“If I were to do the same thing in the U.K., people would politely refuse,” says Scott Weintrob about recruiting dancers for his video. “In L.A. people line up to do it.”
All you need to draw a crowd of movie stars in Hollywood is a boom box and a video camera. That’s a good thing for London director Scott Weintrob. In 2004 he marched into the heart of the city to shoot a video for the re-release of C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” He was armed with only a Canon digicam, a PowerBook G4 and a powerful portable stereo. He shot and edited all his footage and burned the completed video to a DVD within a week.
“The Mac just makes life so much easier,” he says. “There was a time when filmmaking was a closed industry — you had to have lots of money and equipment to shoot something. The idea of Apple is that anybody can go shoot footage and edit it and show it to a worldwide audience.”
“There was a time when filmmaking was a closed industry — you had to have lots of money and equipment to shoot something. The idea of Apple is that anybody can go shoot footage and edit it and show it to a worldwide audience.”
A Camera, a Boom Box and Marilyn Monroe
C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance now)” is more recognizable today than Bach’s “Minuet.” The track smashed the charts in 1991 (along with “Here We Go” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm...”) and rocked countless commercials and movies in the early ‘90s. When Megabop Records asked Weintrob to make a video for the song’s re-release, he knew exactly what to do. “The song is called ‘Everybody Dance Now,’” he says. “Sometimes the best ideas are simple ones.”
Taking It to the Streets
Weintrob took his camera and a boom box to the streets of Hollywood and asked people how they would dance to the track. He didn’t have any trouble finding performers. Homer Simpson, Gandalf, Legolas, Spiderman, Super Girl and Marilyn Monroe — people dressed as them, that is — materialized to play starring roles. A man in metallic green paint, a tree frog, a muscle man in Speedos, three cheerleaders and several break dancers played supporting roles.
“If I were to do the same thing in the U.K., people would politely refuse,” says Weintrob. “In L.A. people line up to do it. People love to be the center of attention. Where else in the world are you going to find those sorts of people?”
The director shot the footage with a rented Canon XL1 in two days. He popped into the local Apple Store in Los Angeles and bought an external DVD writer, a Wacom tablet and a FireWire hub. He tethered everything to his 12-inch PowerBook G4 and a LaCie external hard drive and used Final Cut Pro to stitch the footage together. The video will air on MTV worldwide in 2005. Megabop will use the money it makes from the video to support up-and-coming artists, says Weintrob.
From Fashion to Film School
“Some people know what they want to do,” says Weintrob. “I always knew that I wanted to direct films — it was always a logical progression for me.”
A supporting character in “Everybody Dance Now.” The stars included, among others, Homer Simpson, Gandalf, Marilyn Monroe.
Weintrob shot his first music videos and short films near his North London home when he was in primary school. He had a blast, but he knew he would need industry experience to get that personalized director’s chair.
When he was 15, Weintrob got a job at East London’s Click Studios, which produces glossies for major fashion magazines such as Vogue, Marie-Claire, Dazed and Confused, ID and The Face. Building lighting rigs for photographers Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Albert Watson and David Simms, he got a behind-the-scenes peek at their techniques. “They always showed me what they were doing,” he says. “I learned a lot about photography and lighting before I even went to film school.”
Shadowing Figgis
The knowledge he gleaned from Click allowed him to shine in technical classes at the University of London, but a chance encounter would make things even brighter for the young director. During his first year he met director Mike Figgis. The two quickly formed a relationship and Weintrob eventually shadowed Figgis during the filming and production of “Leaving Las Vegas,” “One Night Stand,” “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” and “Timecode.”
“Figgis was great at making people feel passionate about what they do,” says Weintrob. “And at the end of the day it’s really about instilling that passion in people. They should look forward to getting up and going into work.”
Weintrob used what he learned to create a reel of clips that pushed him into the spotlight. He showed the reel to a panel of judges at Fuji Film, who gave him a scholarship to direct a 15-minute short. The film won the Fuji “Most Suitable for Theatrical Release” award and was screened across Europe. It gave Weintrob the exposure he needed to launch his career. He made his first music video for the band Dodgy and went on to direct others for The Music, Elbow, Faithless, Cousteau, Venus Hum and Jakatta.
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