And Then The Woodies Happened

Peep those visuals behind Santogold. Those were designed and animated by this guy! The mtvU Woodie Awards were my last official project at mtvU and that meant (in addition to shooting the event) I had the pleasure of doing all the performance graphics for the bands. Along with Santi White, you can see my phat visuals poppin' behind The Cool Kids, All Time Low, Lykke Li, Q-Tip, DJ A-Trak, Chromeo and Vampire Weekend. For real, that shit was fun.

Recap of the show? Uh, Awesome x 112^2, next question. Specifically? Fine.

• Asher Roth started the show with a song about college. He sampled the legendary Say It 'Aint So riff, but it's cool because he looks like Joey Cheek but even less dangerous if that's poss. Then Cool Kids jammed out in front of some Ice Cream bicycles which they did not ride. Shame. 
• Motion City Soundtrack won a Woodie but no one recognized the dude because his hair wasn't doing the thing and he brought up the director of the video and everyone's like, who dat?
• Atmosphere won also. Sweet.
• Lykke Li came out looking like a Ring Wraith but you know, hot, and she blew people's minds by playing a kazoo. It was solid shit and then Surprise! Q-Tip bounced out, sweated, and did a medley of hip hop tightness. 
• Chromeo won a Woodie and outed house DJ A-Trak as his brother. Everyone was like, "I'm confused." But still happy cuz they both rule. 
• The audience got Rick-Rolled with a Britney video and they were mostly disappointed that they didn't get to see the Britney video. 
• Moby's bald.
• All Time Low performed with dancers and beach balls and killer graphics, thank you very much.
• Santogold performed wearing an amazing purple and yellow Cosmonaut suit, which perfectly matched the purple and yellow graphics. Thank you very much.  
• Spank Rock performed with her and was not drunk.
• Paramore won Woodie of the Year and they accepted the award with grace and humor and I think I'm sort of in love a little bit.
• Vampire Weekend and Chromeo finished us off with a Christmas song about kids and two other super sweet hits. The wheat field graphics, alas, were not mine but they still looked dope. 
• No fights, minimal underage drinking, and I found $20 on the floor when it was over. 

Also, if you were there and saw any crew guys lumbering around and thought to yourself, "man, those crew t-shirts are the definition of fresh," well that's because I designed them, silly. Phatty props to Melanie (pictured), who politely asked me to design a crew shirt with a tree on it, and when I gave her nothing resembling that, still got them made. I stole 6 of them so if you're anywhere in the XL - XXXL range, I literally got you covered. 

Final shout out goes to Heather, the mysterious exotic dancer featured behind All Time Low's performance. This classically trained ballerina thought she was auditioning for anything but the part of a stripper and ended up beating real strippers for the job of a stripper. Real strippers have bad balance because they're always leaning on something or hanging from something or sitting on my lap in Ridgewood, Queens and ballerinas rely on like 3 toes and can chill out on one foot and do their taxes without even moving. So yeah, she got the part of silhouetted dancer girl and didn't even freak out when I led her into our dungeon-like green screen studio, which is nothing more than an unfinished basement with broken light bulbs on the floor. It didn't seem so weird when I was in there alone, but I can't tell you how creepy I felt with her when I turned the boom box on and said "Dancin' time." Professional low point. BUT the result looks great and it's all because Heather, one month a New Yorker, was wicked cool.

The Woodies were right on. Best Woodies ever, and that includes next year too. Unless I'm doing those visuals also.