Nerdcore For Life: Now on DVD!

I can’t believe the day has finally come. Today is August 3rd, 2010 which means that our documentary Nerdcore For Life is now officially available to own on DVD! If you’d like top purchase a copy, just head to www.nerdcoreforlife.com to place your order. What does the DVD include? Well, here’s a breakdown of what’s on there:

The Movie
-The feature-length documentary (of course)

Bonus scenes
-Nerdcore Night After party
-The Sucklord meets Nomad
-Nerdcore in Las Vegas
-Monzy performs at Stanford
-The Nerdcore For Life team in Amsterdam

Music videos
-LOLcats by Doctor Popular
-Buggin’ Out by MC Router

As much as I love our film, I think the bonus scenes contain some of the best moments on the entire DVD. There’s some really awesome stuff in there. Basically the bonus scenes contain the footage that we thought was a little too harsh for the documentary.  (Check them out and you’ll understand what I mean.)

The release of the DVD closes a really huge chapter in my life. This Friday, August 6th it will be five years since I first heard of Nerdcore and got the insane idea in my head to try and make a movie about what was then, a totally underground and nascent genre. I’ve been trying to write a new description of the film for this announcement but I think our official synopsis still describes the film perfectly:

Two of the 21st century’s most powerful social forces; Hip-Hop and geek culture collide head-on in the feature-length documentary, Nerdcore For Life. Born on the internet, Nerdcore Hip-Hop is rap music made by geeks, for geeks and covers such traditionally nerdy topics as comic books, video games, sci-fi, anime and technology. This new and fascinating genre is founded on “Do It Yourself” ethics and most Nerdcore rappers create their music on home PCs and disseminate their work for free on the internet.

Though it has existed on-line for almost a decade, only recently has Nerdcore gone from being an internet fad to an underground cultural phenomenon. Filmed over the course of two years, Nerdcore For Life profiles the top names in the genre as they celebrate “geek Life” and their passion for hip hop to the fullest, fight anti-nerd stereotypes, and attempt to overcome the common obstacles that block musicians of all types from fulfilling their dreams. The documentary follows these dedicated artists as they go from recording rhymes in their mother’s basement to performing live for thousands of cheering fans. From their first song to their first MTV appearance, Nerdcore For Life chronicles the amazing transformation of a group of unknown nerds into internet celebrities and rising hip-hop stars.

I’m quite proud of this film and what we accomplished with it.  Now all that’s left for us to do is sell a copy to YOU!  So click here to do just that:  http://www.nerdcoreforlife.com/

It is on like a Tevatron

One of the best things about being a filmmaker is that sometimes you get to go places and see things that are off limits to the general public.  My camera has opened a lot of doors for me but of all the crazy things I’ve been allowed to shoot, the stuff I got to film this past week takes the cake.  For reasons that are still not 100% clear to me, I got to spend 2 days filming a music video at one of the most important scientific facilities in the world; FermiLab.  FermiLab is located in Batavia, IL and is home to the world’s largest particle accelerator. (Though the Large Hadron Collider at Cern will be taking over that title soon)  Anyway, it’s a big ass machine called a tevatron that flings particles at each other at mind-blowing speeds.  When the particles collide they rip apart and physicists are able to catch a passing glimpse of the stuff that makes up those particles.  But that’s just one of the many types of world-class science they are doing at FermiLab.  Those people are hardcore over there.

I grew up only about an hour from FermiLab.  I was kind of an atomic energy nerd when I was younger and I always hoped that my class would go to the lab for a field trip.  We never did and I always regretted it.  Well, I that is to say I did regret it.  Over the last few days I got to see every nook and radioactive cranny of that place.

Me, Funky49 and our bodyguards in the Tevatron control room

How’d it happen?  Well a few weeks back a Nerdcore rapper from Florida named Funky49 e-mailed and said he had written a rap about FermiLab and he was flying to Illinois to visit the facility.  Funky makes a brief cameo in Nerdcore For Life and he knew that I lived not to farm from Batavia so he asked if I’d want to shoot a music video with him while he was in town.  I said ‘heck yeah’ and that was that.

Funky49 outside FermiLab's Wilson Hall

FermiLab was really, really, REALLY supportive of the whole project.  As it turned out the Fermi rap was even the brainchild of FermiLab scientist; Dr. Ben Kilminster.  Funky49 had created an entire hip-hop album about Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry.  Dr. Ben heard it and thought Funky would be the perfect guy to do a rap song and video about FermiLab.

Now, if you are a gigantic mega-nerd this whole concept might sound a little familiar to you.  A rap video shot at particle accelerator?  Hasn’t that been done before??  It sure has and that’s the point!  As I mentioned, the tevatron at FermiLab is about to lose its “world’s largest” status to the new particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland.  Last year, some staff members at CERN created their own hip-hop video entitled “The Large Hadron Rap.”

The video is pretty good and damn did it blow up on the web-o-sphere!  The Large Hadron Rap video is up to 5.2 million views on youtube.  So the FermiLab folks figured that perhaps it was time for the Americans to rebut with a hip-hop video of their own!  And so, I now find myself on the front line of history’s first international, particle physics hip-hop feud.

Me filming the camera-shy buffalo

Funky49 and I spent two days running around the FermiLab compound.  And man, it really is a “compound.”  It’s a huge, amazing place.  What I like best about it is that the designers of the facilities really tried to reflect spirit of the mid-west in the grounds.  There are vast fields of open prairie between the buildings and there’s even an entire heard of buffalo living there.

It’s going to take me a few weeks to cut the video together but I have a feeling it will turn out to be something really cool.  We were allowed an absurd level of access.  We even got to film the open tevatron!  After we were done, we had to get “frisked” by a Geiger counter to make sure we hadn’t been irradiated.  And that wasn’t just some overcautious act.  The hardhats of our two chaperons tuned out to have been contaminated with radioactive dust while we were filming!

Inside the Tevatron room with our guides and their irradiated hard hats

So anyway, it was a great couple of days.  Huge thanks to Funky49 for asking me to do the video and extra big thanks to Dr. Ben and all the great people at FermiLab for showing us around and putting up with our shenanigans.  Check back in a few weeks to see the finished video!

OMG! LOLcats musik video unleeshed on teh internetz!

It was exactly one year ago today, on July 12th, 2008 that Nerdcore rapper/producer Doctor Popular and I spent an afternoon in a garbage filled alley in San Francisco filming a music video for his song LOLcats. Nerdcore For Life is roughly 84 minutes long.  It took about 5 months to edit.  The music video for LOLcats is under 3 minutes.  It took me 12 months to edit.  Ok…I didn’t spend all 12 months editing the thing.  It just got pushed to the back burner for a minute.  But when I realized that the one year anniversary of the shoot was coming up, I dug through my hard drive, found the files and finally finished our nerdcore magnum opus.  I didn’t exactly plan to post the video one year to the day that we shot it but sometimes the universe just makes cool stuff like this happen.

I think the video turned out awesome.  I’ve watched it 500 times at this point and it still makes me smile.  The song is great and Doc Pop is actually a really good actor too.  I think the reason I like the video so much is because I think LOLcats and Icanhascheezburger.com are like the most hilarious things to take up space on the internetz.  I look at ICHC every day!  Doc Pop is an LOLcat fan too and when you combine our geeky affection for this bizarre little meme, you get a very strange music video packed with in-jokes that only the most die-hard LOLcat fans will understand.  Even the San Francisco ally where we shot the video is an in-joke!  (details here)

So watch and try to enjoy the fruits of our Audio and Visual labors.  If you get every single LOLcat reference then congratulations;  you win a cheezburger…..and a belly rub…and a bukit!  We took a bunch of pictures during the shoot.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This might be my favorite photo of the set. It's just 2 guys; one performing and one filming. I didn't even own a decent camera this time last year. The one in the picture is borrowed.