blog.captivatethem.ca

Die Mannequin is a bad influence. I picked up a copy of Fino + Bleed from the XPress office a month ago and it’s been on repeat in my stereo since. In that time, I was demoted at XPress for standing up the Trailer Park Boys, almost kicked out of my crib and hung out to dry by the girl I was seeing.  Not since I spent too much time listening to Motley last year or Buckcherry the year before has an album controlled my every action like Fino + Bleed this September. Call me a method writer, call me crazy, call me whatever the hell you want. I lost myself while preparing for this interview. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say it was messy.

By the time Vlad, Alex and I met up with Die Mannequin’s front-woman, Care Failure, and the matriarch of Ottawa’s Warner Music branch, Mary Jelley, it felt like the last day of a long tour – and in Ottawa on a Sunday to boot! I was sweating week-old liquor out of a month-old playoff beard, trying all the while to focus on my subject with eyes wide shut. It was destined to be a night that went down in my biography, or my obituary.

A bright sun beaming down on a late summer day, the three of us settled on shooting outside, where we set up in the shadows of Scotiabank Place and rolled on it. The interview went well, even though I looked and felt like total shit. I don’t get nervous during interviews, still, standing next to Care, it felt like my heart could, at any time, collapse and cave into my chest. After we finished the interview, Vlad took Care aside and managed to trap a dozen amazing pictures in just a few minutes. Though we went well over our allotted time limit, both Care and Mary were totally cool with the whole process. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: If all labels had a Mary Jelley, the world would be a better place.

A couple hours later, Die Mannequin blew the lid of Scotiabank. Watching Care rip it up, I knew that all the shit I’d gone through getting ready for the interview was well worth it. At that moment, I couldn’t care less if I was, as Care writes in Caroline Mescaline, “just another rock casualty.” Marilyn Manson closed the night out with a killer set, yet it didn’t seem to matter. This night was about Die Mannequin, not Manson; it was about Canada, not the U.S.; it was about tomorrow, not today.

RLR

Big Thanks: Die Mannequin, Mary Jelley, Mr. Butterscotch, Marilyn Manson, Live Nation, Warner Music Canada, Scotiabank Place

***To view the whole story, and our full gallery, head on over to Captivatethem.ca events or click here!

Just a quick update!  Captivate just wrapped principle photography on the set of a music video, aptly entitled SHOOTOUT.  It was a fully packed two day shoot, featuring a large cast, tons of props, special effects and some serious stunts.  Police commandos jumping roof-to-roof, true to form FX, and a femme fatale to-die-for made for a blood-pumping great time.  The end result should be violent, visceral and a helluva lot of fun!  Footage soon!

(All photographs © Alexander Vlad 2009.  Very special thanks to Nick Liboiron, Meredith Lyman, The RCA Centre, and the City of Montréal)

Good afternoon rockstars.  We got some concert coverage and a beefy video interview with Die Mannequin who are currently on tour with Marilyn Manson.  We’re still cutting the footage so all I got for you today is one shot from after the interview.  So without further delay, here’s Care Failure, lead singer and guitarist from one of Canada’s hardest rockin’ bands.

Stay tuned.  Also, check out their site and tunes.  http://www.diemannequin.ca/

Beautiful people, here’s just a quick update!  Friday I photographed the lovely Anne and Renée on the beach in Aylmer, Québéc.  While it was a fridgid afternoon, the shots worked out better than expected.  I love mixing wide skies, beaming sun, and lots of strobes all cranked up.  I find the final result is challenging and rewarding for photographer and for viewer.  Enjoy!

Captivate is off to shoot an exclusive interview and concert with Die Mannequin, the brilliant, hard rockin’ opening act for the master of shock himself.  If anybody needs me I’ll be backstage at the Marilyn Manson concert.  Have a great Sunday you headbangers!

It’s been a super hectic few weeks, juggling things between cities, pouring so much time into video and wrapping up long-running projects before the autumn grind really sets in.  Part of this has been building an online infrastructure to facilitate photoblogging, sharing music and video projects, etc, but now, just by taking a browse around, you can see that things are starting to tighten up.  Here are some shots from a shoot I did with ever-talented makeup artist, Meredith Lyman (http://www.meredith-lyman.com) and her beautiful friend Erum.  I was so pleased with the chemistry on set and the final product that I even integrated one of the images into the layout of our main page.  Below is Mer’s account of the antics.

“This was my first shoot working with Alexander.  We both wanted to pull together a shoot just to see how we vibed as a team after our first meeting.  I sent out a mass e-mail and managed to get my lovely friend Erum to model and the good folks at Armada Lounge let us borrow their space for the night.  I have to say I was amazed I was able to pull together a hot model and a killer location  so last minute!!

After we had those two ingredients in place everything else flowed super smoothly.  I think we all shared a similar artistic aesthetic and worked so well together it felt more like play.  The proof of that is definitely in the the resulting shots!  Hopefully this is the beginning of many more successful collaborations between myself and Captivate Creative Studios.” -Meredith Lyman

To view the rest of Erum’s gallery, head on over to captivatethem.ca or click here.

After two revisions, the latest incarnation of Smokin’, Drinkin’, Fuckin’ is complete and online.  For the uninitiated, this is the first music video I’ve shot.  It was completely unorganized, last-minute, tiring…and the most fun I’ve had all summer.  There is much camera jitter due to laughter in some cases, but as far as run and gun productions go, I’m very pleased with the outcome.

I’ll follow this post with set photos and production notes.

Just a note:  Our rentals didn’t come through for the shoot day, so we bought a Canon Rebel T1i to shoot this video on because it was available, only $900 for the body, and records 720p @ 30fps.  Combined with some good lenses I managed to wrangle something good-looking out of a budget rig.

Shad & Remi

In the burrows of Ottawa’s west end, an area far detached from the bustling stone corridors and vibrant night life of the capital city’s centre, Algonquin College finds itself in a location particularly prone to debauchery. In the shady pits of Deerfield, or even outside the shining student rez, “those nights” tend to happen in record numbers. Things can get ugly. Thankfully, last night was not one of “those nights.” On the contrary, it was an outing oozing with music and bubbling with good times. After an interview with Shad K – one of the freshest cats at the forefront of the new wave of Canadian hip hop – I was taking in a few brews at The Observatory, wondering where Vlad was at. We were supposed to shoot a set with Shad, so I figured Vlad wasn’t gonna show. Sure enough, at that moment, who do I see walking from the front of the stage, where he’d been shooting Thunderheist?

Thunderheist!

While we showed up at different times, it didn’t take long for me and Vlad to find ourselves on the same page.  The goal seemed pretty simple: Find a good setting, grab Shad and take some pictures. Not so. The Observatory is notoriously hard on photographers, and has been since I went to J school at Algonquin some years back. I’m not sure why, but they won’t let you shoot in there for any worthwhile period of time. So, of course, someone in the place, who Vlad reports looked like Peter Jackson (pre-gastric bypass surgery), got into Vlad for being too liberal with his camera and, as such, we were forced to take our party elsewhere. It was something of a headache pulling Shad out of his dressing room, bringing him back to the gig and then being told that we had to go somewhere else to take the shots we were after. But long story short: We went back to the room, set up, and were finished within minutes. As Shad is a post-graduate student working towards his MA in liberal studies, we thought it would be cool to set him up at a white board, looking like he was teaching a class. The end result? You tell us. The shots are posted and we definitely hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Talk to ya soon!

For the rest of the images and story, check out our event listing on Captivatethem.ca or click here.

RLR & AV

Big Thanks: Ken McLeod, Kat Stewart, Shad, Thunderheist and Algonquin College.

Here’s the first cut of a quick DJ promo I shot in August.  It revolved around a tour to Kingston via limo, contending for space with the beer cooler, and a lot of laughs with DJ Paul Burke (BzRK), his manager and all’round rockstar Ryan, and a gaggle of others.  Because of the promotional nature of this edit, it’s short n’ sweet.  I’ll update this post with the completed cut when it’s available.  Huge thanks to Joy Supper Club (Kingston, Ontario) for a great atmosphere and UMM Entertainment for treating their artists like kings.

What a whirlwind summer this has been.  It’s been so busy that it’s in fact very difficult to write the “all-encompassing” greetings post I wanted to, so I’ll cut this into a brief announcement. Blog.captivatethem.ca is back, but as a separate entity to our main site.  Its aim is to give a direct outlet to our creative team and mates in the trenches to let the world know what we’re working on, who is inspiring us, and what forces in the industry we’re watching.

We’ve recently expanded as a company.  The team at Captivate Creative Studios has grown to enable us to take on larger and more diverse productions, namely in video and interactive multimedia.  Promotions is also becoming a big part of our day-to-day, and finding new ways to help the musicians we love achieve success.

Tune in regularly to reap some madness!

~Alex and the gang

Just a peak at some new work...