Eight-inch-tall Kiss dolls, whose platform shoes make up at least an inch of that height, are dancing on Dion Labriola’s dining-room table. Or at least that’s what the young film and video maker tries to imagine as he positions and repositions the figures of the glam-rock band, propping them up, leaning them against each other, and then stepping back to click the shutter on his Bolex 16-millimeter motion-picture camera.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
He’s been at this for about 45 minutes. So far, calculating from a film speed of 24 frames per second and from the standard animation procedure of shooting three frames for each separate movement (to make sure one of them is good), he’s shot about three seconds of film. That’s 216 different minuscule repositionings of the dolls. Local band Rights of the Accused has commissioned the video for its cover of an old Kiss tune, “Do You Love Me?” and this session will be the last shoot before he starts editing what he’s got.
Labriola’s persistent self-promotion was largely responsible for the collaboration between himself, an Art Institute-trained film and video maker, and one of Chicago’s best industrial dance bands. Labriola was turned on by a first pressing of the song, to which he had early access as a DJ at the now-defunct U-Bahn, where the Thrill Kill Kult sometimes hung out. Inspired by the song’s divine visions and reluctant to let someone else interpret a song he liked, he decided to approach the band. He collected some religious imagery, shot a test roll on Super-8, and then showed his ideas to them. “What I presented them with was also basically what they had in mind themselves,” says Labriola. “The band contributed a lot and many of the images were theirs too, so it was just luck really that we happened to think alike.”
