If you’ve ever wondered who creates those super-stylish animations that enchant the eye on Renaissance’s e-flyers, or who conjured up the powerful Pollock-esque One+One imagery, then click on – because here we meet Grete Hjorth-Johansen, aka VJ Eyeborg.

Quadrophonic - 3AM (Unsigned)

“I made this video for James Zabiela, when he was exploring the possibilities of the DVJs a few years back,” explains Grete. “When he gave me this track, I listened to the lyrics, looking for imagery, and straight away the lyrics ‘3am I’m about to bounce’ made me think of a frog getting ready for a night out on the town.”

Now you may find this a bit strange, but it’s quite true! Grete had previously filmed a frog, and wanted to combine this with footage that she had shot on the streets of Tokyo.

Grete continues: “As the frog footage was very rough and dull, I took it into Adobe After Effects and boosted the contrast a lot, saturating the colours (Nothing is worse than grey and dull footage!) The Tokyo footage got a similar treatment, of a contrast boost, and I also colourised it, so it became monochrome, in order to make it look more graphic and less detailed as a background. Next I made a few different clips by layering the frog onto the Tokyo clips. I wanted to make use of more of the lyrics, to show that the video really synched with the track, so I put my video camera on a tripod behind me at night and filmed myself typing my badly misinterpreted lyrics into TextEdit on my Mac.

“The next step was editing, so I imported my now very colourful clips into iMovie and chopped it all up to the beat of the track, trying to focus on making the editing more choppy and rhythmic when the track was most hectic.

“It’s a rough piece of work but I only had a day to do it, from idea to finished video. It makes me wonder where that frog is now… but at least it got to rave in Tokyo for a while!”

Look out for Grete’s visuals during forthcoming performances of Nic Fanciulli and Andy Chatterley’s live Buick Project at London’s Ministry of Sound. She will also be VJing in the main arena at Renaissance’s Wild In The Country event in Hertfordshire (UK) on 30th June.

For more about Grete, see:
www.myspace.com/eyeborg