The Gurn Killers Official Blog

Ohai intarwebs… Miguel (aka Smeeguel aka GK bassist) here.

So, yesterday was a very special day for the Gurn Killers. We shot our first music video ever. But before I go into Epicness Saturday, let me back things up a little bit.

The Harrah’s tournament has been over for several weeks, and some of you are probably wondering what’s next for us. Are the Gurn Killers disbanding? Do we take our prize winnings, call it a day and go back to our regular lives?

Well, I’m glad to say the answer is a resounding ‘NO’. I guess that’s what happens when you bring four highly entrepreneurial types — who also happen to love the spotlight — together… they’re going to squeeze every millisecond possible out of their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame.

Following the events in Atlantic City, we have been very vocal with MTV, Harrah’s, and pretty much anyone else that will listen in expressing to them how The Gurn Killers would like to help keep promoting their product… I mean here we are, four regular dudes who met playing Rock Band, and now we’ve gone and achieved milestones that some REAL bands can only dream of (like opening for the B-52s). So yeah, we’re taking the whole “START A BAND, ROCK THE WORLD” slogan pretty seriously… even if we’re playing plastic instruments.

So… as soon as we heard that MTV and Pepsi were teaming up for the “Drink Up, Rock Out” promotion and heard what the stakes are (possible trip to E3 + VMA Award), the hamster wheels started turning almost immediately. We all want to go to E3. We all want to win a VMA (I mean, who doesn’t?). We HAVE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

But how? Here’s our situation:

• In order to qualify for the trip to E3, the video has to be submitted by Tuesday evening.
• I was out of the country on business all last week and got back to NYC Friday night, so we literally had one day (Saturday) to get all the footage, and Sunday/Monday to edit it
• Even with only a few days’ notice, we wanted to put together a high quality video, cause… well… cause we’re the damn Gurn Killers and that’s just how we roll!

After some back and forth, and scrapping a few AWESOME ideas because we just wouldn’t have enough time to shoot all the scenes, we agree on a high concept and a song (not going to spoil it just yet).

Then Mr. Clutch himself (our drummer Luca) basically tells us “Hey guys, an old roommate of mine from NYU directs videos professionally and he’s willing to direct ours.” For FREE. Holy crap… a real director in charge of the shoot… are you kidding me? I guess it really helps to know people, huh?

So we finally congregate around 1PM Saturday (a bit behind schedule due to the fact that some of us are night owl types) at Luca’s, the GK Army also starts rolling in one by one, and in come the videographers, Mike and Jonathan. The second they showed up with their gear (HD camera, fancy lights, and a pair of roller skates for rolling camera pans), we could tell they meant business. Let me just stop here real quick and say that Jonathan and Mike were INCREDIBLE to work with… just two very down to earth guys who were happy to be helping us, blew us away with their creativity, and didn’t mind us getting overly excited and pitching our own ideas every 2 seconds.

The shoot itself was fun, but also INTENSE. We performed our song in full costume at least 20 times… and when you pick a fast song, that is a LOT of headbanging (and crouching in a bulldog bass stance in my case). My neck and thighs are ridiculously sore today. About 5 takes in — probably due to the excessive jumping around in a wig and black outfit — my body decided to overheat to the point where I almost threw up. Six glasses of water and a cold towel around my neck later, I was ready to rock again.

We took so much footage… but it’s better to have too much than not enough, that way the director has plenty of angles and styles to choose from when editing the video. After working with Mike and Jonathan, I am 100% confident that whatever they do in post-production (even in 48 hours) is going to blow our mindholes.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to everyone who showed up at Luca’s on Saturday. Jess, Tren (sp?), Mo, Sneezy, Pockets, Matt, Kyle, Cary, Fernando: You all kick ass and we certainly couldn’t have gotten through the day without your support.

I’m not going to spoil any details on the video, but here’s some behind the scenes photos from Saturday’s shoot… the video itself should be up on Pepsi’s site by the Tuesday deadline. I’m sure we’ll also post it here as soon as we upload it. The dailies blew away our expectations and personally I can’t wait to see the final cut. We’ve done our part… now if the stars align properly we might be seeing some of you at E3 this year!

Enjoy!

PepsiVideoShoot