PORTFOLIO

Hi, I'm Alan, the sole creative behind MAX STUN and "You Are Here." My background is in creating short form video content for brands, products, film and tv. The visual album "You Are Here" will be my first music and video venture in which I have full artistic freedom.

WORK REEL

Here's some of my work as a video director, director of photography, editor, and producer. I cut more than my teeth making these gems:

It can be hard to feel like an artist when people keep telling you to put more logos on everything you make.

I've had some awesome creative opportunities, but I can count, on one hand, the projects I've worked on that had true artistic integrity.

Here are a few of them...

EVERY BREATH (2014)

This short was self-produced as an entry for a creative editing contest sponsored by Elias Music Library on Tongal. The contest challenged participants to create a 2 minute video using three or more tracks from the Elias library.

I had a weekend and $0 to shoot, edit, and submit this short. I'd been sitting on about 50 hours of family videos that I always wanted to use in a project. So I broke out my camera and a Home Depot dolly rig and asked my wife to operate camera while I practiced some asanas. The result was a therapeutic journey of self-reflection and self-realization that I hoped to pass on to the audience. The video piece won me a GoPro (which I sold to pay some bills) and got me on Elias Arts' editor roster.

This was one of the most personal projects I've shown publicly and, in a lot of ways, one of the most rewarding.

"TAKE ME" BY TIËSTO (2013)

This was the first music video I produced. I had to get creative with a limited budget, so I took an inventory of what I had access to. I always wanted to put my Datsun 280Z in a video and this was my chance. From there, the desert seemed like the easiest place to shoot without being bothered. We bought some smoke grenades, cast some friends, and called "Action!"

"MAGENTA SKY" BY ZHU (2018)

Here's a preview of a music video I recently produced. The assignment was a desert-themed, sci-fi portrait of technology and its effects on relationships and reality. Again, I got creative with the budget. I built a helmet showpiece to center the narrative around, used LED practical lighting to establish a futuristic setting, and a $12 watering can to create a rain shot.

A NEW FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT

In 2015, I joined a small company of six people whose mission was to "get YouTubers off YouTube." The model was to produce web show pilots created by popular YouTubers and sell them as series to a hungry digital content market. Of course, it wasn't 100% altruistic, but it "making YouTubers' dreams come true" was good enough for me.

What better way to put the trade skills I picked up cutting my teeth in commercials to use in a digital setting? I love the challenge of taking something rough, like a YouTube pilot, and making it look like it belongs on a bigger screen.

Here's a sizzle I made for New Form. This wasn't my favorite project, but it'll give you an idea of what the company did, and how I elevated it.

Frankly, I much preferred producing trailers at New Form to producing the sizzle reels. There's an art to crafting a compelling story in a compressed timeframe -- case in point, all the horrible feature films we've seen that we were lured into by incredible trailers.

THE FOURTH DOOR FULL TRAILER (2016)

Here's a trailer for a web series I produced and edited myself as the Creative Director at New Form.

ON MY OWN

My time at New Form was invaluable. I learned a lot about working in the digital space with digital talent, how powerful a tool social media is, and how important it is not to misuse it. But the most important thing I took with me when I left was the confidence to produce high-quality work, leading a team or on my own.

But my experiences, on a whole, aren't just for me to use and learn from; they're here to guide and inspire other talent and artists.

I hope MAX STUN "You Are Here" is a project that inspires everyone, viewers and creators alike, to love the things that they make and do.

Thanks for your consideration!