Alumni collaborate on hit music video

More than a dozen Emersonians worked on a music video that has been getting a lot of Internet buzz. Directed by Bryan Schlam ’09 and produced by Aviv Russ ’10, the video was featured on Vimeo’s front page for almost a week, and selected by the site’s editors as a staff pick. It has received nearly 90,000 plays in 20 days.

The video is for a song called “Chinatown,” by Los Angeles indie rock/pop band Kitten. It is the lead single from the group’s debut album Kill the Light (Atlantic Records).

Kitten – “Chinatown” from Bryan Schlam on Vimeo.

“I was influenced to create this video through various [photos] and moving images I had collected over the years,” said Schlam. “The idea was to take the looping qualities that these images already have and bring them into a musical canvas, remapping and looping the actions to the pulse of a song.”

Pat Scola ’09 was the director of photography. Other Emersonians who worked on the video in a variety of roles include: Tyler Bell ’09, Stephen Chang ’10, Drew Cookson ’09, Nate Cormier ’09, Maggie Dillon ’09, Hannah Elder ’09, Luke Hanlien ’10, Alex Keller ’10, Jenna Lyng ’10,Trevor Morrow ’10, Elie Smolkin ’09, and John Weselcouch ’08.

“We went about bringing on our friends as crew, just like in college, except with financing,” said Russ. “It’s awesome to get to work with talented people, and better when they are friends.”