(on the set of “Brooklyn Bullshit”)

Ok, for the sake of full disclosure, Rik’s also a friend of mine, but that just means I knew that he was talented before the rest of you did : )

The folks at SOHH.com did a short piece on Rik Cordero and his work on the Blue Magic video trailer (which didn’t get at first as a marketing tool but I’m starting to realize is the future of music releases. I actually think it makes more sense now for artists to release a single and a full video for the single at the same time now. Since most young fans experience their music on the web anyways.)

“As an indie filmmaker, Cordero is used to working around tight deadlines and modest budgets. But for “Blue Magic,” limited resources were complicated by the fact that Cordero was instructed to model the trailer for a song – he’d never heard – after a scene from the movie- which he’d never seen. [View trailer here.]…
Cordero took the instructions, relied on his instincts and put the treatment together during a four-hour Harlem shoot the following day.

Cordero told SOHH. “It was totally like no permits, really renegade. The main kid was like an intern at Def Jam. The girls in the video were friends of one of the producers…”

Cordero edited the trailer that night and brought it to Def Jam offices the next morning, when Jay-Z invited the filmmaker into his studio to view the rough cut together; it was the first time the pair had met directly.

“In the studio we watched it like 20 times,” Cordero said. “He loves the scene where the girl blows smoke at the camera; his reaction was just amazing. Here’s this guy who’s used to working on million dollar videos, and he sees this thing we just put together and is moved by it. That made me realize there’s something to just going for the vision and just creating without over-thinking it.”

Big things for an Asian-American filmmaker on the come-up : ) I’m waiting to see what he just shot for Hov down in Baltimore.