My latest music video was released yesterday for the Italian artist Francesco Novara, featuring vocals by Violette, and starring members of Quest Crew (Steve, Feng, & Ryanimay). Created in a few days in the mountains around Los Angeles along with DP Ryan L. Brown, and using a good amount of footage from the GoPro cameras (mixed with the 5D), this is one of my favorite dance videos to date. Editing/Coloring was done by Tristan Kneschke @ Exit Edit.

For those of you interested, a link to the free download of the track is here: http://soundcloud.com/francesconovara

This was also one of those projects where I put the cart in front of the horse. In this case, the cart was the concept and then footage of the dancers, and the horse turned out to be Francesco Novara (Francesco, you may edit this on your own blog to read “Italian Stallion”). Having the idea to attach the cameras to the dancers on a flight out West, I couldn’t wait to throw it into production (literally, as you’ll see). So regardless of the fact that I didn’t have a musical track for this video, I shot the footage anyway. Once complete, Francesco Novara came to the rescue creating this beautiful piece of music. Vocals by Violette topped it all off.

Planet of the Apes Party Fun Time is still going strong. Apparently others also wanted to see a film that showcases Charlton Heston with some glow sticks, turntables, and his insatiable urge to find the ultimate dance party.

Thanks to MTV’s NextMovie.com, CBSNews.com, NYMag.com, laughingsquid.com, BuzzFeed, and BoingBoing for featuring the video. And also a special thanks to the very new DailyDot.com for the interview about the project.

Atmosphere Proximity wrote some goodness for us to film for the campaign of this year’s Big Ad Gig.

The deliciousness paid off with a front page feature on Creativity-Online.com this week.

It was a pleasure to work with DJ Caruso (Eagle Eye, Disturbia, I Am Number 4) again to create the behind the scenes for his latest project “INSIDE,” a social film sponsored by Toshiba + Intel, starring Emmy Rossum, and DP’d by Mauro Fiori (Avatar).

East Pleasant Pictures likes a good excuse to throw a party, so we did a wine, cheese, and bananas get together to screen my latest (in collaboration with EP*Vision): a side project entitled “Planet of the Apes Party Fun Time.” Good showing of people, fun times, and the likes of MTV’s NextMovie.com did some features on the project.

I finally had a chance to bring together two of my favorite artists that I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with for the following project. RJD2′s “Might As Well Step Forward” features the dancers from Quest Crew in this music video that I directed/filmed. It was premiered on MTV U and www.mtvU.com, with homepage features on MTV.com, Vevo.com, Video of the Day on Spinner.com, and other various features, bloggings, and write-ups.

Editing/Coloring completed by Tristan Kneschke, with a special thanks to Pleasant Post for the generous use of their coloring facilities. Intro illustrations provided by AJ Purdy.

The music video I directed for Violette’s single “Insomnie” went live today, and is available on iTunes. Brush up on your French lessons and check it out.

Had a chance to team up with Andrew David Watson, who is a wonderful DP and good friend of mine, on this video as well. Every time we meet up for a shoot or test shoot, I seem to try and mess up his beautiful images. This time, the “foggy” effect in the video was added by throwing a 25cent plastic bag in front of the lens to film the footage of the city. Now how’s that for efficiently using thousands of dollars worth of camera gear?

Violette photo shoot

My Life as Liz, season 2 airs on MTV! Check it out: Tuesday nights at 11pm EST. Full episodes are online as well, but here’s one of my favorite moments, a quick web exclusive that I shot on a road trip to Austin from the Ft. Worth area. Lady Gaga provided the soundtrack, the “nerd herd” provided the choreography. I love these guys.

The screenplay for the television pilot “The Start-Up” is now complete, co-written with Donovan Baddley. It contains all you need to know about running a successful business and time machines, or successfully running a time machine while not ruining your business… or something like that. Yes, it’s sort of chaotic. Now if we only could cast the real life versions of Pinky and the Brain, we’d be set.

James Casey photo shoot

Homeboy Sandman’s “The Carpenter” makes it overseas with airplay on MTV UK and MTV Latin America.

I spent a large part of 2010 bouncing around art colleges and coffee shops in Brooklyn, and learning how to line dance in Texas (that is, all due to filming My Life as Liz, season 2). With the premier on MTV right around the corner, the promos have finally started popping up online. Enjoy!

It’s been a very hectic year with projects… so I decided to take some vacation time with “cheese” as the common theme (not much unlike this post). Here’s my favorite panoramic from the trip to France and the other from Wisconsin.

Homeboy Sandman’s “The Carpenter” music video premiered this month. You can catch it on tv on MTV U and online at www.mtvU.com.

So far, it’s stayed at number #1 on www.mtvU.com for a few weeks now, and love keeps coming in from features on sites like NahRight.com, theFADER.com, videos.antville.org, and more.

In production on a music video for Violette’s new single “Insomnie.”

Production on Homeboy Sandman’s new music video for “The Carpenter” is wrapped!

For some reason, MTV Iggy chose to keep this clip out of the final Subway “Keepin’ it Fresh” video that I shot. I don’t know, I think it would have fit in nicely. Featuring Hok from Quest Crew. At least it was swept off of the proverbial cutting room floor and sent my way.

Final videos can be seen here.

I came across some band photography that I did a few years ago, and realized that I miss the world of still images. Maybe it’s time to throw that back into the mix again? Here’s two from one of my favorite shoots with “The Shy.”

Happy photos of happy people doing happy things makes me, well… happy. I’ve been filming another tv series with MTV over the past few months. The majority of the season has been shot here in New York, but for a good six weeks we set up shop near Fort Worth, Texas. If you find yourself in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, I strongly suggest you check out an evening or two or three at Billy Bob’s. This photo documents one of the last days of what will be known as “Brad’s Pre-Cowboy Boot Era.”

The magical food court music booth…

This morning I thought… “Brad, why not extract the mating dance scene from your short film “Hey Ted, whatdoyouthinkaboutmegettingoutofherealittleearlytoday?”, ya know, the one with the Euro Trance song “Ovulation Sweeps the Nation” as the soundtrack… and post it on your blog?” Then I switched to the seat across from me and nodded thoughtfully while stroking my beard, “Nice idea, nice idea indeed.”

I’m very happy to be joining the roster of commercial directors at ka-chew! this month!

I’m also quickly finding that since their name contains an exclamation point in it, it’s very difficult to either A) write a sentence where I too would like to use an exclamation point, or B) finish off a sentence using their name in any way that is less than ecstatic.

While I’m a live action/low-fi effects guy and not an animator like many of their directors, perhaps I’ll finally be able to bring my “flying tongue kid” test animation idea to life sometime this year {exclamation point} I also must sincerely say that I’m very excited to be working with the creative director John Andrews and alongside some very talented people on the roster. Will be a great pool of people to continually learn from.

While heading up to MTV in Times Square, I stopped for a quick moment as I tried to live out my own version of American Beauty’s “plastic bag blowing in the wind” scene. My object lacked the physical motion of the scene, and so far I have been unsuccessful in using this image to make one of my neighbors fall in love with me (the year is still young though), but I still feel it’s a photo worthy of posting.

In my path I saw this dirty tissue resting perfectly on top of a decaying twig of sorts, to make a little rose. To my excitement, and the bewilderment of those trying to walk past me (and perhaps those reading this), I then ran to catch a green piece of paper that blew past my way. Grass! And then, my “rubbish rose” scene was complete.

I purchased a little Sony cyber-shot camera recently, and was pleasantly surprised with the panoramic function. As you pan the camera, it digitally stitches together the photos to make one, wide panoramic. I wanted to test it out, so besides the obvious scenic shots, I also gave it a go on…

my delayed airplane’s cockpit-

film crew while driving along in Florida-

and, rather unsuccessfully, on a sexy pose of myself. For those of you who have not seen me in person, let me reassure you that my body is not freakishly disproportionate, but that this is rather a side effect of the “digital stitching process”-

DJ and producing legend RJD2 just released his new album, Colossus, in January. I directed/produced a music video for the track “The Glow.” As you’ll see, many toys went into the making of this video, which I mostly shopped for in 99cent stores across America on my other gigs. I’m just happy now that the project is over, that I no longer have to go through the security line with a stash full of barbie dolls in my bag. That got a little weird.

To the dismay of most New Yorkers, and the utter joy of myself, it snowed last night. Never, ever tell a New York native that you are excited about this, such insolence isn’t tolerated very well. That said, I can’t really help myself…

My local watering hole of choice is a few blocks away from my apartment, on the walk home I successfully drew smiley faces on almost every car. I say “almost every” solely because of the one with the flashing blue Viper alarm light that I didn’t care to get tangled up with. I contemplated gathering forces with others to cover the entire city, but chose to return home and watch this video over and over again instead.

I sort of, kind of, maybe… got too close to one of the dancers in Quest Crew while filming them for the Subway’s “Keeping it Fresh” MTV Iggy collab and broke the handle of the camera at the end of the video. If you are a potential client reading this, please don’t be alarmed, I only break a camera about once every few years, so things should be ok for awhile.

New York! Brad Hasse and Bradonio Productions now call New York home once again. Things started up bi-coastal between September to December, and then I finally made the official move in December. I’ve been warned heavily about settling into the city for the winter, but so far actually love it. Life is good with seasons and some extremes. Although I’ve been on the road for most of it, half my destinations haven’t exactly been much warmer either. So, here’s me tipping a proverbial glass to winter, so far… your icy touch makes me feel oh so good.

I’ve been shooting a series for MTV which has me traveling on the road quite heavily (I’m basically just a well paid hobo with a camera). Between all the connecting flights along with puddle jumpers galore, I believe I’ve seen the people of the world turn into tiny little ants on lift-off and return to a 1:1 scale once again upon landing over 100 times in the past few months. And every single time when I have a window seat, like a 10 year old kid, I get excited and have my face plastered to the window. Don’t think that swift change of perspective will ever get old for me.

Back on the road again… this will be a 24 hour travel day to make it back out to the south of Italy to present the work I created for the Maratea Film Festival. I’ve already had my “fall asleep before the plane even takes off” nap, and now it’s time for a $5 sandwich with meat that, if it weren’t for me putting it in my belly, could have survived even an atomic war.

I fly, I ride a train, I hop in a car, I drop off my bags, and then it’s off to the festival an hour later. To kick off the festival there is a video by Francis Ford Coppola on the region of Basilicata (the region in which the town of Maratea calls home). And up next will be the work that I created for the festival. Who would have thought that my inability to properly pronounce words in Italian would have progressively be turning into such a good career opportunity? Well, Arnold Schwarzenegger did it in America, I mine as well capitalize on it in Italy.

Just came across this write up again that OpenFilm.com was kind enough to do on my channel. Shortly after they awarded the work with the filmmaker of the month award. That makes me happy, because until then I wasn’t really sure if people would enjoy videos about ovulating wives, metaphysical coffee breaks, and shamefully misguided language learners.

30+ sailors headed out this week from Plymouth, England… westbound to America past icebergs, seasickness, weeks of solitude, wet and cold, and sleep deprivation for the OSTAR 2009 cross Atlantic solo man/woman race. I, however, did not put my body through such torture, but rather a few hours of extreme fun filming them during their departure for the “Out There” documentary. I found out there’s nothing like using a boat as a dolly.