Mastercard Priceless Experience 2004

Wow it's been three weeks since my last post. I am not so good at this blogging thing. I've been busy, mainly moving to a new apartment in Manhattan, and settling in. It's great and I love it.

Anyway, back to where I left off. About a week or so after graduating from Harvard, I was on a plane to Los Angeles. The sixteen of us interns were put up in the Universal Studios Hilton for five weeks, with all expenses paid for, plus a small stipend for spending money. In addition, we were given free trips to the Universal Studios theme park, and vouchers to restaurants at CityWalk, a shuttle ride from our hotel. It was pretty surreal. We also got a tour through the different sets and studios of Universal Studios, including the soundstages and the fake New York City. They also treated us to a Hoobastank concert (during which we wanted to rush the stage but were stopped), complete with a limo ride.

The internship was split into two parts. There would be the filming of Hoobstank's next music video, "Same Direction," along with seminars moderated by Lara Schwartz (who produced many of "Puffy" 's videos) with Universal Studio music executives and random people involved in virtually all facets of the music and music video business, including a couple music video directors (Nigel Dick and Dave Meyers -- who had been working on Britney Spears "Outrageous" video before she dropped out of the rest of the tour and began her fall from grace), Kevin Lyman (who started the Warped Tour -- we also got to "help out" and hang out at one of the venues, where I first saw Flogging Molly from backstage), and some people from KROQ.

Now, Hoobastank isn't my favorite band, either, but the process of making the videos was exciting and edifying. "The Reason" was a decently big hit that summer. It was a ballad that had been released with the intent to appeal to soccer moms. They wanted to follow it up with "Same Direction," a more punk rock song that would appeal to their original core fan base.

Early on we met with Brett Simon, a young director who had done the video for The Reason, which was a pretty cool video (probably because it has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song. I also recently realized that he directed that NLT video I love.) Despite the internship being advertised as one where the interns would be directing the video, ultimately Brett had creative control over the project and final say, although he did incorporate our input. Each of us was asked to submit an idea for the two videos (both for Same Direction). One would be a sequel to The Reason video, as it was quite popular, and one would be more creative. Four ideas were chosen (two for the sequel, two for the other) and we were divided into four groups. We were split into groups based on our ideas.

A girl named Rachel came up with the idea of a "Mad World," and I ended up in her group because my idea was similar (I wanted to set it in the 19th century). Our group wrote a treatment, which is basically a detailed summary of the plot of the video, where the band is in an alternate reality where everything is garish and exaggerated. We submitted images of makeup and props as well. Our group's idea was the one chosen for the "other" video but with modifications. Brett anchored the idea with a concrete story -- the video would be about a fifth member of Hoobastank that was cut from the band 17 years prior -- a triangle player. It would depict him imagining what his life would be like if he were still part of the band, concocting dioramas in his basement to embody his fantasies. The four groups were combined to form two -- with the sequel groups together and the "other idea" groups together.

Ultimately, we ended up helping out with both videos but we spent more time on the one we were working on. The Mad World video was filmed in a huge open warehouse type space, where we helped the crew construct the sets -- life sized replicas of the dioramas that we helped the art director construct. Using clever set design and camera work, the video goes from the dioramas to the life-sized replicas. Here it is:


The video is hilarious and odd -- definitely not what you'd expect from such a commercial band. Which is why the band didn't choose it for the official version. I definitely would have chosen it. It featured a cameo of Joan Jett (playing the triangle player's mom, cleaning out his earwax?!) and Dennis Rodman's limousine.

The other video is a prequel/sequel to "The Reason." It was shot at an abandoned restaurant space and the nearby alley. The coolest part was the cameos, which I forgot about until I watched again -- Joel from Good Charlotte, Chester from Linkin Park and...... KANYE WEST! This was before I even knew who Kanye was, or I totally would have tried to make friends with him. I was like, who are these people? I think they are all on the same label, which is why they agreed to do the cameos, during the band auditions for lead singer (they were all pretty funny).

Here it is (it will make more sense if you watch The Reason first, although both videos take multiple viewings to kind of catch certain details).


Looking back, it was definitely a wonderful experience, although I hate to say that the crew members were cooler than the actual band (although Dan, the lead guitarist, seemed cool and was our favorite). You don't realize until you're on a set how many people are involved and necessary for these types of production, who don't necessarily get credit -- all the crew members, camera people, ADs, DP, art director, wardrobe, producers, PAs, etc. I'm definitely still interested in film/music videos and would like to get into that somehow in the future, but the experience was discouraging because I realized how difficult it would be to put together that sort of a project without serious funding or the support of a studio. A successful fashion house generally operates in a similar manner, with the designer in a role parallel to a director, but at the same time, one person can and often does make a dress alone from start to finish. I also didn't like LA, which is where most of the contacts we made were.

[Another random cool aspect of the trip was when I got to meet up with Stephen Stills and his wife, Kristen (whom I had met at Harvard). They took me to a Democratic rally at the Saban (as in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) residence, and then we bought steak dinners for takeout and drove in his Aston Martin to his house in the Hills. I met his kids and he let me listen to his album in his personal recording studio. Totally amazing. (I recently saw him again when he played with Nash and Y oung in Central Park).]

And so, before I left LA, I set up my interview with Proenza Schouler.