Written by Aysia Buendia
Hello, it’s Aysia, and this is another Behind the Scenes of “Songs of Finals Week” for 2017. If you didn’t already know, the Songs of Finals week package is a bunch of parody music videos that preach most of the feelings students deal with before, during, or at the end of final exams.
This year our lovely lyricist, Cathy Bui, came up with most of the new songs in the best place to think. The shower. With ideas brewing in her head, Cathy gathered her super-crew: Brianna Bui and Aysia Buendia (that’s me). Together, we created a “Songs of Finals Week” package that would definitely be the highlight of our senior year.
The songs we decided on were “24K Magic” by Bruno Mars, “Help” by The Beatles, “Single Ladies” by Beyonce, “Starboy” by The Weeknd, “Say Something” by A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera, “Low” by Flo Rida, and “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. But, there was something missing. We needed a song to wrap up all the feelings of Finals Week. We needed something that would make everyone a little less, depressed. All of the sudden there was a burst of brilliance. BROCCOLI! Elizabeth Luna and I collaborated and created a parody to “Broccoli” by Lil Yatchy & D.R.A.M.
For the creation of the actual video, Cathy and Brianna worked on the shot list, and I made the costume list.
Our plan was to start recording and filming during Winter Break, but our plans had to be pushed back a bit because our male singer that we intended on having was unavailable for any of the filming days. Fortunately, we contacted Angaelos Hanna and he gladly accepted the challenge. With the two-time “Songs of Finals Week” female lead, Tricia Tran and Angaelos hit the recording studio.
I Will Survive
The music video for “I Will Survive” was very easy, thankfully. We had Tricia singing on a chair, the room was dark, and there was one spotlight on her. While I stood holding Tricia’s personal, Cathy and Brianna were filming from all the best angles.
Low
We filmed “Low” after school in the BBN room. The extras had to learn a bit of choreography for this scene. Fun fact: Brianna’s little sister, Kylie, had a small role in this song, even though she is not yet attending FVHS. But, she will forever be BBN famous.
Starboy
The house that we filmed at for Starboy was beautiful! It was a full on mansion, which was the perfect setting for this video. Some of the shots we needed were a bit tricky. Like this above the head shot was kind of sketchy because I was standing on a wobbly ladder. The stairs scene was even more dangerous because Brianna and I tried filming a tight angle of Angaelos, while walking backwards down the stairs. It was always the last step that we forgot about and nearly slipped on.
Say Something
The filming for Say Something went very well.. We were lucky to find another house with a piano so we could transition smoothly from Starboy to this song. Thank you Matthew Messick for letting us borrow your house! Fun Fact: the report card we burned belonged to senior, Johnny Khoa. He had all straight A’s, but it still felt empowering to burn a report card.
Single Ladies
Huge thank you to dance captains Madi Haney and Heaven Cha for creating the Single Ladies dance on the spot and performing as Tricia’s back-up dancers. We used Brianna’s parent’s studio to shoot this song, Help, and 24K Magic because it had great backgrounds and props.
Help
Help was definitely a fun one to film because we had a whole different idea in the beginning. We wanted to capture the Beatles essence so people could quickly recognize the song. When we changed it and tried some unplanned shots out, we loved it and decided to use that footage. Huge props to Angaelos for entertaining us by pretending to interact with himself during the “band” scene.
Broccoli
Broccoli was filmed at the Huntington Beach Central Park at 8 in the morning. The one difficult part for this video wasn’t waking up early, it was getting the broccoli. Cathy, Brianna, and I had a group call while I was at the store trying to figure out how much broccoli to get. We decided on two big heads of broccoli and one 3oz bag of frozen broccoli. All the broccoli was used to spell out “Send Luck” at the end of the video. And, if you are aware of social media memes, then you can probably guess where we got that idea from.
24K Magic
24K Magic took quite some time to film, but that is because we wanted some day and night shots. If you didn’t catch it the first time, Johnny “The Deal” Bernardin made an appearance in this song as the convertible driver and background dancer. One shot we filmed that brought us both excitement and fear was the rooftop scene. We wanted a background with the setting sun, lights, and buildings, so we decided to climb on top of Brianna’s studio. Another death-defying scene was the forklift intro. Brianna was operating the forklift, while Angaelos and Tricia clinged to each other in order not to fall off.
Overall, this BBN package was very well planned out and used many different components to really come to life. The end result was definitely worth all the time and hard work. Both Angaelos and Tricia had a lot of fun working on this video, and it is a memory they will always keep from their senior year in high school. The same goes for Brianna, Cathy, and I. It was a great experience working with these girls and I know that we will all continue to work our hardest to provide the school with fun entertainment through BBN.
