Friday, May 24, 2013
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Film Watch a little, not a lot
Posted by Matthew Schniper on Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 5:40 PM
Cheers to you if you can make it all the way through this newly released music video by local scenester/musician/producer/goofball Charles "Major Mandolin" Prignano.
Titled "Drink a Little, Not a Lot," it's grating, to say the least.
Learning that local filmmaker Pete Schuermann was responsible for the visuals, I gave him a quick call to ask the obvious question: "WTF?"
"This thing goes back to when we made Alice in Wasteland together — he was one of the financiers," explains Schuermann.
"He's been bugging me for years to make a music video ... he said he'd come up with some money and we'll do something. I said, 'Let's do irreverent and weird.' My thought was David Lynch meets Monty Python."
Schuermann went on to say that the project — essentially shot in hopes of it going viral on YouTube — cost around $12,000, with a lot of volunteer help and him working at "slave wages," because Prignano has helped him in various ways over the years.
"He's retired [from the Air Force] and he's one of those guys who sees value in art-based things whether they yield a return or not."
Schuermann worked on the video for the better part of a year between other jobs and his own project, Creep!, but says if the work had been done on consecutive days, it would have been about a three-week project.
"I treated it more like a short film than a music video," he says. "It serves as a nice portfolio piece for me."
Indeed, nothing sells a filmmaker like a good segment of gratuitous vomiting and ample T 'n A!
