Project Proposal

My project is to make a music video covering several different songs with only kazoos. This project is a passion for me because I can have a lot of fun with it and it will be a great way to tie up the end of the year. I envision the final music video will have a large group of people performing on kazoos in different scenarios to match each song covered. It will be highly entertaining to watch and listen to, bringing joy to the audience.

I am in a group with Devon Bartlett. Devon will be arranging the kazoo songs, and I will be creating the video. We will both need to communicate really well to know what needs to be done to combine the two, and Devon and I will each help a little with the others part. Devon will be in the video, and I will help pick the covered songs. This is a risk for both of us because we will have to coordinate a large group to make the video well, and will need to balance the timeline of creating the songs with the video simultaneously.

Project Productions

Read my research paper

Here's my partner's website.

Project Reflection

The idea for this project came early on in the year- around September. A majority of the AM students were locked out of freestyle since all the teachers were late, so Devon and I were sitting in the parking lot right outside the front gate bored out of our minds. I rifled through my backpack, looking for something to do, when I noticed that I had a rather classy kazoo in there. I pulled it out and excitedly showed Devon, and to my surprise she too pulled a kazoo out of her backpack. The two of us then proceeded to play “This is Halloween”, and a few other songs, for the good twenty minutes it took for someone to show up and unlock the gate. In that time, the two of us ended up joking that we should start a band called “Screaming Butterflies” and we could tour all of America with our amazing kazoo covers. Eventually that joke led to a slightly more serious consideration of the idea, and our innovator project took shape.

I hit a roadblock with the research part of my project. I wasn’t really sure what to do. It was hard to come up with a controversial issue when doing a project that was basically a huge joke. I ended up picking one of the more obviously media related topics, being censorship, because it was all I could think of that would relate to our project. It helped add to the project in the end because it gave historical context to what we were doing- making a music video not only creates a statement about your band, but it’s an addition to a rich background battle between what’s acceptable in music videos and not. Irony struck when our (completely clean) video got taken off of Youtube for “breaking Community Guidelines”. Despite the fact that our music video had no violence, obscene language, suggestive themes, hate targeting, and technically didn’t classify as spam (although some may debate that, if they look unfavorably upon masters of the kazoo instrument), Youtube denied my appeal and our video was left off-site. We recovered by uploading it somewhere else and informing our fans on our band's social media accounts of the gip Youtube just slated us.

Devon and I had to fight through a lot of nasty situations like that to get the end product we did. Problems we faced in production included scheduling issues, bad weather, actor bailing, location problems, equipment failure, and costuming conundrums. That’s not even mentioning post production. Despite all the things that went wrong, however, Devon and I both wanted the same thing: We wanted to finish this project, and we wanted to have fun with it. After all, the whole basis of the thing was to have a good time and a few laughs. I have never worked so well with any other partner in both my years at Freestyle. Both of us evenly split the work, shared what we wanted in the end product, and made sure we never lost our cool and ruined the good time. In addition to this, we were very clear in our communication with actors and transportation so that everything went as smooth as it could, despite complications. Teaming and Collaboration was definitely the 21st Century Skill Devon and I flourished in. Our cooperative interaction allowed us to solve major problems, create a great product, and master our content in a healthy, supportive way that strengthened our friendship.

At the end of this project, I honestly would not want to do anything differently. Our huge struggles ended up yielding better results than what we could have gotten before, and we remained on track and on schedule the entire time. If I were to change one thing, however, I would want to try and take a different approach to our music. As it stands, Devon and I spent hours in the ISO booth recording me playing kazoo hundreds of times for a couple dozen tracks. It was long, hard, and- after a while- sweaty. If in the beginning we had used the piano to synthesize pre-recorded kazoo sounds our music timing would have been better and the notations would have been more accurate. As it stands, I think it ended up fine. It’s hard to make a kazoo sound like conventional music. It could have been a little easier on the ears though.

Another 21st Century Skill I improved upon through this project was my creativity. Never before had I heard of someone doing a full mashup cover of kazoo songs, and of the kazoo videos I’ve seen none of them had a narrative-style music video to accompany them. In the Freestyle culture this was also new- There are plenty of music videos, but none of them as crazy and fun as our kazoo one. It was a fun challenge.

This project as a whole has allowed me to grow and has given me some very important experiences. The most important ones, however, are what made this project truly great: The fact that Devon and I worked well because we had common goals, and the ability I gained to roll with the punches. These are skills I will use in almost every collaborative effort I do for the rest of my life. The ability to work with others and get back on your feet are the irreplaceable qualities that let you get where you want to go.

I really feel like this semester I’ve been in control of my work load. From the scheduling to make sure there wasn’t a few weeks that were killer on stress to the project itself and the quality I wanted to achieve, I have been in charge of everything and I feel like I’ve lived up to that expectation. The outcome of the project was exactly what I wanted, and I had a great time getting there. I value this project far more than any other I’ve done in my Freestyle career because it has helped me grow so much, and it’s ended up being a very positive and fun thing for everyone involved. This is one project that I will never forget.