Pitzer senior wins grand prize for HBO video competition

Reprinted with permission from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Wes Woods II, Staff Writer
Published 03/30/2009

CLAREMONT - Pitzer College senior Justin Weitzel used film techniques he learned in class, and comedy he learned outside of it, to create a grand prize-winning film for HBO's Flight of the Conchords Fan Video Contest.

"It's exciting I'm going down in history as this dancing gorilla man," Weitzel said with a laugh on Monday.

Weitzel, 22, created a stop-motion animation film for HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" Fan Video Contest.

His piece was filmed on two separate days at the lower district of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco.

"I was in San Francisco for winter break," said Weitzel, who is from Palo Alto and was visiting friends in the area.

While driving around with friends he saw a billboard about the contest to promote the second season of "Flight of the Conchords."

A fan of the show since its first trailer aired, he asked his friend to pull over.

"I put on a costume and bought a bushel of bananas," Weitzel said. "As I started to create my video, I was there dancing for 45 minutes."

Shot with Web-cam on his computer, Weitzel spent two hours dancing to get nearly 1,500 individual still frames he needed.

He then spent 12 hours editing the piece before he created his 2 minute and 29 second video before turning it into HBO.

"It was kind of surreal," Weitzel said of watching his clip being used on a show. "When I made the video, I was pretty confident I'd be one of the grand prize winners. It's just reaffirming my abilities as a filmmaker. It's very gratifying."

The senior was one of ten grand prize winners whose video was edited to create one "fansterpiece" to promote this season of the popular HBO series.

"I was absolutely not surprised at all," said Stephanie Hutin, director of production for the intercollegiate media studies program. "He is one of the students who is really, really interested in participating in media culture both in school and in the rest of the world too."

Hutin added: "We really sort of strive to give the students the tools they need in order to create their own place in the world of new media."

Weitzel will graduate in May with a degree in media studies.

To view the video that ran on HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" with Justin Weitzel's clip go to http://www.flightlipdub.com and click on The Final Fansterpiece

To view Justin Weitzel's video: go to http://www.flightlipdub.com and scroll down to featured. Click through the videos to find "Justin Weitzel."