Old Movies: Wilkins-Price Campaign HQ

Genre: Comedy/Political

Production Company: Pathetic Productions

Premise: Jeff Baker is an intern for the Wilkins-Price presidential campaign. During his employment, Baker becomes aware of campaign fund embezzlement. The job pays well, but is it worth the accompanying immorality?

Background: In the course of a week, this masterpiece was provided a miraculous series of coincidences to become one of the best films the cast has been involved in to date. Things started off shaky. Patrick called Min and told him they would be filming soon. Three hours later, Patrick called Min again, waking him up, and Min was promptly fired from the project. After Patrick and Min finished fighting, that night, Patrick, Min, and Martin filmed an extravagant and unnecessarily long opening sequence featuring Martin waking up and heading off to work. Patrick, Jeff, Mike, Min, and Martin drove around looking for places to shoot. The original script explained that Martin and Patrick suddenly decided to run for president. They would be running against Jeff and needed some mudslinging footage. It was decided that Jeff would steal something from a liquor store. They drove from liquor store to liquor store until finally someone allowed them to film from behind the counter. Surprisingly enough, the owner of the store practically handed the store over to them because he wandered off into the back while they filmed. The shot was black and white and a logo was added to it to make it look like a security camera. A new script was written, but this shot was squeezed into it anyway. They needed to film Martin shredding papers in his office. Patrick would have asked his school counselor if he could film in her office, if she weren't at a convention at a college somewhere, but lucky enough for the group, her office wasn't locked and the scene was shot. Every school video they had seen featured someone's kitchen table serving as a news desk, but when it came to the news sequences, Patrick would not allow this video a similar fate. Using the phone in the counselor's office, Patrick called a local television station and asked if they had a news desk we could use. This was Friday and the video was due Mondey. Once again fate smiled upon them and a news desk and correspondent were available, but would only be available for the next two hours. All of the costumes were thrown into the trunk of Patrick's car and they drove down to the television station. While the studio set up cameras and lights for the shoot, Martin walked around the studio and filmed people working and Patrick wrote the script that the news correspondent would be reading. Once the taping was finished we were brought into a smaller office where they green-screened an "Election 2000" logo behind the reporter and added news music. Patrick would not shut up about how amazing this all was. The next afternoon, Patrick called a local Marriot and made sure the group could film in the lobby. When most of the shooting was done at the hotel, Patrick called the local library and asked if they could use one of the conference rooms, but as it turns out, those cost money. This would be the first time any of them had spent money on a movie. They drove to the library to find the doors locked and closed. They almost walked away but decided to read the signpost to find what hours the library was open. They walked back up to the locked doors and noticed a small sign on the board. "Democratic Club Meeting 8:00PM Sat." They looked at their watches, 7:45. This was getting scary. They walked into the democratic club an easy fifty years younger than anyone in the room. Thanks to the fact that old people are gullible and Patrick is a good liar, they were able to, fairly simply, convince the women running the meeting that they were making a documentary about the city's political interests. They set up cameras pointed at the crowd intending later to use these shots as reaction shots. Having been informed that the meeting would last a few more hours, they were bored and went to Wendy's for a snack. At Wendy's they decided that the opposing candidate would be Thomas Davidson, a cunning reversal of Wendy's spokesperson Dave Thomas. The name was later changed to Thomas Stevens for some reason. The footage of the audience was reviewed and a speech was written that would fit with the audience responses. This way, Patrick could make a speech and they could cut to shots of an audience asking questions and Patrick answering them, appearing entirely involved with the crowd. When the meeting ended, Patrick asked the women who were closing up shop if he could say a few words at the podium. He read the script they wrote at Wendy's and the edited result was a perfectly convincing speech to the elderly onlookers. After the Democratic club meeting, they returned to the Marriot. Not surprisingly the conference rooms at the hotel cost a lot more than the ones at the library (something to the tune of $100 an hour, but again Patrick's charm got them in for free, promising the women at the front desk that it would not be more than an hour. Four and a half hours later, they emerged from the conference room with all the footage they needed. The footage was horrible, everything was shot from one angle, the dialogue was adlibbed even worse than the rest of the movie, but the bulk of the filming was done. All they had left was to film the finale. By now they had 24 hours left to film. Despite the fact it was only about two seconds long, the shot in the closing with Martin crying took nearly an hour to shoot because the whole cast was laughing hysterically for reasons that have been forgotten. To show that the candidates were now poverty stricken Min was depicted on the side of a road with a cardboard sign. The cardboard Patrick found for the sign was too big to be taken seriously. He had already written "Will Work For" in huge letters the whole way across the top when he realized the word food would not fill the huge gap he had left. Min leaned over and said, "This is the worst sign ever," which prompted Patrick to fill the gap with the words "Better Sign." The rest of the day was spent editing. The whole opening sequence was accomponied by an intentionally overenthusiastic techno musical piece that accentuated the relative boredom occuring in Martin's daily routine, brushing his teeth, drinking coffee, watching political debates, etc. Patrick instructed Min to find a patriotic song. Min returned 30 minutes and $20 later with... the soundtrack to the the Patriot. Not what Patrick meant at all, but it would have to do. About four seconds of one track is used when the words "Pathetic Productions" fade in and that was it. A $20 cd for four seconds. Editing grew more and more irritating. The computer they were using crashed several times during the renedering process and the video simply would not transfer over to a tape, no matter what they tried. Consequently, the video was presented to class in the form of four giant mpegs that will be available for download from this site soon. Update: download here.

Cast:
Martin Broder
Birk Biggler
Lauren Lester
Mike Neumeister
Patrick O'Riley
Jeff Orr
Min Park