2003: Bud Light Spec Commercials

Date of Creation: 2003

Synopsis: Spec commercials for the Bud Light "It's all Here" campaign.

A Brief History: A project for an advanced cinematography class (I think), roommate and fellow classmate William Jennings and myself decided to do something a little more interesting and useful than photographing trees with the few rolls of super 16 that were handed out to us. So we made a couple of terrible spec commercials.

The main problem with these is mostly that they're 5 and 15 seconds too long, respectively, hence they are ineffective as commercials because you can't buy ad time for 35 seconds.

They did give birth to the catchphrase "Best birthday ERRVER!" though, so I suppose something good did come of them.

There was actually a third one we shot in a bar, but it was pretty awful and I can't seem to find it so. Ah well. It had an irish bartender and a talking beer bottle, if I remember correctly.

Critical Analysis: I actually quite like the alien abduction one. I think if we reshot either of these today they would turn out pretty good.

2002: 4am Perfection

Date of Creation: 2002

Synopsis:  Just flippin through the channels, seeing what's on TV.

A Brief History: I don't really know. It was Sean's World History project, and apparently he got a B+ on it, which I find hard to believe. I'll let him fill out the cast and post any additional information.

Critical Analysis: Potentially the precursor to GTV2, the Webbies entertainment segment several years later? Slightly disjointed, but wildly entertaining. A fun ride for all. The one kid was particularly believable as DaVinci.

2002: Welcome to the Majors

Date of Creation: 2002

Synopsis: Rookie reporter Richard Head for KRAP news has to tolerate a hazing from the veteran anchor, Simon Stew.

A Brief History: I don't remember doing this either, I just found the VHS tape laying around. I suppose this was probably a Video 2 project; we were supposed to write and direct our own news broadcast, so I went a little out of my wheelhouse apparently and added a little drama.

Fellow classmates Aaron Aubuchon and Pat Walsh were excellent; they played off the awkwardness perfectly. And were generally good sports about it, considering most of the news broadcasts other students did didn't involve blood or smoking in the studio.

And man, I know I ripped off that Pokemon commercial from somewhere, but that was AWESOME.

2002: Webbies Entertainment Segments - Prologue

Date of Creation: 2002

Synopsis: In the opening to the first Webbies Entertainment segments I worked on in college, a young indiana jones doppelgänger steals the Webbie. The Webbie's been STOLEN!

A Brief History: First of all, for those of you that were hoping to see the rest of this year's webbies, sorry. It's pretty awful anyway and I can't afford the bandwidth. Suffice to say it's a combination of ripping off SNL skits and ripping off Triumph the insult comic. If there's really just a ton of interest, I'll put it up, but there's going to have to be a push.

The opening sequence is pretty endearing though, since it's pretty much a shot for shot remake of the scene in Indiana Jones, somehow shot in Webster's tiny TV studio. We were moving flats back and forth all over the place to try and create an environment that's somehow larger than the studio space.

As bad as the rest of the Webbies was, there was a great callback in the middle of it, when Indiana runs through the game show studio, in which contestants are playing Jeopardy. One of the contestants, Sean Connery, notices Indiana run off and yells, "Junior!" You can probably guess the rest of the exchange.

The one shining star about this Webbies was that it was the first year beginning of a 6 year (maybe even 7?) tradition of one-upsmanship that led to a dynasty of excellence, culminating in the destruction of the entire awards ceremony as a whole. If that's not something to be proud of I don't know what is.

2002: Strike!

Date of Creation: 2002

Synopsis: A bunch of fellows play a rousing game of baseball.

A Brief History: This has as little history as anything possibly could; as far as I know, Brian and Jim said they wanted to make a video featuring them playing baseball with, well, themselves.

Rather than use any fancy split screens or digital effects, we went low tech and just covered it from various angles, though there is a hilarious shot where Brian is rounding the bases after his homerun where each time he passed jim at the respective bases, Jim had to sprint back around the camera so he could be at the next base in time.

And, like all good baseball movies, it ends in a fight.

2002: Going Down

Date of Creation: 2002

Synopsis: A man's life falls into jeopardy when he boards an elevator. Should've taken the stairs.

A Brief History: This was Dan's Film 1 project, the first sort of thing you shoot in production classes. We were in good with public safety so we were able to lock down the elevators in the parking garage. We rigged up a bloody headshot effect, the same one we used on "Destinos". It was basically a rubber tube that we stuffed with fake blood and toilet paper, which connected to an air tank with a quick release valve. Pull the valve and the compressed air shoots the blood out the rubber tubing with great force. Instant head shot!

2002: Incubis

Date of Creation: 2002(?)

Synopsis:The strikingly Lovecraftian tale of a man trapped in his own dream, unable to awake, haunted by the inevitability of reality.

A Brief History: I have completely blocked the memory of participating in this film from my mind. I had no recollection at all of shooting it, so when I popped it in and noticed that I was...well, IN it, my brain kind of exploded. I haven't been the same since.

As far as I can tell, this was James Green's film 1 final, it features Joe Klueh and myself, and it's pretty dark, just like James Green, even though I believe he was top dude at the time, so I don't get it.

Critical Analysis: Common sense would dictate that individuals don't accept rides from strangers riding around in AMC Gremlins, but aside from that I have no complaints. Pretty heady and intense for a Film 1 project. I'm impressed.

Additional Notes: I just realized that if you type "gartner archives" into google, the vimeo page for this is the second result, which undoubtedly results in individuals looking for archival market research accidentally clicking on that page, which is hilarious to me.

2001: The New Gremlin

Date of Creation: 2001

Synopsis: A breakthrough in automotive style, class and technology, the AMC Gremlin is reinventing the car.

A Brief History: I'm going to have to count on Dan to fill us in on what exactly this was for, because I don't really know. Suffice to say, I had a blast driving my Gremlin up and down the street in the rain.

Critical Analysis: Hey, this thing holds up! It's a pretty decent commercial, even with my stupid voiceover.

2001: Razorburn

Date of Creation: 2001

Synopsis: A local drug cartel finds a new method of transportation for delivering their product. However, they quickly find that law enforcement has been quick to adopt that method as well.

A Brief History: This was a project for a video 2 class in college, and it was probably the first actual video project I did for my college career. Actually, scratch that. It was my second.

I started off spending the week before shooting a video. I can't even remember what the concept was. I very distinctly remember getting to the Thursday or Friday before it was due the following Monday, being in the edit room...and absolutely hating what I'd done. Like, embarrassingly bad.

Instead of trying to fix it, I just threw everything out the window, came up with another idea, and shot it and edited it as quickly as possible over the weekend. Luckily friends Mike Brasher and Todd Lewis were keen enough to help, and I happened to have a cop uniform on hand just laying around.

Critical Analysis: There are a billion cringeworthy stereotypes and film school character tropes in this, but all that aside I'm still pretty happy with how it cuts, considering it was like 11 year ago. It's kind of a Guy Ritchie meets Paul Greengrass ripoff, but it got me a reputation in Video 2 class that I knew what I was doing. So I had THAT going for me. Plus, there's even "400 Blows" tribute in there!

I do have to say, that's quite a lot of coke for about $80.00 though.