The art of play

>> Montreal filmmaker Benjamin Steiger
Levine gets a career kick from YouTube

PROCESS-ORIENTED: Steiger Levine

by SCOTT C

Looking back, 2007 turned out to be a great year for Mile-End filmmaker Benjamin Steiger Levine, who spent most of his time finishing up a short film called Zackary Samuel: Illusionist, before signing on to direct the video for Socalled’s “You Are Never Alone.” The video, which has had over 1.6 million views on YouTube to date, features an array of entirely charming visuals, mesmerizing special effects and an identically moulded head of Socalled, made by special effects puppetry whiz C.J. Goldman.

“Production-wise, I really only had these two projects going,” he explains, “and I’d mostly been doing fiction and hadn’t thought of doing too much experimental or creative stuff. I was actually finding the fiction a little hard because you’re always working towards a specific narrative goal. You’re always working so that everything lines up to create an emotion in the end. When I started the Socalled project, it felt liberating because even though I think there’s an atmosphere and an overall effect, you get caught up more in the process of it and it’s kind of fun to enjoy the process and not worry so much about where it’s going to end up.”

As a kid, Ben enjoyed drawing, playing with Lego, Play-Do and plasticine, and found working on this project allowed him to rediscover that playful side of creating and building things. The project took a while to complete, and although he got lost in the post-production, the results have been gratifying. Since its debut on YouTube in September, Boards magazine, the leading industry publication about the international business of commercial production, has featured the video, and Ben has started getting phone calls.

“I had an interview with Partizan, the people who represent Michel Gondry, and that was pretty wild, but a company in London called Colonel Blimp has been sending me pitches for music videos, which is very exciting,” he says. Blimp’s roster of directors is responsible for videos for artists like Luke Vibert, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, the Rapture, TV on the Radio, M.I.A. and Kano, so look for Ben’s creative moxie on the small screen in the year to come.

“I really enjoy the music video thing, and I’m going to go with that for now. It’s a way to explore things that are sometimes technical and exciting, like when you’re a kid playing around. They also allow you to get a feeling across without having to attach it to a story.”