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The Cutting Edge

Whistler Secondary Grad Jaron Albertin making his name in video

We’re well into June now and the end of another school year is in sight.

For the Whistler Arts Council this means another round of student art awards.

This year, a Grade 12 graduate from each of Whistler Secondary and Xit’olacw Community Schools will receive a $500 scholarship, and students from Whistler Secondary, Xit’olacw, Spring Creek, Myrtle Philip and Alta Lake Schools will receive bursaries up to $250 to be paid toward a summer arts-related camp or program.

The Arts Council has been recognizing student excellence since 1987, making for nearly two decades worth of past recipients.

In the spirit of the season, Pique arts reporter Shelley Arnusch tracked one past recipient down, all the way to the cutting edge…

Filmmaker Jaron Albertin has what is arguably the world’s strangest calling card.

Set to the dark and tedious sound of German techno music, a crew of sweaty, muscular men clad in neon yellow shorts perform synchronized cardio-aerobics with pastel ice-cream cone graphics above their heads.

It’s a music video in format, but for Albertin, it was simply an art project. He heard Ascii Disko’s music and obtained permission to use it by e-mailing the band directly. He then went in search of retro workout footage, finding the circa 1980s Calgary-produced community access TV program Men In Action at a library. The two elements were then cut together with some graphic embellishments.

The video turned out to be as compelling as it is ridiculous. It was exhibited in an art show at Vancouver gallery The Crying Room, and also chosen for RESFEST 2003 (a kind of Oscars for the experimental digital video set) last October. Its irony was not lost on the judging panel, who awarded Albertin best music video honours.

The exposure led to a spot on the roster of Softcitizen, an international video production house in Toronto, where the 25-year-old filmmaker’s experimental, European sensibility has flourished. He’s produced music videos for Solvent and Cut Copy and recently wrapped up production on an installation in a new advertising campaign for the Diesel fashion house.

Designed to be a series of dreamscapes, the advertising campaign allowed the selected filmmakers’ imaginations to run wild. Albertin doesn’t disappoint – his contribution involves an amorous naked couple on a galloping horse. He considers it one of the best things he’s done so far.

He may be directing international ad campaigns for innovative fashion houses now, but like Albertin says, a filmmaker’s "break out" is a media construct. There are always years of hard work that led them to that point and there will continue to be years of hard work ahead.

Behind Albertin are early years in White Rock, B.C. and a move up to Whistler at the age of 13.

A member of Whistler Secondary’s first grad class of 1997, he was the recipient of several awards, among them a Whistler Arts Council award recognizing his drawing skills and a scholarship to Vancouver’s Capilano College. He used the Cap College scholarship for a one-year film program. Aside from a media arts course in high school and some casual footage of his pro-rider snowboard pals in Whistler, Cap College was essentially his foray into the world of film.

The following summer he landed work with a cousin’s production company in Portland, Ore., where he said his interest in film and video production really began to grow. The heightened interest led to more training, namely the two year Broadcast Communications program at BCIT, after which he purchased a camera and a computer equipped with industry standard Final Cut Pro editing software.

Post-BCIT he worked extensively as a background extra and a production assistant before he landed his first job, editing a feature film (albeit a low budget feature film) called Spook.

"It was quite a nightmare, actually, but I learned a lot out of that," Albertin notes. It’s a sentiment that has defined his career so far: learn as you go, and draw value even from the most disastrous projects.

It was after Spook that he began his foray into the world of music video production, working with Vancouver partners in rhyme Checkmate and Concise. The insular West Coast hip-hop scene eventually led to a fellow music video filmmaker named Wendy Morgan, who asked him to edit a project: the debut video for West Coast rappers Swollen Members.

The experience was a good one all around. Morgan and Albertin worked well together and the Members were stoked enough on the final product to hire them back for their follow-up video, for the song Fuel Injected .

As anyone with any knowledge of Canadian pop culture already knows, the group and the video became a smashing success, commandeering the charts and taking Best Independent Video honours at the 2002 MuchMusic video awards. Suddenly Morgan’s name was turning heads, and along for the ride on the rollercoaster was her No. 1 editor.

Albertin’s continued association with Morgan drew him eastward to Toronto in the summer of 2002. He went out for one particular job, but on completion, the work kept coming. There were more jobs than he knew what to do with and more opportunities than he could ever conceive of back home, so he made the move permanently.

It’s proven to be a good move. Along with the accolades from RESFEST 2003 and his hiring with Softcitizen, he picked up a MuchMusic video award nomination of his own in 2003 for editing on Treble Charger’s high-octane video Hundred Million – another collaboration with Morgan.

He’s also the editor behind the recently released Nelly Furtado project Forca. Mainstream Canadian pop-darlings aside, his own aesthetic takes a more surrealist form: white walls, stark lighting, fragmented frames, and perspective-shifting distance shots.

"There’s a lot of elements of clash," he muses. "Everything, when you look at it seems very surface but there’s a dark undertone to all of it. Quite creepy."

It’s an aesthetic that suits the Euro state of mind, he confirms, admitting that his next step is to take his skills even further east across the Atlantic.

In his own view, his progression eastward is indicative of his "360 degree turn" from his Whistler lifestyle, which he defines as laid back and mountain-centric. Despite the innate creativity he says he found in the Whistler/Vancouver skateboard community, he personally had to find his artistic niche elsewhere.

Even so, he says his eastern acquaintances comment on his distinctly West Coast demeanour.

And for other Whistler teens dreaming of a similar career path in video-film production his best advice is to "just get out there." A lack of fancy film school is more than compensated for with passion and creativity, especially in this era of accessible filmmaking technology.

"With the availability of having your own equipment and your own camera, if you want to get into film, there’s no better way than just to do it yourself," he insists.

"If you have the drive and the motivation to do that alone, then you’ve got it. If you’re doing it, you’re doing it."

Ultimately, he says, he’d like to focus on more projects like the Ascii Disko retro workout video.

"I’m really into a lot of video installation work; I’d love to get into doing more video art," he says. "That would be my ideal job. To do video installation work and be an artist."