TOON AERTS
In 2001, Toon Aerts (°1977) graduated with honours from the Sint Lukas film school in Brussels on presentation of the shortfilm "Dialing the Devil". His shortfilm, a gritty 70’s style roadmovie, won numerous national and international awards like the Leuven Kort Festival (BE), Het Grote Ongeduld (BE), Courtisane (BE), 3rd Pixie Awards (USA) and the Golden Sheaf Awards (CAN).
Toon then signed up with production company CZAR to direct commercials. He had a blitz start and quickly directed for the most creative agencies in Belgium, including Duval Guillaume Brussels, LG&F, etc ...
His work didn’t go unnoticed in the Netherlands, where he directed a campaign for the Amsterdam agency KesselsKramer for the Dutch mobile phone operator Ben. In 2002 Toon received The Young Directors Award for this commercial.
He has since shot commercials for EA Games, Lipton Ice Tea, KPN Digital TV, Ikea, The International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Planet Internet and many others. The Asics commercial he shot won a bronze and a silver award on the Cannes edition of 2005.
But Toon always continued doing other projects as well.
Music has always been his first love, that's pretty clear. Not only did Toon direct numerous music videos for Belgian bands like The Sore Losers, Millionaire, Mon-O-Phone, El Guapo Stuntteam and Fence. He also did the promotional photography for Vermin Twins, Radio Infinity, Mon-O-Phone, El Guapo Stuntteam, Vandal X and The Shovels. He is also currently involved in coordinating the art direction of the Sore Losers, including band photography, directing music videos, shooting album covers, website and t-shirt design and even a making-of of their debut album.
The music video "Back From The Grave" won the prize for best music video at the 2009 edition of the Belgian Shortfilmfestival "Leuven Kort" and was shown at the bi-monthly BUG Music Video Festival in London and was selected for the Mirrorball section of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
More recently, Toon took part in the "Innercoma" project, led by Belgian artist Philip Metten. Working closely together with Metten himself, Toon created a shortfilm that was shown at Z33 in Hasselt.
Since september 2010, Toon has been a regular contributor to the excellent magazine The Word. You can check out his contributions in the Editorial section of this website...
Toon has received a fund from the VAF to shoot his shortfilm "Perfect Drug". The movie will be shot in 2011 and will feature Misha Downey and Kosi Hidama, two actors Toon already collaborated with on such crazy projects as the "Noise Of Quasar" art project, the "Sink That Ship" music video and the hilarious "Asics" viral. Perfect Drug will be produced by EPIDEMIC and is certain to become a real headturner, we'll keep you posted.
Toon's work, being it his films or his photos, are characterised by a strong visual style. His work clearly refers to elements of popular culture like horror movies, sci-fi, 70's exploitation or television series. Toon likes images that are loud, colorful, larger than life and over-the-top. Toon tries to intigue the viewer, to capture his attention and more importantly show the viewer the way he likes to look at reality ...