Featured Visualizers / The Vision Behind the scenes!

Celebrity hiphop photographer John Richard has been on his photography game for years, check his site and blog out.

http://www.johnricard.com/
http://photojohnricard.blogspot.com/



John Richard has been shooting hip hop artists onstage and in the studio in NYC for well over ten years. Artists go to him because he understands who they are. Their music doesn't all sound the same to him. He knows the difference between Trey Songz and B.G. He understands how to shoot each artist the way they should be shot.




Westwood - 'Meet the dj' Radio 1; Schooling you on how the music musiness is now, online driven.
http://www.youtube.com/user/timwestwoodtv
http://www.timwestwood.com/

Tim Westwood Interview Telling Lupe Fiasco "Your Chain Game Is Weak"
http://www.lupethefiasco.blogspot.com/

Legendary Videographers!



Legendary Music Video Director...Hype Williams...
http://www.hypewilliams.com/



Hype" Williams was so named by writing partner Muse One, who taught him the ins and outs of graffiti. He was also mentored by "Fargo" in graffiti culture. Williams began his film-making career when he left Adelphi University in Garden City, NY, and joined with fellow graffiti writers Mike "Muse" Alexander and Ricardo "Phyz" Springer to create SOTA (State of the Art Productions). Other notable SOTA members include San Diego, Ca graffiti kings and two time EMMY award winning artist, Ken "Quasar" Thompson and Chris "Sake" Kinney. Under that umbrella SOTA created logo and album cover designs for many hip-hop artists of the time.



Their big break came when they began working with Classic Concepts Video Productions. Lionel "Vid Kid" Martin & VJ Ralph McDaniels used SOTA for art direction in many of their videos and created Hype's first opportunity with the "Filmakers With Attitude" moniker (FWA), which was Hype's first video company. SOTA's development of the "Rhythm Is The Master" promotion for Polygram/Van Gibbs/Chuck Chillout Album project projected SOTA and Hype's artistic foresight ahead of the rest. The writing and drawing of the comic book, with Michael "The Talent" Laing as main artist, set SOTA ahead of the pack, as their work on the video of the same title broke ground for animation in a hip-hop video.

Williams is notable for creating a number of groundbreaking and successful music videos for hip hop and R&B artists such as Craig Mack ("Flava In Ya Ear"), LL Cool J ("Doin' It"), Nas ("If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)", "Street Dreams"), Missy Elliott ("The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", "She's a Bitch"), Busta Rhymes ("Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See"), Kelis ("Caught Out There"), and Jay-Z ("Big Pimpin'").

In 1998, he directed his first feature film, Belly.

Williams "signature style", although it is not exhibited in all videos, involves shots placed in regular widescreen ratio, while another set of shots is placed in the spaces which would normally be left blank in widescreen ratio videos. Videos that use this style include "Diamonds on my Neck" by Smitty, "I Ain't Heard of That" by Slim Thug, "So Sick" by Ne-Yo, "In My Hood" by Young Jeezy, "Check Up On It" by Beyoncé, and many others.

Awards Williams has received for his video work include the Billboard Music Video Award for Best Director of the Year (1996), the Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video of the Year (1996) for Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah," the NAACP Image Award (1997), the 8th annual MVPA Award for Black Music Achievement (1997), MTV Video Music Award in the Best Rap Video (1998) category for Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video (1999) for TLC's "No Scrubs", Winner of the BET Award for Best Director (2006) for Kanye West's “Gold Digger,”[2]

In 2006, Williams was honored by MTV with its Video Vanguard Award, presented in honor of his achievements, as Kanye West would put it, as a "film maker." He received a standing ovation.[3]

[edit] Videography

Don’t let his party-hearty, backfield-in-motion clips for Ghostface Killah’s “Cherchez La Ghost” and Mystikal’s James Brown jam, “Shake Ya Ass,” fool you – Little X, born Julien Lutz, is one serious dude.
“I’ve been drawing all my life,” the twenty-four-year-old Toronto native says. “I wasn’t growing up thinking about film. I thought I was going to be a graphic designer.” As a teenager, Lutz acquired his nickname because of his outspoken nature. He was deep into the local hip-hop scene, designing party fliers and logos. He moved out of his house at sixteen, sleeping on the floor of an older friend’s recording studio with a bunch of other kids. “There was a lot of hip-hop, a lot of weed, a lot of girls,” he recalls. His life took a turn when he landed a job at MuchMusic, Canada’s version of MTV. “I was assisting the producer on a show called Rap City, and that got me interested in the [video] medium,” he says.



After a few months, X landed an internship in New York with Hype Williams, the top director in hip-hop videos. “I liked his style,” X says. His five-month internship turned into a five-year apprenticeship, during which he did everything from drawing storyboards to fetching coffee. Since then, he has directed videos for some of the biggest names in the business: DMX (“What’s My Name?”), Mystikal (“Shake Ya Ass”), Ice Cube (“Until We Rich’), Chris Rock (“No Sex”) and the Roots (“What You Want”).


Little X BET The 5 Interview

“I’ve always been the young guy,” he says. “So it feels weird now when I’m not. I’ve worked with artists who are even younger than me. Aaliyah is twenty-one; Eve is twenty-one; the girls in Blaque, who I’m working with next week, are all like seventeen and eighteen. I’m just like, ‘Whoa.’” X is versatile, with a mutable style; his skill lies in an understanding of the songs he conceptualizes. His clips smoothly run the gamut from flossy (“Cherchez La Ghost”) to cartoony (Redman’s “I’ll Bee Dat”) and satirical (“No Sex”). “I get into songs that allow me to do a concept or look,” he says. “My background is illustration, and my appeal to film has always been the visual side. I listen and listen to a song until something clicks. I’ve done videos without feeling the click and it just didn’t flow right.”

X hopes to work in features, but not too soon. “The video directors I admire who have moved into movies, like David Fincher, took their time,” he says. “They didn’t grab the first script they were shown, like, ‘Hey, Eminem and Snoop are doing a movie about farting!” – Anthony Bozza