Ray Roy

Luis: How do you describe your feeling that 1.5 Million people are watching
your Hamster Dance video right now around the world? Did you ever
imagine that you can do that yourself now - without the help of
regular media?
Ray: A filmmaker friend of mine, Allen Cordell, called me the
night "Hamster Dance" got featured, I told him to shut up and that he
was hurting my feelings and that it wasn't funny, I thought he was
playing a joke on me! I was driving in the city, and as soon as I
could I got to a computer and WOW there I was on the front page of
YouTube. I started getting lots of comments in Spanish and maybe some
in German and things like that, which I thought was funny because the
video started out as this cross cultural experiment, and now it is
cross cultural on a much larger scale. There is no way I could have
gotten this type of reaction without "Viral Video" venues like
YouTube. Big budget international movies and international pop stars
get distributed and advertised by huge companies with large budgets,
and venues like YouTube make it possible for an independent artist to
make a splash. Some weirdo-teenaged blogger can get more views than a
big-budget action movie trailer, and that just tickles me.

Luis: How was you experience filming the Hamster Dance?
Ray: I was involved in this Cross Cultural Video Production series
being moderated by Jon Rubin with the help of a Fulbright Grant at
Purchase College. I was sending videos back and forth between
Istanbul, Turkey and Mexico City, Mexico. I love doing collaborative
work because it allows you to create something you would never think
to do on your own. Even if though I made Hamster Dance on my own, I
was responding to another video, and I had no idea what my partner was
going to send me. There are a lot of comments on Hamster Dance that
say its very "random", which makes perfect sense because I've always
thought of randomness as something that exists outside of what you
anticipate. There was no way for me to anticipate what my partner
would sent me, so I made a response and now it's posted on YouTube
without the video that it was a response to, and to everyone else it
seems like an idea that came COMPLETELY out of nowhere.

Luis: How much time do you spend planning for your videos?
Ray: Very little. At least in the case of Hamster Dance, it was
made entirely in one night, from shooting to editing to posting it
online. I had been thinking of a different idea, something sexy and
silly, and I wanted another person to be in my video, I think I wanted
a whole HUGE CROWD of people acting completely ridiculous running
around naked at some weirdo rave, it would have been possible, last
summer I was a resident artist at Wham City, an arts collective and
venue located in Baltimore, Maryland (USA), lots of really awesome
people with very few inhibitions were always hanging around, and we
would have shows and there would literally be hundreds of people
there. At one of our larger shows I was recording the performances,
and by the time I got the idea to get a bunch of people to be in the
video right away, the show was over and everybody was drunk and
leaving. So I went with what I had... myself and some hamsters (there
is actually 2 in the video, at different times, so they didn't get
tired)

Luis: Do you have your own studio facilities?
Ray: I have my own equipment, some of which I used student loan money
to get (like my cameras) and other things I just saved up for from
doing video design for bigger artists and dance companies. My stuff
is usually pretty simple, so I just need a room and then some black
paper or something to put behind me, then I'll shine some cheap clip
lights on me and I'm good to go. Or I will find a big space I can use
for free if I need to, like an empty dance studio late at night (where
I shot Hamster Dance), or maybe some friends have a big empty space I
can use for a few hours. You don't need any sort of budget to make
videos that look good, you just need to plan out what you want to do
and maybe experiment with a couple of different things like lighting
or how you set up the camera. I think a lot of videos on YouTube
would get so much more response if the people who made them spend that
extra bit of time and thought on making them look impressive. Even if
you have a really great idea, executing it poorly can turn people off
to it.

Luis: You call yourself a performance artist, how do you define what a
performance artist is?
Ray: Well first I think there needs to be some sort of performance
involved that incorporates you, your body. That is a given I think.
But more importantly I think it needs to be at least a little bit
shocking, or you have to be doing something that people normally
wouldn't see, or do something mundane in a way people wouldn't
normally expect to see it. Like when Tony Clifton (Andy Kaufman/Bob
Zmuda) would make fresh juice in front of an enormous audience waiting
for a song and dance, or how experimental dance in strange cardboard
costumes can be performed at a venue that is intended mainly for Bands
to perform at (my friends in the group Eagle Ager are great at this)!

Luis: What message do you want to convey to your audience about your art?
Ray: None, I would rather people just watch it and make up their own
minds, people will love it or hate it, but either way they watched it
and now it is part of them forever.

Luis: You have a lot of subscribers, do you get fan mails from your
subscribers? Do you write them back?
Ray: I have gotten a few letters of encouragement, and also some
hate mail. I like to write back to the hate mail mostly. It's crazy
people go out of their way to call you stupid or whatever. One time I
saw a fight breaking out between two guys in a bar because one guy
brushed past the other guy and pushed him a little bit on accident.
They started yelling at each-other and grabbing each-other and they
fell into the bathroom and were punching each-other and screaming. I
had a long day and all I could think was "Man, that is so stupid, why
would you even want to do that? All I want to do is fall asleep", it
just seems like so much work to hate. But when people write me nice
letters I try to write back and tell them thanks for the support,
because it does help for an artist to hear that somebody likes it. I
think a lot of young artists worry about what they are making a lot,
like sometimes I say to myself "Oh my god, what am I doing? What if
this is bad?" But you just have to finish what you started and by the
time its all done it has become something different than what you
started.

Luis: Please tell us about your experience meeting Mr Waters? Did he give
you feedback on the videos you gave him?
Ray: I heard John Waters was going to be at a film screening at
Maryland Institute College of Art one night (I worked at MICA for a
bit when I lived in Baltimore), So I got my ass in gear and made a
quick DVD of some of my stranger and more perverted video/performance
art (I have a rarely seen video called "PISS" that I sometimes play at
live shows). For the cover of the DVD I used the close up of my
crotch in Hamster Dance where I am pulling the animal out of my
fanny-pack. I went to the film screening after it had already
started, and I didn't see John Waters so I walked to the independant
movie theater down the street where my friends worked and felt sad for
a little bit. Then I thought I would go back to the screening before
it ended just to see if he was there (didn't make sense to give up
just then), and I walked into the lobby and John Waters was there
talking with a couple of the organizers of the screening. So I walked
back inside the theater for the screening (I didn't want to bother him
while he was talking to other people) and I sat in the second to last
row. Then John Waters came in and sat right behind me. He put his
feet up on the chair in front of him and he was wearing very brightly
colored striped socks. I waited till the movie was over and when he
wasn't talking to anybody and I walked up to him and the conversation
went something like this...

"Hi Mr. Waters, sorry to bother you..."

"Oh you aren't bothering me!"

"I am a video artist and I love your films, and I want to give you
this DVD of some of my work"

"OK, it might be a while before I watch it"

"Thats fine..."

Then he asked me if any of it was shot in Baltimore, and I told him I
was a member of Wham City and I lived in the CopyCat building and some
of it was shot there. He told me he knows the CopyCat and some of his
earlier actors used to live there and I told him that WhamCity was in
the CopyCat building and we had recently won Best In Baltimore. We
talked a little more about a Baltimore then I said it was nice meeting
him and that was that.

So it was nothing too crazy, Im just glad that John Waters had a DVD
of me urinating and eating raw meat.

Luis: What to you is youtube?
Ray: YouTube is a golden opportunity for any independent artist

Luis: Who are your favorite youtubers?
Ray: Obloy http://www.youtube.com/obloy
Showbeast http://www.youtube.com/shwbst
WhamCityTV http://www.youtube.com/whamcitytv

Luis: How do you market yourself on youtube?
Ray: I just put a link to my website (which I have started to
update) www.rayroy.tv then I link to friends websites and check my
inbox for inquiries. A UKTV show in London is licensing my video for
a Viral Video show. Its great.

Luis: Do you have any advice to people starting in youtube?
Ray: Take a little bit of time and make your videos LOOK good. If
you can read, you can take the time to find out how to edit something
or how to light something or how to take your camera off of the
automatic settings. But mostly experiment, make something weird and
new. There are so many accounts that are just video logs or people
doing simple parodies of something popular, and some are really good,
but there is SOOOOO MUCH of that stuff that it doesn't stand out. If
you are uploading anything to YouTube, it's because you want somebody
to see it, and why would anybody want to see the same thing over and
over and over and over again?

Luis: What is next for rayroy3?
Ray: I am still a working video artist. There is a dance show
opening up next week that I did video design for in New York City, and
then a play I am video designing in April. But I am really excited
about my next independent project which I am making to be featured on
YouTube, it is a music video starring Blue Leader featuring the music
of OCDJ. I will finish shooting it in April. I am also going to
submit it to some music video festivals, the same way my friend Allen
Cordell did for his music video of Dan Deacon
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYeMwgfxt5c). And I am going to be
doing live video & performance art a lot more at venues in New York
City. I was just asked to make a piece in honor of Paul Revere's
midnight ride! I'll post performances on my website, www.rayroy.tv

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Be sure and see Ray Roy's Hamster Dance Video, a Viral Phenomenom that has already reached 1.6M hits... what do you think of that?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFbEBVuVHZc