A few weeks ago I was chal­lenged with the task of cre­at­ing two com­mer­cials. The first com­mer­cial was for a Coke-A-Cola con­test that my uncle informed me of. The con­test called for com­mer­cials of no longer than 50 sec­onds in length, which showed peo­ple enjoy­ing Coke-A-Cola at a con­cert, restau­rant, the movies, or an amuse­ment park.  The sec­ond was a com­mer­cial for the aca­d­e­mic decathlon team, which we some­how got duped into doing  because peo­ple absolutely loved James’ cam­paign com­mer­cial and they wouldn’t take no as an answer.

Now these two com­mer­cials where  polar oppo­sites in terms of impor­tance. The Coke com­mer­cial had $10,000 on the line, it had to have high qual­ity footage, be  impres­sive, and sim­ply be a good com­mer­cial. The decathlon com­mer­cial on the other hand  had vir­tu­ally no impor­tance to us,  we had no expec­ta­tions as far as qual­ity was con­cerned, and our reward was a grade which we weren’t quite sure we would end up receiv­ing. This meant, that we could basi­cally take a pic­ture of somebody’s busted up jaguar that hydroplaned on the free­way write “join decathlon” on the front of the pic­ture, call it a com­mer­cial, and be done with the whole thing.

How­ever, for rea­sons that I am still not fully aware of,  we decided to work on the decathlon com­mer­cial first even though we knew that the Coke com­mer­cial was more impor­tant and would com­mand a greater amount of our time and ded­i­ca­tion. Cre­at­ing the decathlon com­mer­cial was hon­estly one of the hard­est things that I’ve ever had to do. It wasn’t so much the fact that I wasn’t capa­ble of cre­at­ing it, or that it was tech­ni­cally chal­leng­ing, it was more so the fact that I had no moti­va­tion or inspi­ra­tion to go off of. The feel­ing could be com­pared to the feel­ing that one gets when they are try­ing to date an ex girl­friend who broke up with them because she was a cheater and had no respect for that indi­vid­ual in the first place. Which is to say that com­ing up with ideas for the com­mer­cial was a shame­ful, painful, regret­ful, and ulti­mately unevent­ful expe­ri­ence. After an embar­rass­ing  hour of throw­ing around crappy ideas we decided to go with a “Locker Insurance”-esque com­mer­cial, which wouldn’t be too hard to shoot, and would have enough spice to cap­ture some sort of audi­ence. To be hon­est, the main appeal of such an idea was the fact that we could com­plete it and be through with the whole thing as quickly as pos­si­ble. Thus, we came up with a few lines to say, had a basic sce­nario, took three shots, edited it in a half an hour and we were done with our first commercial.

The Coke com­mer­cial, was even more of a chal­lenge. Unlike the decathlon com­mer­cial, we were incred­i­bly inspired and moti­vated to cre­ate the Coke com­mer­cial. There was $10,000 on the line, and it was really a chance for us to pull out all of the stops (which in case you didn’t real­ize is a ref­er­ence to how an organ works) how­ever, the sce­nar­ios demanded by Coke where a lit­tle ridicu­lous. We could 1. Depict a con­cert, which was pos­si­ble given my Dad’s com­pany, but impos­si­ble given the amount of peo­ple that it would have called for. 2. Depict an amuse­ment park, because we know how cam­era friendly amuse­ment parks are. 3. Depict the movies, which  sounds good until you real­ize that bring­ing a cam­era into a movie the­ater is fed­eral offense. 4. Depict a restau­rant, which we couldn’t do because we didn’t know any­one who owned a restaurant.

Hard pressed for ideas, we went down stairs for some nour­ish­ment when Mike Busch walked by and exclaimed some­thing silly like “You know what would be great, just have a guy pee­ing on a case of Pepsi and at the end of it have big let­ters that read “FUCK PEPSI”. Upon hear­ing that, we all knew that Mike was on to some­thing. We jumped in the car, bought a case of Pepsi (we didn’t have Pepsi on hand because it sucks and no one in my house drinks it), returned to the house, and quickly began shooting.

Our idea was a bit more com­plex than our decathlon com­mer­cial. It enthralled cap­tur­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent angles and shots in order to prop­erly express the idea. Plus, we had to bring in some spe­cial effects work, which included using a hose to sim­u­late a pee stream. After a solid hour of shoot­ing we got all of the nec­es­sary footage, strung it together in a half an hour, and we were done with our com­mer­cial. While we were proud of the final result and con­fi­dent that it would win, the com­mer­cial did have some bla­tant flaws that we didn’t think the Coke com­pany would appre­ci­ate. We thought that pee­ing on a Pepsi sequence was fine, but the biggest issue was the fact that our com­mer­cial didn’t take place in any one of Coke’s four ridicu­lous loca­tions. Thus, we decided to make another com­mer­cial just to be on the safe side.

Our sec­ond Coke com­mer­cial involved Thomas and his girl­friend, Lau­ren, watch­ing the movies at home. At first, Thomas and Lau­ren are awk­wardly watch­ing the movie, Thomas tries to make a few moves, but Lau­ren shuts him down. Then Thomas drinks a Coke, Lau­ren smells it, and bam they begin to make out. The idea was pretty good, it was a funny, appealed to a lot of peo­ple, and it incor­po­rated one of Coke’s four locations.We shot for about half an hour, put the footage together, and quickly sub­mit­ted both com­mer­cials to the con­test just before the deadline.

All in all, I think we had a very suc­cess­ful day. I found that film­ing com­mer­cials  is a lot eas­ier than film­ing a whole movie, they’re shorter, sim­pler, and often eas­ier to do a qual­ity job on, and yet they still develop the fun­da­men­tal skill-sets needed to make suc­cess­ful movies. In other words, if one is hard pressed for time, and wants to become a film­maker, they should make as many com­mer­cials as they pos­si­bly can. We lit­er­ally spent about five hours total mak­ing three com­mer­cials, which isn’t bad con­sid­er­ing that shoot­ing a scene for some of our movies can take a whole day. The hard­est part about mak­ing these com­mer­cials was the fact that we had trou­ble com­ing up with the ideas for them, which isn’t bad at all con­sid­er­ing that we were start­ing cold turkey.

Big props to every­one that was involved with mak­ing these. Thomas and Kevin were help­ful and a plea­sure to work with. Lau­ren was very pro­fes­sional, espe­cially for a female. She was prompt, polite, and didn’t mind mak­ing out with Thomas a few times on cam­era, even though it was incred­i­bly awk­ward for both of them. I really appre­ci­ated this con­sid­er­ing the “I can’t spit Martinelli’s out of my mouth with­out get­ting sick” or the “I’m tak­ing an emer­gency trip to Mex­ico” excuses that females have pre­sented to me when mak­ing movies. Mike Busch also gets credit for com­ing up with the funny idea for our first com­mer­cial. All in all, I’m proud of what we did with just a few hours of effort, for a lot of peo­ple this may look like crap, but I actu­ally think it’s a tes­ta­ment to our effi­ciency and improv­ing effec­tive­ness at cre­at­ing films.

Oh and for some rea­son, peo­ple absolutely loved our decathlon com­mer­cial, even though I per­son­ally think it sucked. Just goes to show that some­times peo­ple either have ridicu­lously high expec­ta­tions, or none at all.

A week ago my brother decided to run for ASB Pres­i­dent at my school. Because a high school elec­tion runs very much the same way as a real “demo­c­ra­tic” elec­tion does, which is to say that it is an over-glorified con­test to see who is the most pop­u­lar, has the most money, and can lie the best, my brother real­ized that he was at an imme­di­ate dis­ad­van­tage. This isn’t to say that he lacked the pop­u­lar­ity, money, or decep­tive capa­bil­i­ties required to win the elec­tion, because he quite cer­tainly did, but it’s more-so to say that he did not pos­sess these three attrib­utes to the extreme and glute­nous extent that his rich and spoiled oppo­nents did.

Real­iz­ing that he couldn’t win the elec­tion using the “most posters, most gim­micks, most lies, most fake friends, most time on ASB, most money spent” war of attri­tion style that his oppo­nents would undoubt­edly uti­lize, my brother decided to uti­lize a more sub­tle “guer­rilla war­fare” method. He designed posters which promi­nently dis­played his face in a Big-brother, Communist-esque, fash­ion, with a slo­gan loosely fol­low­ing the lines of “Build­ing a bet­ter tomor­row for you and your chil­dren”. The idea was to under­mine the exces­sive nature com­monly found in today’s “demo­c­ra­tic” elec­tions, with the power and bril­liance of some good old Com­mu­nist pro­pa­ganda, and for the most part, the cam­paign was very effective.

Peo­ple who passed by my brother’s few posters couldn’t help but notice  the imags that they were see­ing which was  a pow­er­ful fig­ure with an idea of what he wanted for the future. For those used to a tra­di­tional “demo­c­ra­tic” can­di­date, the con­cepts employed in my brother’s posters where for­eign as they lacked the oblig­a­tory  “vote for *insert name here*” and “*insert crappy slo­gan that loosely plays off said candidate’s last name here*”, tech­niques that my broth­ers “demo­c­ra­tic” oppo­nents had so exces­sively employed. Thus, the images remained in the minds of the peo­ple that saw the posters, and with this sup­port for my brother’s cam­paign began to grow. While my brother’s posters were indeed bril­liant, they where per­haps too bril­liant. A few cow­ardly cap­i­tal­ists couldn’t help but deface some of the posters with french-style mus­taches  in an attempt to infuse the posters with the weak and piti­ful nature of the french, which they ide­al­ized so much. How­ever, the deface­ment of my brother’s posters did lit­tle to harm his cam­paign. In a true show­ing of inge­nu­ity (the kind that the cap­i­tal­ists weren’t pre­pared for) he merely expanded the piti­ful french-mustache style, into full on Stalin mus­taches, because we all know that Stalin, was prob­a­bly the world’s most benev­o­lent and inspi­ra­tional ruler to date and thus my brother wanted to asso­ciate him­self with him as best he could.

But like any Com­mu­nist, my brother needed more than just pro­pa­ganda posters to defeat the cap­i­tal­ists. He needed a nuclear weapon to oblit­er­ate the demo­c­ra­tic cap­i­tal­ists who threat­ened his cam­paign, or to at least keep them at bay Cold War style. This is where I came in. Using my skills as a film maker, my brother and I devised a vision for a 1 minute com­mer­cial which would ulti­mately lay the foun­da­tion for his even­tual rule as high com­rade of the ASB Union his Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. The movie had to appeal to every­one, it had to have humor, it had to be styl­is­tic, it had to have action, it had to por­tray his mes­sage as a can­di­date, and most impor­tantly, it had to make him win.

After a cou­ple of days work, plan­ning and film­ing my brother’s cam­paign com­mer­cial, it was com­plete, and for the first time ever, I had cre­ated a movie that had all of the aspects I orig­i­nally envi­sioned for it.

The com­mer­cial aired on the week of the elec­tions, and it was a resound­ing suc­cess. Those who viewed it absolutely loved it, and more impor­tantly, it kept other com­mer­cials (which would have oth­er­wise won elec­tions) at bay. We had out­classed the com­pe­ti­tion, and beat them at their own game, deliv­er­ing every­thing that the peo­ple wanted but with­out the exces­sive ten­den­cies that are so fre­quently employed in “demo­c­ra­tic” campaigns.

Unfor­tu­nately, the cap­tial­ists got the last laugh. My brother did not win the elec­tion, and when my best movie to date was posted on youtube, it was taken over by cap­i­tal­ist  “copy­right” hold­ers. See, because I used a very pop­u­lar song in the com­mer­cial, a big cor­po­ra­tion decided that they owned that song, and because of that, they decided that they can make my video auto­mat­i­cally play when­ever it appears on my youtube chan­nel. I have an issue with this for a vari­ety of rea­sons, not only is it annoy­ing as hell when I go to my chan­nel, but the cap­i­tal­ists are essen­tially using the bril­liance of my video to adver­tise their song. While I don’t nec­es­sar­ily have a prob­lem with this after all it is bet­ter than hav­ing my video “muted”, I think I should at least have the basic right to pre­vent the video from auto­play­ing on my chan­nel so that it doesn’t annoy the crap out of any­one who vis­its it. It is very much like giv­ing a friend some money for gas and then demand­ing that he only use his car to drive you around because the gas in the car was paid with your money. In other words, its exces­sive, con­trol­ling, and defeats the orig­i­nal pur­pose of the whole ordeal. But  I sup­pose those are the three ele­ments  mak­ing up the foun­da­tion of our proud “demo­c­ra­tic” cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety so I guess I have to deal with them.

About three weeks ago, my fam­ily and I jour­neyed up north to visit the lands of San Fran­cisco. Our rea­sons for vis­it­ing the area where var­ied. My brother was going to visit his girl­friend up in col­lege, I was going in order to visit San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity, my Dad was going because he loves dri­ving on any kind of road trip, while my Mom and youngest brother went sim­ply because they didn’t want to feel lonely. I usu­ally despise road-trips as much as I despise a female who refuses to make me a sand­wich, but I actu­ally don’t mind trav­el­ing up to north­ern Cal­i­for­nia. First off, north­ern Cal­i­for­nia is only a six hour drive from Orange County, the drive is often scenic and beau­ti­ful, and most impor­tantly I get to remain in the state of Cal­i­for­nia. Any other kind of road trip is unac­cept­able because it requires more than a day’s drive, often across bor­ing land­scapes, and they require me to leave the state of Cal­i­for­nia. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for expand­ing my hori­zons and I have been on count­less cross-country road­trips through­out my life­time. How­ever, I’ve quickly come to real­ize that Cal­i­for­nia is the best state in the union and leav­ing it would be like giv­ing up a Fer­rari Enzo in order drive a Toy­ota Prius. It’s point­less, unre­ward­ing, and stupid.

With this in mind, I was look­ing for­ward to my jour­ney up north. I thought it would be a nice chance for me to escape the stresses of my daily life here in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and at the very least, it would be an oppor­tu­nity for me to ride my bike in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment. Now, I have trav­eled up north in the past and the expe­ri­ences where dis­ap­point­ing. The peo­ple up north are lib­eral, and live an entirely dif­fer­ent lifestyle than those of us down here. While the north does have some beau­ti­ful scenery, I always felt that the gen­eral atti­tude and lifestyle of the peo­ple ulti­mately kept me from truly enjoy­ing what the area had to offer. But San Fran­cisco promised to rem­edy this. Whereas I vis­ited the most lib­eral and admit­tedly less pop­u­lated areas of north­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Santa Cruz, and Sebastapol, San Fran­cisco was a heav­ily pop­u­lated and bustling metrop­o­lis. I thought this would be much more akin to my lifestyle here in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia and thus, I had very high hopes for San Fran­cisco. Despite my opti­mism, my trip up to San Fran­cisco ulti­mately dis­ap­pointed me.

To start things off, there’s noth­ing to do in San Fran­cisco. South­ern Cal­i­for­nia is packed with a ton of attrac­tions that can keep a tourist busy for weeks, whereas San Fran­cisco just has the Golden Gate Bridge, which is admit­tedly impres­sive, but can only enter­tain a tourist for a few hours. San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity felt like a cold, bar­ren, and heart­less cam­pus. The fact that I vis­ited the cam­pus while it was rain­ing out­side, and in the mid­dle of a fur­lough week prob­a­bly didn’t help those neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments all that much, but I still found the school to be dis­ap­point­ing. The idea of liv­ing in San Fran­cisco was very appeal­ing to me, and San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity appeared to be one of the bet­ter Cal State schools, but as I spent time on cam­pus I came to the con­clu­sion that the school and the city just weren’t a right fit for me. The last and final dis­ap­point­ment how­ever, was the fact that rid­ing a bike in San Fran­cisco absolutely sucks.

San Fran­cisco, and north­ern Cal­i­for­nia in gen­eral, are con­sid­ered to be the most bike friendly areas in the coun­try sec­ond only to Port­land Ore­gon. How­ever, I found that this sim­ply wasn’t the case. San Fran­cisco is hilly, lacks bike lanes, and is sim­ply too crowded to safely ride a bike in.  Now I did man­age to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was actu­ally pretty cool, but given all of the cycling lore that comes from up north, I was expect­ing a city with an intri­cate net­work of bike lanes, and thou­sands of cyclists. Instead, all I got was one measly bike trail for the Golden Gate Bridge that was about three miles long, and was paved worse than the trails that I ride here at home.

While I did leave San Fran­cisco feel­ing a lit­tle dis­traught, and dis­ap­pointed, I do rec­og­nize that the city and its sur­round­ing areas do  have their mer­its. The scenery and geog­ra­phy around San Fran­cisco is beau­ti­ful. At one moment you could be emerged in a for­est, and the next moment you could be rid­ing along the pacific coast, which is pretty damn cool. The archi­tec­ture is awe­some, and I hap­pen to love all of the build­ings that inte­grate cor­ru­gated alu­minum into their designs. As dis­ap­pointed as I was at the fact that  San Fran­cisco has lit­tle to to offer tourists, or vis­it­ing cyclists, it does offer a lot for some­one who knows the city and its sur­round­ing areas well. I per­son­ally think that if I lived and belonged in the city, I would love it. How­ever, the sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that I’m too con­di­tioned to the fast paced, and con­ser­v­a­tive lifestyle of south­ern Cal­i­for­nia to truly enjoy San Francisco.

As any true film­maker should, I brought my handy flip video cam­era with me on the trip and made a mini doc­u­men­tary. I plan to pro­duce a vari­ety of other small doc­u­men­taries in the near future, under a cat­e­gory that I’m call­ing MEI Doc­u­men­tary Films. The pur­pose of these films is to sim­ply doc­u­ment and dis­play the mini-adventures that I par­take in through­out my life and to hope­fully improve my skills in telling an “off-the-cuff” story. I have a few other doc­u­men­taries planned to be released and so hope­fully I’ll be able to pro­duce a con­stant stream of nar­ra­tive movies, and doc­u­men­taries in the near future.