Sunday, June 30, 2013

Peotone High School Archives, Volume 1

Recently I was able to rescue some footage shot during high school that was thought to be lost for all time.  Our group made several little short movies during high school and my friend Tom was fortunate enough to even have some of them on a VHS tape.  I converted this tape to DVD and uploaded the videos to YouTube.  I shared this on Facebook but I’m not certain how many people saw them.  Additionally, I’ve found that YouTube has removed the audio portion of at least one of those videos due to copyright infringement. I assure you if I could make any money off this, I would have done so.  Just to be clear, I don’t own the rights to any copyrighted material.  I’ve since uploaded these videos to a hopefully less scrutinized area, so you’ll need to follow the link at the bottom.  As a bonus, I’m offering you some behind-the-scenes commentary on each video.  Hope you enjoy it!

I. I Shot The Sheriff

This video was shot during senior year (circa 2000) for my Public Speaking class. We had an assignment to lip sync a song. It didn't need to be filmed but we decided to have a little fun with it. Yours truly is featured as Bob Marley. Kyle Pedigo, Tom Prokop, Brian Delaney, Tom Coursey, and Clayton Thompson took part in the drug bust and faked playing instruments. Josh Bult joined for the song and may have been the only one actually playing something. The man behind the camera was Jon Solita. Collectively, they became The Wailers, affectionately known as the NEPCO Gang (inside joke) for our purposes.

If we were going to sing about shooting the sheriff, then by golly we needed to show someone being shot. The set up was to have me, as Marley, purchase some pot from a drug dealer (Pedigo). A raid would ensue and I would shoot said sheriff (Delaney). I borrowed a rasta wig and applied a ton of brown paint to my face, neck, and hands. It took forever to wash off that paint once we were done. One detail I overlooked was pants; I don't remember Bob having pale white legs. We borrowed some police equipment and riot gear from Coursey's dad, a Will County cop. Mr. Coursey had issues with us portraying Will County cops, so a Cook County patch was acquired and taped over the uniform's actual badge. You can see this when the camera zooms in on the dead sheriff.

There is not a whole heck of a lot to say about the song. I regretted being filmed holding a sheet of paper with the lyrics.  I knew the words; the sheet was strictly precautionary.  I also want to reiterate that my lip syncing was on point the entire song.  About halfway through, it appears as though I am a little behind.  I assure you this is entirely a technology glitch.  I’d like to commend Delaney for his enthusiastic delivery of the chorus, which is apparent from the song’s opening line.  Coursey looks hilarious standing there in the riot gear, and Bult gives us a nice a little jig at the end.  I do my best to get down with my reggae self as the song plays out to the end.  It was a fun night and I’m pretty sure we got an A on it.

Watch the video here.

1 comment: