User:Bgreis



Dustin McLean is a director, animator, musician, film maker, and innovator. The originator of the “literal music video” concept, McLean caused a sensation when his literal take on the 80’s band Aha’s “Take on Me” was released on YouTube in October 2008. Although it was removed by YouTube two months after its release, the video had already had hundreds of thousands of views, and was available on other web sites, such as McLean’s’ site, http://www.dustfilms.com.

McLean was born April 8th, 1980. He credits his family with influencing him early in life to pursue filmmaking. Even as a small child, McLean would film family and friends using his uncle’s video camera. Dustin taught himself to play the drums at the age of five, and learned to play the piano and guitar during his high school years. A high school art teacher is also given credit for helping McLean grow as an artist and animator. McLean graduated from Ventura High School in 1998. In the past he created popular short animation, and composed music for online animations and video games. He has 2 self-produced albums of original songs.

After working for six years as a laser printer technician while working on freelance animation and film projects in his spare time, McLean joined the cast of Current TV’s SuperNews, a weekly animated program which satirizes current events. In May 2006. McLean is the Assistant Director for the show, and provides animation as well as being the voice of some of the characters. Following the success of “Take On Me”, McLean continued to produce literal videos, as well as filming satires of commercials. He has done literal videos of “Under the Bridge”, “Head Over Heels”, “White Wedding”, and “Loser”. McLean collaborated with comedian Jason Nash for an original song and video take on the teen-pop genre titled “You can’t tell me what to do. In addition to many original satirical videos, Mclean also acted and co-directed a video with “Weird Al” Yankovic, titled “Ringtone”. In addition to his real name, Dustin also uses the pseudonyms “Dusto McNeato”, and “Dustball”.

Over the years, Dustin has won numerous awards, including but not limited to: (2001) Best Short Film (Spin) Channel Islands Film Festival, Level I (Grand Prize for film/video) National Foundation  for Advancement of the Arts, (2006) Best Web Browser Game for “Dad and Me” Independent Games Festival, and fourteen Awards on Newsgrounds.com and King of the Portal. McLean has been interviewed and featured on podcasts, news programs and other televisions shows, and been the topic of many newspaper and magazine articles, including but not limited to MSNBC,The Wall Street Journal,Yahoo! Music,Rolling SStone,and Time Magazine.

Beverly A. Greis 19:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/26256

http://newteevee.com/2009/02/26/literal-music-videos-go-from-a-ha-to-billy-idol/