Rock and Roll 'Em

Posted by LHadmin on 11/20/2008 | Comments (7)

Rock and Roll 'Em

Heineken Funds SCA Music Videos

For the second consecutive year, Heineken has awarded two teams of SCA graduate students $40,000 each to create music videos. By providing the opportunity to work with sizable budgets and professional clients, the contest opens students’ eyes to a possible post-graduation career path.

Prepping a scene for the deSoL Sing It All Night music video shoot.

"A lot of the students don't really know exactly what they want to do when they enter the program," said senior lecturer Brenda Goodman, who serves as USC's point person for the contest, along with adjunct faculty member Jeffrey Obrow. "They know that they have a love of media, film, and communicating ideas through moving pictures, but what kind of storytelling they're going to do is one of the things that we work with them on during their time at USC. I know for the teams last year that the contest opened up the world of music videos to them in a way that they really hadn't thought about before."

The two teams were selected from more than 90 students who met with this year's bands, deSoL and Lifehouse, and submitted treatments, storyboards, rough budgets, reels, and bios. The bands, Goodman, Obrow, Heineken's Marketing Manager Pattie Falch, and Julie Mulholland from Heineken's entertainment marketing agency, Mulholland Drive Entertainment, selected the winners.

Director Michael Callahan and producer Anthony Bushman, both second-year production students, teamed up to create the video for Lifehouse’s song Make Me Over. Set in a cluttered warehouse, the narrative follows a one-armed, legless mannequin who comes to life, replaces his missing appendages, and tries to win the love of a lady in a red dress. Unfortunately, unlike him, she is completely inanimate.

"We had a great conversation with Jason Wade, the lead singer and songwriter, about the message of the song," said Bushman. "We took it to mean that someone is trying to make himself over, make himself better for someone else, but not seeing that he doesn't need to change because he's great as he is. And Mike and I both think that it's a very important message, because he and I were the outcasts in grade school and didn't have that many friends, and we both turned out pretty well. And we didn't try to fit into what was most socially acceptable at the time."

For deSoL’s song Sing It All Night, director Brent McHenry, a second-year production student, and the producing team of third-year production student Philip Hodges and second-year Stark student Nadia Munla crafted a video featuring the band's lead singer, Albie Monterrosa, mailing a postcard from a gas station in the desert to his sweetheart in New York. On the front of the postcard is a superimposed moving image of the band performing on a beach, and, as the missive filters through the mail system, the music affects the people who hear it.
"Their music is a fusion of Latino rhythms with more contemporary rock," said McHenry. "That fusion ties into this theme that they pride themselves on, which is their music's ability to unite a diverse group of people and to appeal to a wide variety of different music lovers. So this idea of unity is what inspired this postcard that can connect people across a wide distance."

From left to right, Rick Woolstenhulme (Lifehouse drummer), Anthony Bushman (video producer), Jason Wade (Lifehouse singer-songwriter), Michael Callahan (video director) and Bryce Soderberg (Lifehouse bassist).

Working with established bands made the students' own transition into professional life seem like a more imminent reality. "Tony Bushman, the producer from the Lifehouse video, called me last week," said McHenry. "He said, 'Man, I'm on a break from the editing lab, and I'm getting dinner right now at Panda Express, and I'm pretty sure that your song, deSoL, is playing on the radio.' And as he says that, I hear Albie in the background on the speakers. That was pretty cool."

The music videos, which are scheduled to be completed by mid-November, will premiere at a gala event on December 5 at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills.

They will also be posted on Heineken's Web site at heinekenandfilm.com.

» www-cntv.usc.edu

Share| Tags: ArkansasShowcase Add [+]