About Me:

My name is Ruben van Leer, born in The Netherlands 1984 near Amsterdam. My father being a music composer and musician taught me NOT to go into the music industry... I chose to 'dive into' the universe of image making. Starting with a bachelor in design in The Netherlands (HKU - Rietveld), via film making in San Francisco (SFAI) and finishing my MFA degree at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. At the age of 16 I created a design-company called: Westframe - winning several national design competitions and making money to support my broad field of (personal) studies and fascinations. During study- and business hours I directed a modern dance film for national television (Merkavah), triggered stage images for Coldplay in Hollywood and create audio-visual performances & installations.
Commisioned works come in from several sources. Most of the times commercial agencies approuch me to participate in a brainstorm session for a particular product. Then I end up doing the production with my own people, or part of the production of my liking. I always feel very previlidged with these opportunities.
Now almost a decade lator I look back at a succesful working experience, creating a great network of (creative) people and doing amazing concepts and experiments.

About the job 'Director of Design' @ Hi-Res:

The time has come for me to set foot abroad again and make my stamp in the world. I'm able, ready and steady to work at a company like Hi-Res. I followed the Hi-Res studio from when I was 14 years old, when the 'Requiem for a Dream' website came online. In a unique way I always came across the works of Hi-Res over the years and affiliated myself with it. I truly believe the Hi-Res ideas have a certain karma to it that I deeply resonate with. The stuff that is hard to put into words...

I'm applying for the job: Director of Design, simply because I could identify myself with the job description mentioned on the Hi-Res website: 'jack of all trades' - 'exceptional concepter' - 'excitement' - 'everywhere any time' - 'strong aesthetic' - 'digital guts heart sense' - 'global strategy indie bands' - 'truly amazing individual' (Ahum...)

Hopefully this dump page backs it up. Let me know & enjoy.
(My fully functional website will be up soon...)

> watch all the clips in HD on Vimeo

About TommyTV:

A few months ago Tommy Hilfiger Europe started a new compaign evolved around music: 'The Hilfiger Sessions'. In cooperation with Sony BMG, Hilfiger has created a podium for international music stars to play in a jam-session with local musicians worldwide. The registrations of these performances together with 'The Special' are presented on TommyTV.com, Joost, YouTube and in the store on screens at you local Hilfiger reseller.

The Hilfiger Sessions is travelling all the major cities in the world starting in Europe. At the premium sessions two video-directors are present: one for the live robot-cam direction, capturing the performance. And me directing the context- and backstage stories of the jam-sessions, with a mobile camera crew, called: 'The Special'. Berlin and Madrid where a succes. I interviewed Wyclef Jean, who played a session with traditional Flamenco musicians and Kelly Rowland doing a co-op with Joy Denalane, OneTwo, Kahn and Candy Dulfer. I directed the full concepts-scenario-shoot-to-post production from my studio in Amsterdam.

Personal notes on the TommyTV project:

For me as a starting director/producer this project was a great opportunity. With a tight deadline of 2 days shoot in foreign countries, a cut-down budget and 6 days to edit 15 clips of total 40 minutes (incl 8mm footage), was a real challenge. Besides that I had to convince the Tommy marketing departments, Sony music managers and PR agents of my ideas about the video clips that I wanted to make. In the end it was all about going with the flow and work with the opporunities at hand. Specially in a hectic environment as this one.
A project like TommyTV and the Sessions show pioneership. It tries to reach a global audience and uses much force to bring across cultural cohesy. In essence my work is all about that.

The website TommyTV.com was designed by Media Republic. Although the website looks cool, I think I can do a better job in directing a website like TommyTV. In my opinion the navigation, design and interactivity can be better. Also content wise I think Tommy could have curated a more interesting and edgy line up of music artists. During the concept talks of the project I numerously attended this quality issue. Due to political arguments the line up manifested like it is.
I believe working at Hi-Res I could take a client like Tommy, and bring a project like TommyTV to a next level. Having a lot more strength (and a good fascilitated studio-people) to back up the 'good' stories and ideas.

About Hide Out:

The past 6 months I was invited as 'artist in residence' at 11 (restaurant - bar - club www.ilove11.com). This place is unique because it's on the 11th floor with a beautiful view on the skyline of Amsterdam. And all around the space, above the windows, more that 100 meters of video screen is positioned that present contemporary film and video art.

Hide Out is my last piece of total 5 works in this space. I brought together different artists from different disciplines to create (live) audio-visual stories that come to life in this specific space.
I came across an amazing fashion collection by Femke Agema (www.femkeagema.nl). Together with illustrator Sue Doeksen en photographer Brenda de Vries we filmed the costumes by Femke. I wrote a monologue and a story for the character (played by great actrice Mae Engelgeer).

The original concept of the fashion collection is about hiding from all the (media) inputs of today's time. The designs express this clearly by the shapes and fabric uses.
I interpreted this video installation as a sort of science-fiction sequel to the collection. I present the character as a messenger from the future, who comes from after the media-war era (say Y 2144). Her monologue empowers and uses a stylish vocabulary, that also refers to the colors, fabrics and shapes of the costumes. The slow pase of the video worked great in the space. Moments of attention alternate with serene and hypnotic imagery. She's like a dream of awareness, but also herself not able to escape the medium that is transporting this message (in this case video...).

About IkbenAlles.nl:

During my Master studies I was investigating the subject of Equality. For days I would walk the streets of Amsterdam interviewing people and ask them in front of a video camera where I could find such a thing as Equality. The last days of my search I met an intruiging character who is being called: 'Jesus' or calls himself: 'All', with a smile... He's an illegal immegrant, originates from Algeria, lives in a tent in the park for over 19 years now and speaks 5 different languages.
In the first video-clip you see here is my first encounter with this homeless guy. This clip was part 1 of 5 of a full documentary featured at several national (film-) festivals.

But the documentary felt somewhat passive to me. Because the dialogue of questions and answers couldn't directly come from the audience. So I had to find an interactive solution for this. I gave the Jesus dude a small video camera, that he wears around his waste. And a full featured (server side FLV encoding) website: www.ikbenAlles.nl. On this website people can ask anything to Jesus and they get a personal video-response back from him; from the streets of Amsterdam.
Now I put my questions in the hands of the audience and my camera in the hands of the homeless guy, voila: I created a humanistic-digital Oracle...

Me interviewing with video cam, searching for Equality

Teaching Jesus how to use his new website at the city shelter point

About Merkavah:

After winning a national design competition with Karmachine.com (interactive dance on the web), I was able to direct a contemporary dance film broadcasted in 2002 on the NPS. Together with a friend of mine: Sylvester Lindemulder I now got subsidy to work with a great group of people to visualize our ideas about Merkavah in a dance piece.

Merkavah is described in mystical texts as 'the Devine Chariot' or 'vehicle through the heavens'. Geometrically it's visualized by two piramids intersecting each other, with one pointing up and the other down (like the Star of David). The center is of a hexagonal shape.

We designed a hexagonal mirrored space (see Making Of), which only reflects from the inside. These special mirrors made it possible for us to film through the structure and capture the dance from 6 different angles simultaniously and reflecting in multiple layers.
I ended up with a lot of footage, making an edit for a single screen for television in 2002. 5 years after broadcasting the film, the club 11 space gave me the oppertunity to make a 6 screen video installation of Merkavah. This meant that we finally could present te work as it was shot; synchronous from different angels. I edited the movements of the dance with time-remaps over the different screens, to emphesize the travelling through the heavens - 'the body through the geometry'.

About DIESEL Venice 2004:

Imagine this: the oldest casino in the world, a black shiny catwalk in the middle, huge video LED screens, a drummer playing along the DJ and beautiful models showing the new 2004 Diesel collection -walking through all this media violence...

I directed the audio-video part together with DJ Joost van Bellen and triggered it live in the space on the LED screens using my VJ setup. Also doing a live video-on-drums improv sync inbetween every DJ set.

Total duration of the show: approx 30 min.

The 3 sets of the show where labelled: 'Mountain Mods', 'Apres Chique' and 'Royal Rock'. These themes where the only things Diesel handed me to direct this audio-visual spectacle. Basically I could design anything I wanted. I animated sync video-clips on the DJ tracks (Pioneer DVD DJ setup). On top of that I could then mix in live video-scratching, MIDI-controlled drumming triggers and morphed web-cam glitter. In my pre-production I embedded video-symbols on transcending one-world-powers (diesel - oil - Queens - USA - psychedelics - bombs - burning flags - falling crystals - rainbows - crocodiles - pyramids etc).

I did several of these advanced VJ projects between Y 2001 and 2005. For ELLE, Martini, Coldplay, Christies, NIKE and many others...