Hey everyone -
This is the official blog of the 2008 Niteskool Music Video. There will be frequent text and video updates here, and we are also now accepting donations for our project through PayPal!
In case you aren't familiar with Niteskool, The Niteskool Music Video is an annual project through Northwestern University that gives students an opportunity to create a music video with a large budget. The song that has been selected this year is Butterfly Assassins' "Sylvia II". The purpose of this blog is to keep people updated with the pre-production, and eventual production of the video. We'll be posting updates periodically, so keep checking back to see how the project is coming along!
Thanks,
- Chris Amos (Northwestern '10) and Rob Runyeon (Northwestern '10)
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Who is Making it?
Chris Amos ('10) - Director
Rob Runyeon ('10) - Director
Brad Cerf ('08) - Producer
David Lassiter ('08) - Director of Photography
Jen O'Leary ('09) - Gaffer
Aaron Menninga ('09) - Set Designer
Chris Wickman ('09) - Editor
Alex Wayne ('09) - Special Effects
Andrew Walker ('09) - Sound Design
Alex Leibowich/Bennett Kissel ('11) - Vid Doc
Rob Runyeon ('10) - Director
Brad Cerf ('08) - Producer
David Lassiter ('08) - Director of Photography
Jen O'Leary ('09) - Gaffer
Aaron Menninga ('09) - Set Designer
Chris Wickman ('09) - Editor
Alex Wayne ('09) - Special Effects
Andrew Walker ('09) - Sound Design
Alex Leibowich/Bennett Kissel ('11) - Vid Doc
What is Niteskool?
- The Video
- The Niteskool Video is an annual grant given by Northwestern University that allows students to create a music video for an on-campus band with a large budget, giving them a once in a lifetime opportunity. This year, the Niteskool video will be made for the Butterfly Assassins' "Sylvia II".
Video Concept
The basic concept of this video follows Sylvia, a girl with a fractured sense of reality. The video begins with the story featured in "Sylvia I," with Sylvia and Father Time staring at each other in a barren room, as they have been doing for years. Sylvia decides to get up, kill Father Time, and finally leaves the room.
Cue the music.
Sylvia walks into the town outside the room, where she is finally free. She is truly happy upon entering this town, and her childlike mind translates this bleak wintery setting into a vibrant springtime world with blue skies, green grass, and a tree that is fully in bloom. While in the winter setting, Sylvia performs several actions that she sees as acceptable, while in reality, they are wrong and uncalled for. For example, as Sylvia thinks that she is shaking an apple tree, she is really destroying a lamp post, and as she playfully tosses grass into the air, she really hits someone in the face with a snowball.
As a result of this, two policemen attempt to arrest her, whom she plays off as two suitors. Sylvia runs away flirtatiously. She trips and falls. She scrapes her knee and begins to bleed. She cannot keep herself from bleeding in her spring world, and thus cannot distinguish the difference between the two worlds, and they begin to clash with each other. Her latent insanity rises to the surface, and she begins to scream in disbelief and confusion. Her world literally crashes down around her, and the entire set eplodes and collapses in all directions around her. As the music fades, Sylvia giggles softly to herself, alone in the wreckage of her three realities.