More than two years after the fact, I present to you all 23 minutes of The Taco Bell Effect (2005), my first ever big video project directed by myself and Starline Hodge. We did it for Jean Dennison’s Visual Anthropology class at UF.
(71.7mb)
Re-watching this for the first time in two years was weird — like watching Friends episodes from the early nineties and realizing how much fashions and actors looks have changed. All of the people in the video look totally different here than they do presently, and the strangest part is that I don’t remember them changing at all.
As for technical stuff, I can’t believe how inept it looks: all of the harsh shadows in the interviews, the air conditioners humming in the background, the framing of the professor’s interview, etc. I didn’t de-interlace it to get rid of the jagged edges during movement. I didn’t even know what interlacing was. I really had no idea what I was doing.
At least I worked quickly back then. Those interviews at the beginning are probably my second best ratio of footage shot versus footage used. All of the subjects (my friends) had things to do within the hour, so I prepped everyone for 20 minutes while I set up and literally kept the camera rolling for the next 40. Each of the four groups did a “commentary” on each of the four commercials they saw, so that’s 16 setups in 40 minutes. In the end, I used about 1/4 of it (10 minutes or so) in the final movie.
As far as the length, I remember Jean telling me that it runs pretty long, and I only sort-of understood what she was saying at the time. Now, I can totally see it.
At least one set of interviews could be cut from the first section. It only needs three of those interview vignettes at most, not four. Though watching it now I’m glad I kept them in because they’re really fun to as a time capsule sort of thing (for me at least).
The last few sections (the powerball, double decker taco scenes) could be intersperced into the interview section, too, to the audience you a little bit of a break from how monotonous they get. I didn’t realize at the time that footage didn’t have to be placed roughly in the order that it was shot in.
The “chicken strips” scene and especially the “Big Mac versus Whopper” scene could be cut out entirely. As much as I love Andrew’s line, “When you were eatin’ Big Macs, I was still buying Happy Meals for the Beanie Babies,” it seems irrelevant watching it now.
Speaking of irrelevant, my two favorite parts — thematically speaking — definitely have to be starting with Andrew’s quote, “How irrelevant, it must be funny,” and Star’s suggestion that we use “Cafe Regio’s” by Issac Hayes as the theme song. Speaking of music, check out the fledgling pre-live Inuit Jargon song that she suggested I tag on at the end: “Goodbye Ocean, Hello Moon.”
(2004-era Inuit Jargon “jamming” as recorded on a Radio Shack mic. That’s me playing the fifth-grade recorder)
Overall, all of my memories from this movie and making it are absolutely fantastic.
- The hour we shot the interviews was some of the most fun I’ve had making a movie…
- I looked forward to going to Visual Anthropology every week, and Jean Dennison was a great teacher and one of the best people I’ve met at UF…
- Meeting Star, I met someone in real life (who was a student like me) that I really looked up to and admired their work…
- All of my friends showed up for the screening. All of them.
Man, some things you really miss.
This definitely marked a time when I realized what I wanted to do with my life but obviously had no idea how to do it well. Then again, I find this a lot more interesting that most of the stuff I’ve done recently so go figure.
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PS. As a bonus, you can listen to my horrendous attempt at a commentary track that I did with Star. We’d been editing all day, and (wracked with Senioritis) she just wanted to go home. I was totally giddy because I’d never finished a video project of this magnitude before, she begrudgingly humored me and helped me make this limp commentary track. It does get better as it goes on though.
