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Taking Flight: Pitzer student's short film scores big with HBO Pitzer College senior Justin Weitzel did not know having a gorilla suit in his car would prove to be so useful. But good timing and a small dose of luck came into his favor as inspiration struck on a street corner in San Francisco. One of 10 grand-prize winners for HBO’s Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub Fansterpiece contest, Mr. Weitzel created a short film called Banana Booty to promote the television series’ upcoming season. The contest called for fans to submit short films designed to show relevance to the HBO comedy series. Winning entries were edited into a final promotional commercial. Having stumbled onto the contest while looking at the show’s website, he was quite confident he could produce a competitive entry. The Palo Alto native found his creative direction 2 days later while driving through San Francisco with a friend over their winter break from school. They passed by a Flight of the Conchords billboard outside a record shop, and Mr. Weitzel connected with the location as an ideal place to shoot his entry for the contest. “It hit me. It was a nice, natural frame, and I liked the ambiguity of the street corner. You couldn’t tell what city it was in. I happened to have a gorilla suit, and I felt the urge to start dancing there.” Mr. Weitzel is the star of the unique shoot. It’s a 2.5-minute stop-animation film that documents his sporadic dancing in front of the Flight billboard. In some frames he is clad in a partial gorilla suit, in others he has more casual clothing. He filmed the piece with his laptop and webcam, and then used the software program iStopMotion. He took pictures of himself every .2 seconds, giving his dancing a jittery visual quality. A prominent theme in the film is the banana, which Mr. Weitzel credited as his favorite fruit admittedly similar to the character of Bubba from the film Forrest Gump, with his fixation of shrimp. He picked up a bundle of bananas from a store nearby, and threw the peels over the sidewalk to add an extra visual touch. “I think they’re silly,” he explained regarding the fruit, also crediting their appearance in his film as similar in spirit to the random humor central to Flight. Mr. Weitzel danced for 45 minutes in front of the sign, which proved to be a unique challenge, endurance aside. “I didn’t have any music so I felt pretty embarrassed,” he said. “People were cheering and taking pictures of me, so I was feeding off everyone.” He added that while he was uncertain if the owner of the record store would approve, the man assured him, “No, this is your block.”
Mr. Weitzel whittled the footage down into a piece spanning 2 minutes and 29 seconds, but did have an extra set of eyes from a friend advising him on what scenes were best to keep. While the Fansterpiece winner was light-hearted and comical, Mr. Weitzel works on a variety of different material through his classes at Pitzer. He takes film very seriously and hopes to become a documentarian after his upcoming graduation. “I’m really passionate about bringing social issues to light,” he said regarding the impact films can have. “I feel that media is very powerful.” To Mr. Weitzel, film is a universal tool for education. He named Favela Rising as his favorite documentary. The 2005 film documented the spread of Afro-Reggae music in a Brazilian shantytown and united people against crime and drug wars plaguing the area. Proceeds raised from the award-winning film went directly to the people living in the town. “It’s a very genuine, warm-hearted documentary,” he said, citing it as an example of how media can be used as a “social instrument for change.” Mr. Weitzel is currently working on 2 different documentaries, one of which is with a friend and focuses on the militarization of the U.S. Mexico border. Stephanie Hutin, Director of Production for the media studies program at Pitzer and the Claremont Colleges, is currently working with Mr. Weitzel on animation. They discussed the Fansterpiece contest during the previous semester, and she thought the results of the film were very fun and matched the energy of the show. “Justin is the type of student who is great to have extensive conversations with, but doesn’t stop there. He’s an example of a student who takes the media studies process and makes it work for him, and in ways we haven’t seen before,” she said. The sole award for winning the contest is the visibility gained for being one of the winners. Given Mr. Weitzel’s aspirations, he said that was plenty for him. “It was reaffirming, and it made me a lot more confident in my filmmaking.” Banana Booty, and the other 9 winners can be seen along with the final promotional video on flightlipdub.com. The promo will be aired on HBO later this year. —Sean Pravica |
