Alright, Joe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

At the end of 2019, a musician named Dylan Bond reached out to me about making a music video for his band Sour Face. The music was phenomenal and Dylan and I clicked immediately so we started developing the idea for their next single “Human Killer.”

“All I want is a little more
Satisfaction won’t save you
All it does is make your blood run”

To me, the record was about pain & salvation. Clearing out infections, old ways of thinking, poisonous habits, in order to purify oneself. Dylan was open with me about his own sobriety and his desire to act in the video. Normally, trusting a musician with such a huge performance role in a music video would have worried me but I could sense this was beyond personal to him. This was catharsis – something he needed to do.

“I wish you could see me now
Finally seeing this fate through
I wish you could feel me now
Just letting all of this pain out”

My dear friend Nick Matthews (Saw X) joined us as Director of Photography and brought an even deeper level of artistry to the images Dylan and I had been dreaming up. Nick and I had known each other for a while at this point but we’d never shot anything together. It was also Nick’s first time shooting 16mm which made it extra special for all of us.

I’m often bothered by the typical @kodak_shootfilm “We just KNEW we needed to shoot this on film” blurb from creators. In the case of “Human Killer”, we didn’t know shit. We knew we needed the images to be deep, gritty, and textured. So on a small budget, pushing 16mm two to three stops seemed like the best way to get that effect.

On the day of the shoot, Dylan was incredibly quiet and drawn in. I don’t think he’d been eating or sleeping much. When we rolled, everything came out. His performance, Nick’s images, and the sounds of the record blended together seamlessly. Our friend Kath Raisch (Aftersun) blessed the edit with her keen eye for color and I did my best to land the cut in a way that felt true to Dylan’s experience.

A few months later, Covid lockdown happened and the film took on a new layer of meaning.

A few years later, I’m sober, writing this with immense gratitude to Dylan, Nick, and the people who co-created this important video with us.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a Mercury who dreams of being a Saturn. The art I hope to create will be a mirror to the light of the people I love, in a world that is increasingly desperate for hope.

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.” – James Baldwin

“He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane. For him the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.” – Ted Chiang

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2012, I was living in New York City and working as an assistant at an advertising start-up. I got fired and almost moved back to Wisconsin. Whether it was stubbornness or naivety, I couldn’t say, but I managed to stay in Brooklyn long enough to start getting work as a PA on low-budget music videos and eventually started to produce.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up in rural(ish) Wisconsin, I didn’t know any artists. As a kid, I took drawing lessons from an older man in our neighborhood who had been an architectural illustrator. He was the closest thing to someone who made a living doing art so I never really considered being able to create for a living. This belief stuck to me throughout undergrad where I tried marketing & advertising. I thought this was the practical version of “art.” It took me until my early twenties and getting fired from my first job to even try to make money by creating things for no other reason. Finally, in my late twenties, I decided to try directing for a living. I guess I’m still trying.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joemischo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/continudity/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemischo/

Image Credits
1 – Balint Seres 2 – Matt Hoodhood 3 – Shaw Fisher 4 – Skyler Stanley