Surprise...you're 10 people short today

My friend and former co-worker Dusty J. and I get to downtown Charlotte this hot Saturday morning, fully expecting to be shooting a video for a model search. We went inside a building across from Discovery Place where we met Kevin, our director. After building and lighting a conference room setup, we taped 6 models doing a spiel about things to beware of in the modeling business. This scene went okay considering that only about half the models knew their lines. But, then again, they were models.
Kevin, the guy who hired us, gave us 90 minutes to finish this scene. “We got two locations…uh…two scenes…and we need to be there to meet the other models”. He instructed us to set up the next scene three blocks down the street, at the corner of Tryon and Trade. We complete the scene in an hour and break down the gear for the trip down the street. So what happens when we arrive? Well, first it’s probably the busiest intersection in Charlotte. There are 10 cops on the corners waiting on us to arrive. There are big Cadillacs and BMWs and two or three other fine assed automobiles parked on the street. The producer (Kevin) then proceeds to inform us that we are also shooting a music video for a new rap artist, Jada. He sets the scene: Artist singing (rapping) in the streets, cops stopping traffic, models and dancers all around, gold teeth flashing, you get the picture. Unfortunately for Dusty and I, we were left out of that discussion. Like a football offense breaking a huddle, Kevin and his homeys started barking orders to the dancers and models who had filed out from an office on the corner. We knew some serious shit was about to go down!
We finally tore Kevin away from his homeys long enough to make him hear us ask…”what the fuck are we shooting?” “Oh yeah” he replies. “Well, we gonna be featuring a new rap artist, biggest thing outta Charlotte, and he’s, you know, part of this modeling …uhhh…promo”. Dusty and I stared at one another for a minute, took a deep breath and split our cameras diagonally across the scene. He wandered in and out of the dancers handheld, I stuck to the sidelines and shot footage of cops, models dancing (yum!), and onlookers who had stopped along the busy sidewalks to see just what the fuck was going on.
The police block off this busy intersection, the Cadillac and BMW and the other cars pull into the intersection from four different directions, and Jada jumps out of a car and begins his song while about twenty gorgeous, half dressed models dance and shake their things around him. We do this scene four times. After the first take, the crowd of onlookers has swelled to about 200.
Each new take would find us shooting various angles/objects of the same things, mostly up-close ass shots (the asses being the most animated things on the set), and dancing and Jada rapping (Dusty stuck with the rapper).


I saw the crowded bus sitting on the corner, held through four lights by the traffic police. I still couldn’t believe that we were in the middle of Charlotte, blocking all this traffic with cops everywhere. I knew that the passengers on said bus would be wondering the same thing as the onlookers now amassed on the sidewalk. Then, I saw him. He stumbled out of the rear door of the bus. Disheveled and disoriented, he weaves his way through the crowd. It’s the obligatory drunk! He had the look on his face of one who has decided that he is an undiscovered star. Slowly, yet not stealthly, he makes his way toward the shiny shakey booty. On the last take he jumps in the shot and starts dancing with the models. We shoot around him. Satisfied with the first scene, we move to a large fountain in a plaza on the corner. There, the models get wet in the fountain dancing with Jada who emerges from behind a waterfall in the fountain. YESSSSSSS! Four takes here. The drunk enters the scene on the second take and jumps in the fountain with the models. Here he begins to wash himself. While this was a much-needed activity, his timing couldn’t have been worse. The cops drag him from the fountain (after he removes his pants) and we continue the shoot. This was by far my favorite location! Then, we moved across town, to a basketball court in a ghetto park for scene three. More models, more dancing, more bouncing tits than you could shake a stick at (and I did).
Scene four found us in a park where we did a “sun setting “ shot. Now, mind you, Dusty and I started shooting this thing at 10 am, it’s now 6pm, no food no drink for all these hours. Lugging all this gear around. Needless to say we were pissed by now! So this video, called “Bounce”, will air on MTV in a new artist slot. The strange thing is that we had absolutely no idea that we were shooting a freakin’ music video before we arrived. The stranger thing is that we pulled it off. And the absolute strangest part is…we harmed nor killed any director in the making of this video.

So this is how I spent one Saturday a few years ago.