Director's Works
Nick Leng, Beetlebugs Sondock
After a brief stint as a baby, Josh Sondock began producing and directing. His illustrious career started at age 9 when he and his brother created their own version of the MTV show, Jackass. Josh was the director and primary stuntman. After slowly discovering that films could engender feelings far more meaningful than nausea, he turned filmmaking into a profession.
Sondock’s award-winning directing portfolio contains commercial work for clients such as Audemars Piguet, Golden Goose, Knickerbocker MFG. & Next Gen alongside music films for artists including Ashe, Jeremy Zucker, Chelsea Cutler, QUINN XCII, Nick Leng, Gavin Turek, Orion Sun & many more.
With an efficacious background as a 5-times-Vimeo-staff-pick-winning producer, Sondock has made content for brands such as Zara, BMW, Calvin Klein, Pantene, Pepsi, Meta, Amazon, Honda, Converse & Unicef as well as videos for artists such as The Rolling Stones, Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, The Strokes, Glass Animals & A$AP Rocky.
"Filming this video was like going to summer camp for a week. Nick & I had already made a video that was a great success (for his song Morning / Midnight) & this project was an opportunity to really go in a totally different direction. While Morning / Midnight was an ethereal, highly technical one-shot performance video, Beetle Bugs was exactly the opposite - it was a super narrative, world-building goofy/psychedelic adventure video.
It ended up being a 5-day shoot with multiple locations a day and a cast of Zebras, Emus, Hamsters, way too many beetles and even an ex-congresswomen (one of our impromptu extras, incidentally). I owe the world to the entire cast & crew, especially producers Alex & Amy, DP, Gus Bendinelli, and 1st AD/Beetle Wrangler, Josh Montes. Everyone was deeply invested in the project & process, and endured creaky twin beds & long rambling road trip rants as we made our way around Northern and Central California.
Post on this video, quite literally took a year. Did it need to? Probably not. But damn, I’m so proud of what we made. Gwen Ghelid brought an incredible eye to the edit, taking it from a maybe 3/10 to a full A++, not to mention dealing with all my tiny tweaks for months on end. And HOLY SHIT -- Kohana Wilson, our animator, is genuinely such a treasure. They hand-drew what is probably my favorite part of the video: the Freaky-Friday narrative climax (the inspiration for which I owe a lot to fellow Riff Raff Director David Wilson).
During the post process, I even got to spend time turning thousands of black drinking straws into a “practical bugs-eye effect for some of our endoscopy camera footage (yes you read that sentence correctly)."
