AUSTIN LYNN AUSTIN

I love this clip. I would like to make an entire video for them like this. Can anyone make this happen? I’m not sure who took the photo but JahTyler on youtube shot the clip.

KOVAROVA { pronounce with long Õ }

A lot of people ask me what the name of my production company means and how to pronounce it. Kovarova is the name of the most famous European Vampire Queen. She is over 1,000 yrs old. I found her (actually she found me) in Prague about 15 years ago, in the basement labyrinth of Obecni dum. Kova is of the royal vampire Zasvorka bloodline and often hunted the neighborhoods of Vinohrady. She was the mistress of King Wenceslas IV in the 14th century. Her castle was burnt down in 1455 and she has been in exile ever since.

In the 1600s, Kova returned to her birthplace Paris, where she was a mistress to King Louis XIV. Louis kept her at Versailles for several years. At Versailles, she met the Austrian empress and fellow vampire Maria Theresa who later gave birth to Marie Antoinette. She was a mentor to Marie and stood in the shadows watching while she was executed. At the time, some said Marie was killed by guillotine because Kova had infected her. It was also rumored that Marie did not allow the consummation of her marriage to Louis XVI because the vampires did not want to infect a “dim-witted” king.

After Marie’s death, Kova fled France and found herself in the aristocratic underworld of Vienna, by invitation of Princess Isabella de Parma. It was a troubled time as Vienna was invaded by France soon after she arrived. The Austrians saw her arrival as a curse and cast her out of the city. She fled north and found herself once again in the City of Prague. She remained in Prague until the start of WWII. During the war she moved between Berlin and Geneva and lusted after the blood of the powerful and greedy. At the end of WWII, she wandered Scandinavia until 1989 and then returned to Prague when the Berlin wall fell. That is where we met in the early 1990s.

I had a studio in the lower floor of the Obecni dum. The studio was located at the front entry of a series of dark rooms and corridors that went several floors underground. There was no sunlight down there. One evening as I was leaving the studio late, I heard the voice of a woman coming from the darkness of one of the corridors. The light from an old tungsten bulb hanging above the hall began to dull and brighten. I could see her faint image in the darkness and I walked toward her. I thought she was lost or was someone that worked in the building. She said hello in Czech, “ahoj.” I said “hello” in English and she began to speak English fluently. She was/is or I should say, looks like, she is 30 yrs old and is strikingly beautiful. She is nothing like the murderous, zombielike types portrayed in movies. She told me that we knew each other and I believed her. I invited her to join me in the USA. Kova is currently in New York City where she has rebuilt her network and has reunited with several other European vampires. I am the only one allowed to know where she lives.

The above illustration by Manuel Rebollo is the closest image I can find that represents how she looks. It’s impossible to take a picture of her. Perhaps Manuel has seen her before.

Obecni dum, where we met and where her castle stood from 1307-1455.

It’s a little late to do a 2009-in-review post. I’ll just say it was busy. And it’s been a stormy winter. I think/hope the last snowstorm of the winter has passed and spring should get underway. I look back on the last few months and I’m reminded of several crazy overnight post sessions. Editing into dawn and having night turn into day without any transition other than export/compress/upload. I’m really lucky that I work with cool people that are willing to undergo that with me over and over again.

2010 has spun into motion and it’s turbulent. We have had two major earthquakes in a month. I’m earning free flights rapidly. For some reason, the building’s boiler is working too good and it feels like summer in here. And I found myself laughing with a cab driver the other night, even though we couldn’t understand what one another was saying.

Hopefully, the ground stops shaking and things flow wonderfully into spring.

It was a great way to end last year’s run with this video. Congratulations, Marilyn.

Now playing: Green Pink Caviar at MoMA, New York

11 W 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
Ongoing

The first week of November brings us to shooting another Artists In Action series for our favorite makeup company. Once again, we are going to the Tribeca Skyline Studios and setting up a four-camera shoot. The angle I took on this was to create an environment where the makeup artist gets to do what they do best and capture it with four cameras operated by some of the best indie film shooters in town. We have enlisted the talents of up-and-coming dps/filmmakers - Kai Leung, Julian King, Chris Teague and Bob Boothe. With the right environment and the right talent, all should run as smooth and with the best result as the last time we did this. I’m looking forward to it.

Another season has arrived. Last year’s Halloween Fantasticals video for M.A.C was such a success with their audience that we set out to make another one this year. Once again, I enlisted the musical talents of Omar Ajluni and went for a tribal score to match the sequential stills and frequent frames. M.A.C’s audience has fully embraced the piece and, hopefully, we inspired several to get their makeup kits out and have some fun this year.

M.A.C says: Spooky-kooky to ga-ga gorgeous, the top looks of Halloween are here as five M∙A∙C Senior Artists demonstrate how monstrously fun and devilishly doable our looks can be!

This project was like a jam session, a riff on graphics and stills. My motion graphics artist and I were playing the juxtaposed computers like instruments or turntables.

M.A.C had just finished shooting the stills in the UK with Miles Aldridge. Toni Lakis at M.A.C set this in motion with a cool direction she wanted to go in and gave me the freedom to take it there. A great starting point was the track by Mika from Klein Records in Vienna. It had the right tempo and spoke the right language.

METAMORPHOSIS

Girls from outer space landed in Berry Behrendt’s Beaver street studio just in time for us to shoot this magazine promo. More candy for the eyes, devoid of narrative, but with large doses of energy, light and textures.

If I meet someone for the first time, say in my local French bistro, and they ask me – Austin what do you do? Instead of the default answer - video director, film maker etc… These days I just tell people “I sling eye candy for a living”. The next question is usually – what does that mean?