2007 for Rich Loffman, TPJ and MJ Ultra

It's been 2 years now since I started this blog and in that time I think an awful lot has happened. Most of it has been pretty good and I think there has definitely been a lot of progress in both my film and music careers. As I don't have a PR company to help me out with promotion please forgive me for being a little narcissistic and blowing my own trumpet as a look over 2007.

Winter to Spring.
2007 started with me in very optimistic mood. I finished 2006 by exhibiting my short films at Design Festa in Tokyo and that led me into making 2007's first short film wInTeR gHoStS featuring footage shot at Design Festa. I also met with representatives from 100 Meter Films to talk about getting a feature film script I had written into production. The Script, Rain, was in hindsight a little ambitious but I did enjoy the experience and I will continue to pursue this channel in 2008. I particularly enjoyed working with Michi Kudoh on designing a little video of concept drawings for the film that I showed at the presentation. If the film does go ahead at some time in the future I hope that Michi will be there to help me again.
March saw the first MJ Ultra gig of the year. We played Ruby Rooms in Shibuya and although the venue wasn't that great we enjoyed playing the show.

Spring into Summer.
To be honest the summer was f***ing frustrating! I had planned a couple of projects. One was a multi media art event called Project : Kiss which was almost up and running before all the participants decided that they were leaving Japan. Dash my luck, but I will to get this, or something similar launched again in 2008. Another project I had planned was called Virus, again this fell through and once more it will be launched again in 2008. Fingers crossed that both Project : Kiss and Virus will be realized next year.
I also launched my MySpace page this year and uploaded a lot of my short films. This was how I came to make a few interesting connections, including the Japanese band Molice.

Summer to Autumn
During Autumn things were a little quiet. One of the main reasons for this was that I started working full time at a new company, this has taken up more of my free time than I had imagined although I am now starting to find a bit more balance between work and play as I become more accustomed to the job. However I still found time to shoot a video for Molice. This I have to say was a lot of fun and although editing has taken me a little longer than I had imagined it's now ready to go and should be online before the end of the year.
MJ Ultra played their second gig of the year at Dress Akihabara in Tokyo. This was a slightly better venue than the show we played earlier in the year and we have come on a little more as a band. We have more of an 'image' and I made a special video installation for the show. The video was kind of what VJ's do and I took my inspiration from bands like NIN, Underworld and U2 who do similar things. I hope that this will become a permanent feature at MJ Ultra shows. In fact part of the MJ Ultra Video Installation was a sequence I call Soviet Toys. I have made another version of this and put it online (this doesn't feature MJ Ultra's music)

Winter
As the year comes to an end I have launched the MJ Ultra Myspace page and made some adjustments to the mjultra.com.

2008.
In 2008 I hope to focus on making short films again. I have 4 projects planned; Virus, Project:Kiss, History and as yet unnamed 'Ghost story' project. In addition I hope that MJ Ultra continues on an upwards trajectory and that I may get some more music videos made.

I know that was a long entry so if you made it this far then thanks for reading. Drop me a line if you would like to get involved in any of my projects in 2008.