Written by Matt Denmark
Directed and Edited by Stefan Koski
Length: 9 minutes, 28 seconds
Click here to watch it on YouTube Director's Notes Matt Denmark was my roommate during my freshman year of college at the University of Arizona. At the time he was taking a special class offered by the University for students who still hadn't declared their majors. At the end of the spring semester he had to do a project for this class that talked about himself and what he had learned about himself over the course of the year. He didn't know what he wanted to do for his presentation (it was due the next day, and let's face it, PowerPoints are lame) so I offered to help him do a video for his class. This is the result.
The opening scene of us sitting on a couch was taken right in our dorm room. The script Matt had prepared for the video wasn't specific as to what we had to say, and most of the dialogue (with the exception of a few key lines) was expected to be improvised. This is why there's a massive argument about which one of us is full of sh*t. When Matt says toward the end of the opening scene, "I just want you to know that I've always hated you the most," and I ask him, "More than the Pollock?" I'm referring to our third roommate, Adam (his name is in the credits). Our friend Amanda's foot can be seen near Matt's head during this entire scene.
For the People I Hate portion of the video we went down to the Cochise study room to film. I assumed the role of a condescending TV show interviewer, and Matt wrapped himself in a bed sheet and wore a cow-pock to look like a crazy person. There was originally twenty minutes of interview footage from this scene, but since the class presentation had to be between eight and ten minutes, most of it was cut. Amanda was operating the camera for this scene.
Matt wanted to end the video as if he was preparing for a kung fu fight, so the final shots of him were sped up and a voice-over was dubbed to give it that Asian-fu film feel. The ending piece of music is from the Samurai Champloo soundtrack.
Music in this Film: Vagrancy--Samurai Champloo Soundtrack
Major Decision Smackdown--Uncut First Take Click here to watch it on Google Video When Matt and I sat down to film the opening to Major Decision Smackdown for Matt's major exploration project we kept the camera rolling for ten minutes as we tried to get the first scene just right. The entire uncut clip is here. Amanda has said that this kind of video would be prime material for couple's counseling. I like to think of it as a small slice about life in our dorm. You may be wondering why the first video is hosted on YouTube while the second is on Google Video. Well, as much as I've been using YouTube more than Google Video these days, YouTube has a weird stipulation about not allowing video uploads that are greater than ten minutes in length. This one happens to be thirty-nine seconds over. Why YouTube requires this while Google Video only limits you to 100 megabytes, I don't know. But that's the reason behind it.