So a few weeks ago, my friend Jason sent out an e-mail asking people to help him out by being extras in a music video he was shooting. It was for a contest: make a video for a song by Sol.iLLaquists of Sound, a progressive r&b/hip-hop group, and then put it on YouTube and maybe it will be selected as the official video for the song. Jay explained that the video was going to be set at a typical college-type party, and would revolve around a game that I had never heard of, "Edward Fourtyhands" (basically, someone has two 40s taped to his hands and he can't get them taken off until he's finished both of them; this is what people who go to real colleges do at parties).
So I went out for the shoot, stood around for a few hours, drank some beer, met some people, got a free ticket to see a band play at the Viper Room the next night. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday night in LA.
During the shoot, Jason told us that the video wasn't just going to be celebrating this sort of wastrel, irresponsible (though, of course, sexy) party existence, but was actually part of a larger parable. The song, he explained, was about how the Fourty (and malt liquor in general) was destroying the very community that it was being sold to, primarily poor African Americans. The song itself is quite provocative (and a little bit scattershot), and in his video, Jason finds an eloquent and stylish way of tying this all together.
If you look, really closely, you can see me in the background of a few of the shots. For the record, this was the first night that I drank an actual 40; it actually wasn't so bad.
If you enjoy the video, please take the time to go to YouTube and rate it, leave a comment, etc. The more positive reaction that Jason gets, the better the chance that this video will get picked by the band as their official selection. And the better chance that my blurry head in the background will soon be on national TV beyotch.
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