Final Project: Fall of the Shaqterpiece from Erik Kausin on Vimeo.
know- what does a stoner film have to do with Priority Male?! Hear me out though! With the completion of our first album, First Class, I came up with a viral marketing campaign to use as promotional material for the release. Everyone knows Priority Male as a group, a unit, a whole, however, I wanted our fans to get a more in depth look at each of us on a more personal level. So, I came up with the idea of creating short films that would feature a different PMale in each one. Each short film would would be comedic, entertaining our fans, while using snippets of songs off of the album as the soundtrack. Since the album is already released, this is all just a campaign that I fantisized about, but never had the time or resources to do it. With the help of a few friends, I was able to mock up what one would've looked like (and trust me, it truly is a mock up), using myself as the first short in the series of promos.
I wrote, shot, and edited the film in a span of 3 days. It was pretty tedious, but once I got into flow, it kinda just did itself. Since I had more freedom with this project since it's not REALLY going to be used for any promo campaign or really associated with PMale, I really wanted to write something that I enjoyed and that's comedy (in this case, a stoner comedy). With the help of one of my friends, we came up with a really loose script which we pretty much disregarded since when we shot, everything was pretty much improved. Everything with me in the shot was filmed by a second camera operator, while everything else was filmed by yours truly. The soundtrack was recorded by our producer, Ben Lieberman, I utilized different snippets from the album to kind of build buzz, making the viewer want to hear more. There's a specific part in the short where Natasha knocks over the "shaqterpiece". We only filmed it once because we didn't want to have to rebuild it, however, we didn't capture the exact sound I wanted so I kinda did some Foley work and recorded myself dropping cans and such and then compiling them together to get the full effect I originally inteded. I added in an animation of the cover art of the album at the end of the credits as well. Though it is a stoner comedy, believe me when I say there were no real drugs involved, it was all pipe tobacco and it hurt really bad. I probably wouldn't even be able to function on drugs anyway.
Overall, I had a really fun time during the entire project from the creative process to the shooting to the editing. I really do want to use this idea as a promo campaign at some point, so I probably will... in a more appropriate sense, of course. :)
Kausin, Erik, and Steven Hobaica. First Class. By Drew Hensley. Priority Male. Rec. Feb. 2013. Ben Lieberman, 2013. MP3.
