If you provide a stage, flashing lights and a video camera, college students lose all inhibitions.
I discovered this yesterday at an event sponsored by Student Special Events and the Students Activities Center that allowed students to create a music video for free.
Student Special Events hired Fun Flicks to set up shop in the lower level of the SUB. Fun Flicks provided a stage, costumes and thousands of songs to choose from. Students picked out their favorite song and then performed in front of a camera. Fun Flicks recorded it on a DVD for performers to take home.
"We go all over the country," said Tina Miller, part of the road crew for Fun Flicks. "For about two or three thousand dollars, we provide everything but the entertainment."
Miller said the innovative business has been around since the late '80s, and she has seen students do it all - even full nudity.
She said UNM was pretty average in comparison to most schools for entertainment value.
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She said a college in Jacksonville, Fla., took the prize for the most participants.
"It was unbearable in there," Miller said. "You couldn't even breathe, and it was nonstop all day."
At first glance, the whole thing seemed silly. But after a while, I found myself looking though the massive songbook, visions of stardom and suppressed infatuations with Britney Spears coming to mind.
I am not the only one.
Freshman A.J. Bitner had performed six times by 1 p.m. He said as the morning progressed, his performances got better.
"I got more comfortable, and I can act like a goon on stage," he said.
He had danced to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," "What's My Age Again?" and "Don't Speak," among others. He planned to stop around 2 p.m. for class.
The best performance I witnessed was by nuclear engineer student Tri Trinh, who performed "She Bangs" and copied the moves of William Hung. With a backpack on and a straight face the entire time, Trinh looked into the camera and tore it up.
He said he got his moves from watching Hung videos obsessively and incorporating them with his own.
I think it's the atmosphere that allows usually lackluster college students to dance like crazy in front of a massive crowd, but Trinh had another theory.
"You don't see music videos for free every day, and when you do, you have to take the opportunity," he said.
Eventually, I caved in and got up onstage with three friends. We donned long jackets and cowboy hats and performed "The Way You Make Me Feel" by Michael Jackson - my favorite performer of all time.
Our attempts at the worm and the moonwalk weren't all caught on tape. As amateurs, we didn't realize you have to stay in a certain part of the stage in order to be captured on the screen. If I were to do it over, I would have stared directly into the camera instead of at my friends.
However, I must say that once the digital background kicked in, our video looked pretty hot. The girls after us showed us up because instead of running around like fools, they stayed in one spot for the most part. They also looked better because they weren't doing the cabbage patch.
For a split second I felt like good ol' Britney. Who knows, maybe I got up onstage just because I was secretly hoping a casting director would be in the crowd and notice my killer moves.
My 60 seconds of fame was worth it, and I even have a DVD to take home and critique for next time, when it's the real thing.
