Mission Impossible: Miniature Brains

If you're not familiar with the Fupler family, you should be. In researching for this project, I found myself addicted to these little videos on youtube and really, everything that Matt Koval has done. He started this youtube channel that has blown up in followers and Google wrote him a huge check to keep making these videos. Because they're awesome.

He is pretty self-sufficient in props/ wardrobe/ makeup but this time he needed to make a knockoff of Trivial Pursuit for clearance reasons. In addition to figuring out how in the hell this game is actually supposed to work, we also had to come up with a design of the board which we both agreed should be rather comical leaning towards Simpsons-esque.

Then, the game pieces. I will admit that it is completely my fault for misunderstanding the shipping for these adorable little brain erasers. Just for the record (if you're as retarded as I am), when it says "Ships within two days" that does NOT mean it's ARRIVING in two days!

So day before the shoot, I had to locate a replacement. Can you even imagine how hard it is to find miniature brains??? I mean, if you're looking for a little entertainment, just pick up the phone and start randomly calling stores "Hi, would you happen to sell miniature brains?". People think you're crazy. Thank GOD for my girlfriend Danielle who happened to call me mid-panic for these brains and managed to locate THE LAST case of gummy brains on the West Coast. Her friend has a candy wholesale company and had one last box of them.

One issue: she's off work now and heading to a movie in Southcenter. So, I know my stepfather is near there... forget about the fact that he's CEO of an international telecommunications company and probably has a lot to do... I call him "Hi... um... I need a favor. I can explain later, but there's no time now. But all I can tell you is that it's a HUGE emergency. I need you to go to Southcenter movie theater, meet a girl named Jamie outside and give her $10. She's going to give you a box and then I need you to run that box to Fedex to overnight it". And he had to leave within 10 minutes. Being the amazing parent that he is, "Absolutely, no problem".

I knew when he had picked up the package because I got a phone call "WHAT IN THE HELL IS THIS? I have an entire case of Gummy Brains. Is this correct??" Bless his heart, he got it to Fedex 15 minutes before they closed and the package was signed for at 10AM the next morning.

It's such a small thing, but having the right pieces to the game really made a difference!

eric aisha (LOVE)

My friend, Eric has a way of creating furniture that is just mind-blowing. He utilizes a lot of industrial materials with serious attention to detail. They're extremely durable as well!




I've known Eric since the 8th grade back when he wore Hawaiian shirts and was a hardcore Devo fan before it was cool (for our generation). He started to mess around with creating furniture with cinder blocks and... we kind of thought he was crazy at the time. It turns out, he was way ahead of his time and was going to become part of what is now the "Steampunk" furniture movement.



Steampunk is basically for everyone. There are a lot of knockoffs - EVEN sold in places like Thomasville. But don't confuse the mass-produced crap with the hand-made one-of-a-kind pieces that act as an intellectual centerpiece of a room.





For more photos and contact, check out his website www.eric-aisha.com

Daddy's Lambo by the lovely Yelawolf

Yelawolf has quite the following for so early in his career. Being his first "real" music video, we had a pretty small budget to work with. But we had the super talented guys of Hydraulx VFX who've made visual magic happen on Avatar, 300, Book of Eli and quite a bit more. It was fascinating to work with them on creating the Lamborghini appear as if it were hanging from the ceiling... I had to rig chains to this car without damaging it... interesting. Especially on hour 15 of the day.

"Should I call you Yela, or Mr. Wolf?", he prefers Yela. Such a sweet guy to work with, very humble and appreciative of all of the effort everyone made. He was excited about seeing this happen in real life. From my conversations with him throughout the day, I gathered he's from the South and is white trash and proud of it. "All you have to do is ACT like you're a millionaire and then eventually the rest of the world will believe it" was one of my favorite quotes from him that day.

The jewelry fell under my department.. and I took Rey at the Hand Prop Room and used him as a model to send photos of the jewelry to the label. Yela went crazy over it. I told him I just tapped into my inner-rap-star and asked what I would wear. He ended up insisting on keeping one of these bracelets, which was shocking because it was so ghetto! Like, spray painted gold, missing fake diamonds - ghetto. HPR didn't even want to charge us for it because it would cost more in labor/paper than what the bracelet was worth.

Another funny thing about the art direction... notes from the label, we HAD to have a taxidermy deer head. I'm still not sure why, but it's one of Yela's trademarks. God, I hate taxidermy.



(continuity shot)

"Break My Bank" by New Boyz

I had never heard of them, but apparently they're very popular with the kids these days. They really are sweet boys (correction: BOYZ) and it was a pleasure to work with them.

The whole thing happened so fast, I got a phone call from a producer I just LOVE, Michael Mihail. "Hi, um... what are you doing? Like... right at this very second? We have a situation... I know I should've called you in the first place but the director insisted on hiring his friend that's a production designer and... he just fired him on the tech scout." Me: "Wait, you already had the tech scout? When are you shooting?" Michael: "Thursday" Me: "Like 36 HOURS FROM NOW, Thursday?"

The idea was to do a 70's style bank heist scene. LOVE that idea. Oh and by the way, with a budget of... so low I won't even say. But it was low and it took a few favors and handjobs to make it happen. So, I hadn't seen the location in-person, I didn't even have time. With projects this small, it's just basically me + one person + 2 or 3 PA's that have no aspirations to do art department.

I think it came off pretty well. For me, I love an excuse to use a bad fake ficus tree. And this type of setting was so appropriate!