dr. Dog launched a search for the world’s top film student talent to create their own video renditions of the new track.  The incentive? $2000 USD toward tuition cost and school supplies or in cash!

The band was extremely impressed with the quality of the submissions which made it difficult to come to a decision on the winner. After quite a deliberation, they chose Mark Wiitanen as the winner! Check out Mark’s winning video submission below:

Congratulations to Mark on winning this Invite and thank you to the rest of you who submitted!  We welcome you, and all filmmakers, to check out the following opportunities:

This summer the Soho House Group will launch the Electric Shorts film competition and they invite you to pitch your film proposal themed on “Desire” in no more than 400 words for your chance to win the opportunity to shoot the film at a Soho House property. Submit by July 1st, 2010!

International fashion icon Diane Pernet and superstar fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson have created a once in a life time opportunity for you! They are looking for a fashion film feature or short to be screened as a part of the next edition of ASVOFF opening in Paris. Submit your film by July 19th, 2010!

Steven E. de Souza is an accomplished producer and screenwriter of films such as Die Hard, 48 Hours, Tomb Raider and he invites aspiring filmmakers to produce their own take on the Web’s first suspense anthology, UNKNOWN SENDER. The winning short film will be showcased on StrikeTV and you will receive full credits and ad revenue. Submit by August 16th, 2010!

American progressive/alternative rock band, dredg, teamed up with Talenthouse months ago to find a musician to remix their track “Mourning This Morning” from their current album.  The mix with the most votes would be featured on the dredg MySpace page and the winning re-mixer would also receive 2 tickets to an upcoming dredg show of their choice.

After taking some time to review all of the submissions, they were very impressed with Matt Johnson‘s submission and named him the winner — Congratulations, Matt!!

Matt is a musician who was born and raised in Detroit and now currently resides in Michigan. He’s been employed with a family entertainment company since 2006 and spends 8-9 months out of the year on tour as management for the merchandising crew. He likes to play drums and guitar and also enjoys experimenting with different varieties of electronic music from hip hop beats to rock remixes.

“Talenthouse is a great outlet for someone like myself to participate in creative collaborations with artists whom i respect and admire,” says Matt.

Thank you to all who participated in this Creative Invite!! Don’t forget to find out how you could have the chance to collaborate with a Grammy Award Winning musician!

]]> http://blog.talenthouse.de/archives/dredge-to-feature-matt-johnsons-mourning-this-morning-remix/feed/ 0 http://blog.talenthouse.de/archives/adrian-picardi-wins-the-era-and-universal-music-filmmaker-search/ http://blog.talenthouse.de/archives/adrian-picardi-wins-the-era-and-universal-music-filmmaker-search/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:13:15 +0000 Laura http://blog.talenthouse.com/?p=2365

Universal Music and progressive, classical music act Era were in search of an aspiring filmmaker to come up with a “treatment” for a music video to be premiered at a central London cinema, aired on MTV and Vh1, as well as through Era’s online networks. The selected filmmaker would receive up to $10,000 of filmmaking equipment and the honor of working with the world’s largest record company. Additionally, $5000 is being distributed between the rest of the filmmakers who submitted.

After a successful voting period and deliberation by Era and Universal Music, the chosen winner of this filmmaker search is Adrian Picardi. Check out his mind-blowing submission below:

Adrian graduated from the Los Angeles Film School at the age of 19. His first student film, ‘His Day to Remember,’ won the Cinematic Flim2Music competition and was also screed at Sundance that same year!

He is best known for securing a spot as one of the young, up and coming filmmakers the industry has seen and for winning a series of online short film contests, now including this one! Adrian works with extremely low budgets but his films are always commercially appealing and visually stunning!

We featured Adrian on our website a while back and could not be more proud of him! Congratulations, Adrian and thank you to all of the filmmakers for your hard work! It does not go unnoticed!

Back in April we began our iPad giveaway — entering was simple, all you had to do was help us spread the word about our Era Creative Invite by tweeting or posting to Facebook a specific message we sent out. The winner of the iPad was to be chosen at random and that lucky winner is Miguel Angel Gaytan of Yuma, AZ!

Miguel, who also goes by Michael Angel, is a twenty-three year old, aspiring photographer who is greatly influenced by the work of one of the world’s most talented photographers, David Lachapelle. Photography became Miguel’s passion soon after the art-form was introduced to him during his Junior year of high school. Since then, he hasn’t looked back.  He plans on moving to the city of Los Angeles towards the end of this year where he aspires to become a well known celebrity photographer.  In the future he also plans to get published and work for many magazines. Miguel has taken some digital editing and lighting classes through a community college but gained most of his knowledge working on his own photo shoots.  He believes that photographs can be captured in many ways and expressions, but the best ones are the ones we create ourselves — memories of such great beauty that will never fade away.  Over the last six years he has learned a lot about various types of photography including commercial, glamour, high fashion, and beauty and you can see samples of his work below. Miguel also recently submitted for his chance to Photograph Caitlin Moe for her new Album Cover and we wish him the best of luck!

We are absolutely blown away by his photos and encourage you to view more of his work by visiting his Talenthouse artist profile!  You can also become his fan on Facebook or follow him on Twitter for more news and updates!

Congratulations, again, to Michael for winning the iPad giveaway and a special thank you to everyone who participated!! You played a huge role in getting the word out about our Era Invite and we hope you are just as excited as we are to find out who the winner will be!

Talenthouse invited artists all around the world to reinterpret the Talenthouse icon (“Adinkra”). Artists had the creative freedom to change the colors, style, materials, etc. as they saw fit while keeping the same structure so the Talenthouse icon could be recognized.

We received truly incredible submissions and chose Lara Pignotti as our winner with her colorful design!

Lara is a trained advertising graphic designer, but she has always been passionate about digital art. She says she never goes anywhere without her camera, as she loves to capture everything that may be useful for creating computer images. Her design will be purchased by Talenthouse for $1000 for the rights to use it in promotional materials and sold on products in our shop, and be seen around the world! Congratulations, Lara!

We also want to ask at least 10 other artists who participated to turn their designs into limited edition t-shirts on talenthouse.spreadshirt.com

All of us at Talenthouse would like to express our appreciation to all of the designers for the enormous amount of effort put into their designs — THANK YOU!

Taio Cruz was searching for an aspiring female dancer and/or model to appear in his next music video, and teamed up with Talenthouse to find her. With such a short amount of time to submit for this Invite, we were amazed to see how many dancers and models submitted their videos in order to be considered. After reviewing the top submissions, Taio chose Renata De Oliveira as the winner!

Originally from Brazil, Renata moved to Vancouver, BC about two years ago where she started her modeling career after being discovered by chance on the street. And here she is today as the winner of the Taio Cruz Creative Invite!! Becoming a model has taught Renata a lot more about herself and has has helped her love herself the way she is, as it recognizes that all colours are beautiful!

“I’m so excited and proud to have won this contest. I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news. I never thought I’d be the one going to LA and being a part of Taio’s music video. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to Talenthouse, Taio’s producers, and all those people who supported and believed in me” says winning model De Oliveira.

Congratulations Renata! We can’t wait to see your performance in this music video!

David Bruce Bates Jr AKA “davidjr.com” is the victorious filmmaker in our Creative Invite with, award-winning independent director, Rik Cordero.  David will be working alongside Rik and his writing team to develop a bonus episode of Deranged Fan.  Watch his winning submission below:

David is a remarkably busy and successful filmmaker with an impressive resume.  He has worked in production at Disney Online, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, Oxygen Media, and Scholastic Entertainment.  Additionally, David has won Billboard.com’s first ever LIVE MUSIC FILMING “Music on the Move” contest and Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine First Annual Web Superstar Award.  We had the pleasure of featuring David on our website, and he has become a valued fan and friend of ours over time.

David says he is very honored and excited to have the opportunity to work with Rik Cordero and his team.  “Thank you, Talenthouse.com for giving opportunities for people like myself to showcase their work where it can be seen by the top people.”

We’re so excited for you, David! And we are equally excited about all of the incredible opportunities we have been and will be able to provide artists world-wide.  Every single one of us has a connection to art and creativity and, here at Talenthouse, we are dedicated to enabling creative expression through our Creative Invites.