I have a confession: I have a man-crush. After you read this, you'll understand why. First, meet B. Storm. He's probably the newest Internet ASL movie video sensation. One look at his ASL music video of This is the new s**t by Marilyn Manson and I was hooked.
Storm, whose first name is Bjorn, didn't encounter his first deaf experience until seven years ago when he was in college and had a roommate who was deaf. For those of you who are new to B. Storm - he's hearing. But you wouldn't know it by watching the artistry of his ASL signs and how he masters translating English lyrics into ASL.
I first got in touch with Storm through e-mail after my wife blogged about him and I found his website and shot him an e-mail. He responded the same day, delighted to make my acquaintance. A native Wisconsinian, Storm, 26, now resides in San Diego. He started an interpreter training program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after meeting Deaf faculty members who saw he had potential after doing errands around campus for them. "To this day, I am still eternally grateful that they showed such support and pointed me in the right direction" Storm said in an e-mail to me.
Storm's passion lies with his hobbies of creating music videos and make-up artists. As seen on his website at www.stormfx.net, Storm has a variety of different talents and is adept at learning new techniques. Storm recently described how he learned how to do old age makeup for his must recent video, "Crazy" (by Gnarls Barkley). "...I went and searched online for some pointers and gave it a shot. It didn't turn out so well the first time, but now I knew what I was doing."
Storm credits artist Ani DiFranco as his inspiration behind his music (he first majored in music), and was inspired by Eric Malzkuhn's interpretation of "Jabberwocky", which goes to show that ASL can take shape anyplace and anywhere. However, his biggest inspiration is his mother, as he says: "Yes, I'm a mama's boy - and darn proud of it!"
When I ask him why he continues to produce these ASL music videos, Storm's response is that he loves what he is doing. "I'm having fun! I get to combine two of my greatest passions in life - my art, and my second language."
After watching (again) both music videos, I was amazed at what I saw the second time around. The lyrics translated into ASL, the costumes, make-up, and all the video editing, was a lot of work I was sure Storm had to do by himself complete his art. I asked Storm what goes into making a video. In a nutshell: a lot.
Storm explains to me what he did while making the "Crazy" video- he had to do several different scenes and tie them together. "I got whatever I had around my house for the scenes... I shopped online for the strait jacket, bought the therapist's chair from a store in town [and] bought wood paneling to do the scenes." Storm did the mental patient graffiti scene in "Crazy" first then painted over the graffiti with "thirteen coats" of terra cotta paint that is seen in the therapist scene. Storm says it can take up to twenty takes before he has what he needs.
Storm also produced and edited a time-lapse video of him applying make-up and transforming himself from a 20-something guy into a senior citizen with age-old wrinkles. The whole process took him two hours and he condensed it into a five-minute video.
"Armed with a pot of coffee," Storm started the editing process next. Knowing he hadn't seen his friends in "weeks" he took a break before starting this. "[Editing] is a very tedious process and causes a great deal of headaches. Nothing is perfect at this point and you wish you could go back and film again, but you make it work," Storm explains. "Editing alone for this video probably took me about twelve hours."
Storm does all of his work alone but occasionally has friends help him "get out of his strait jacket, or hold the video camera." He laughs at comments people leave on his video praising the "guys" who make it, knowing it's all him.
Storm's biggest pet peeve is ignorance. "I was ignorant about a great many things then set my sights on opening my mind, and continuing to question, learn, and investigate until the day I die." Oh, he also hates these small ketchup packets-- "And I really hate that we haven't invented the double-sized ketchup packet yet. I mean really... I have to pry open four of them little packets for even small sized fries. Yeesh!"
Storm has a wall at his apartment full of post-it notes, each with another idea or dream scribbled "in cryptic messages or stick figures." Ultimately, Storm aspires to put together a live show including people with different talents. He wants a show from beginning to end that is void of language - entirely visual instead. "There are so, so many different forms of visual art out there just waiting to be pieced together and used in different ways."
What does Storm want said on his gravestone, or what people should say if he chose to be cremated instead? He had this to say: "when I was eighteen, I went out and got my first tattoo. I found it on a greeting card years before; it still has a place deep in my heart and has nothing to do with one's ability to hear sound." It reads:
'Those who hear not the music, think the dancers mad.'
Storm says it's "a lesson I wish more people would learn."
I asked him to divulge what he could about his next project, or idea. "Of course I'm already thinking on my next project - it gives me something to do with my time." While it may be a tedious task, he needs to get permission to work with copyrighted material. "If I cannot secure permissions for the pieces I want to do next, I see only one clear option left: write and sing the music myself! Certainly a scary thought, isn't it?"
Scary, indeed, but exciting, knowing what I've seen, it can only get better!
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