Hans Lo does a lot of work, but most recently he’s been responsible for the best music videos I’ve seen all year, Invasion’s last few promos and a Ramesses video.
They’re these amazing video collages featuring all the best bits from shoddy schlock horror movies from the seventies and eighties, they’re so ridiculously watchable that I promise you could watch one through 20 times even if you hated metal, and if you liked it, you could probably watch it through at least twice that. Here’s the Ramesses video, blown up pretty big, just to prove my point:
Hypnotic, I think you’ll agree.
I was into these videos enough to go and hang out with Hans in his house in Peckham, not that that was a chore -Hans is very nice- but Peckham is a fucking long way away from where I live, which shows how much I believe in what he’s doing. We hung out for an hour or two and talked about records, films, weed and his bb gun ‘Gunny’.
Hi Hans, how would you describe what you do all day?
Hmm…tough one to start with, might have to just go with my usual statement “a cinephile who is passionate about making films” (that’s quite lame though, I need a new one soon).
How do you make those movie collage videos?
Basically watching a lot of films, and I mean A LOT! A typical ‘research’ period for making a video would consist of watching 3 - 5 movies a day with plenty of tea and dope, for a week or two. I try to register a few scenes and dialogues that might be of interest then I film them off the telly as starting points and kinda just goes from there. Can’t really explain how the final video comes to what it is because I guess the way my hands react whilst editing is almost intuitive. What my eyes see triggers my hands to react without any motive or reason. Ok, maybe sometimes I have intentions for what the edit will look like but for example in ‘Khali Mist’, I’ve discovered more keying techniques later on in the editing process. By the end of the 4 months, the beginning part of the video looks, to me anyway, slightly out of place with the latter part. So I guess depending on what I’ve learned or any stimuli to the senses, the path of the video goes wherever it wants to go. (I don’t know, I could be over analyzing it).
Do you particularly like making metal videos?
I haven’t made enough to say I like it yet but it’s definitely more enjoyable than making other music related videos. Still trying to find one that seals the deal, maybe if Eyehategod was on the cards then I will be loving making metal videos.
How did you end up making them?
Well it started with the Black Project series, then nervously approached Marek from Invasion about making one for them. After that got hooked up with Ramesses and here I am.
What’s the Black Project?
Me quite literally trying to put 2 of my favourite things together: Horror films and Metal. I can’t play any instruments (except for flute when I was 10, but that’s not very metal) and I don’t have any money to make a horror film that I want to make. Therefore I was trying to botch the two together in the best possible way and see what happens, kinda like exercising my demons.
You’re pretty into the music then…
Wholly devoted to it! I listened to nu-metal bands like Deftones, Mudvayne and Static-X as a teen, Back then it definitely was a form of escapism and rebellion from the boarding school regime. Then I rediscovered more of its roots and depth after reading ‘Lord of Chaos’ a few years back because shitty dubstep and backpack hip hop was getting a little tedious. So this second coming of love for metal has driven me to actively work in this circle of amazingly genuine and heart-warming metal heads. Haven’t delved too deep into the universes of thrash and death yet as there are still so much to explore with stoner doom and black metal.