-Hello. I’m Odin.
-And I’m Alyssa with Beyond Geek.
-And today I’m answering questions about my history with Beyond Geek.
I’m going to be talking with Alyssa about some of the music videos
that I’ve done with the Groovie Ghoulies and Beyond Geek in the past.
And you’re here because?
-While not only am I the daughter of the creator of Beyond Geek,
but I also have a lot of questions because you’ve known my dad for a really
long time, and it’s just kind of fun to get that little bit of insight.
-Well, please, let me explain to you who your father is.
-Please do. I love that.
-So I’ve known Joe Gillis since 1994.
We met when he was working on his short film.
He did a silent movie, much in the same as the little comedic,
serial, silent films from the silent era. -9 Items or Less.
-9 Items or Less..
We were both, through a mutual friend,
and I actually made foam props and some costumes for him.
What a shock foam even then. -Oh, my, gosh.
-And because of that, we just kept working together
because it was it was it was actually a lot of fun.
It was a lot it was a lot of work.
And so a few years later,
there’s a local group here, a local band in Sacramento called the Groovie Ghoulies.
And Joe got to know Kepi, and and they wanted to do a music video
because there was…
something was coming up. I don’t know if it was a contest
or if the song was getting released.
But there was a reason that something was coming up and we had no time.
So we ended up doing was creating this idea for a science fiction music video.
It was called ‘Til Death Do Us Party,
that was the song. -Right.
-And we put this whole thing together in less than 24 hours.
I think Joe had had the final edit finished just about 24 hours
or maybe 36 hours after the initial phone call of
“Hey, let’s do a thing.” ‘Cause of that,
then he and I went on to work with his concept of Beyond Geek
the television show. -Right.
-And I’ve been an editor with him and a maker and on screen and off screen
and all.
I’ve done everything but write music for Beyond Geek.
-Right. Yeah, exactly.
And I mean, I remember that you were always
in the trenches with my dad and that’s always been such a fun thing.
So now the music videos wasn’t just one video you guys happened to do.
Like, it started with a video, but it turned into a couple different ones.
“Don’t Go Out in the Rain. You’re Going to Melt Sugar”
-Right. -“50,000 Spaceships”
And “Running with Bigfoot”, which the coolest part is
“50,000 Spaceships” was never a completely finished film.
There was one little situation where they really, really really,
really, really like my dad and Kepi super wanted a spaceship.
How did that go?
-What Kepi’s idea was for him to sit on this rock
in an area where he knew he had he had good visuals behind him.
He made a couple of they were just literally paper plates
that were hot glued together and spray painted silver,
had a bit of string to a stick,
and he wasn’t worried about seeing the string, right?
Because he wasn’t worried about trying to pretend
it was a real… -B movie style.
-B, very B movie style. -Very B movie style, yeah.
So he wanted these spaceships flying over his head.
So my job was to have this stick that was only about so long, right?
It was a really short stick.
And end with a spaceship at the end of it, just kind of hold it over his head.
And then we brought a couple, so I might be able
to do two type of a thing because the 50,000.
When we got out to where he wanted to shoot it,
he’s sitting on this rock that’s got a cliff behind it.
It’s like I can’t get behind him.
So I’m and then I can’t be next to him.
I have to kind of… -Right, because you can’t be in the shot.
-I can’t be in the shot.
So I do this crazy lean thing with a stick that’s only so long and yeah.
And then trying to keep it, there’s what we call headroom right there.
How much space there is over our head within a shot.
-Yeah. -Well, Joe was running camera
trying to make sure that Kepi had headroom,
but still, it was so close to Kepi that I hit him in the head
with with the couple of times I did it on purpose.
And then it just became really hard not to, not because I was trying to be a jerk.
It was just the space wasn’t there. -Yeah!
-I needed a much longer pole.
So that particular video, we decided
to to drop using the paper plates and ended up doing them.
What would you call clean?
So it was just this sky behind him
and we’re going to add in 50,000 spaceships, some spaceships in post.
Now, this was again 20 years ago so because of that the “50,000 Spaceships”
never quite got finished.
And then during that elongated postproduction time
the Groovie Ghoulies as a band broke up.
So the three of them stopped touring… -Right.
-The three of them stopped performing together.
And so that video just never quite got finished.
The other two both got put out.
That was another big fun thing with what’s going on right now is finally,
20 years later, “50,000 Spaceships” as a finished video is coming out,
and Joe got the one spaceship shot in that he always wanted.
He got that that found footage wiggly UFO shots. So…
and he did that completely by hand.
So even though it was 20 years later and it’s much easier to do match move
and motion tracking within
different editing programs. -Yeah.
-Still by hand. He put this thing on there
and then would watch which direction the blur is going in frame of the tree.
And then he would just have the computer do a motion blur about the same length
and about the same direction because it’s a quick shot.
-Yeah. -So by hand,
he sat there and put that in there
and then I think added a second layer tree on top of the spaceship.
So it looked like it was, you know…
-And further away then it really was. -Behind the tree instead of…
-Yeah. -pasted on top of the video.
-All right. And so “Running with Bigfoot”,
you were in the Bigfoot costume. -I was volun-told
that I was embodying Bigfoot. -Volun-told.
-I had no problem with it, right?
It was like, “Hey, we’re doing this Bigfoot thing.
We want you to wear the suit and make the feet”
And like, “Yeah, sure.”
I had made a wookie suit for something else entirely.
-Right. -So for the music video,
I made Bigfoot feet. I took a pair of combat boots
and made platforms underneath them
and stuck big foam toes out the front and painted them with latex
and glued more of the same hair on them.
-For those of you listening, that means that Chewbacca
is, in fact, also a Bigfoot.
-Yes. -You can—you can use both.
That’s important. -Yes!
-That’s what I’m taking from this.
-Well, just like a Yeti and Sasquatch
are all kind of Bigfoot, like. -Yeah.
-because the whole Sasquatch idea covers Yeti.
That. Well, you know, Yeti’s got a different name
because he’s in a different area.
Chewbacca is in a very different area, so they just call them Wookie.
-No big deal. -He’s in a land far, far away.
It’s OK.
-And you can also tell that Wookies,
Wookies and Sasquatch have been around for a long, long time.
-A long, long time, yep.
No, there’s been plenty of spotting out there.
So I got the chance to chat with my dad
about why you guys headed up to, like, the Northern California area.
You did.
And it sounds like it had something to also do with Bigfoot.
Were you a part of that planning as well?
-As far as the planning, no.
I didn’t—I wasn’t part of the planning at all.
Kepi knew the locations he wanted to go to
the railroad track locations, the tunnel, where the pond was,
these are the places he wanted to go.
And then, you know, he was open to our interpretation of,
“Oh, it would look really good. If we went over here. “
-Right. Right. -So.
-And there was one day of pickups that Joe and I did, like, a month later,
maybe it may have been a week later, but we went back up to some of the locations
because we needed more close ups of me, especially the whole sequence
with The Hunter shooting at Bigfoot in the music video,
“Running with Bigfoot” -Right.
-because The Hunter is Joe. That’s Joe Gillis.
-Yeah. -You probably noticed.
-Yeah, just a little bit.
-Just a little bit. -I’m a little familiar.
-That was shot on an entirely different day.
The two of us went back up for that and a few other close
ups of me running around and doing things was all shot later.
So it was two days of shooting for that.
But everything else for all three of those music videos were shot in one day.
One go. With the five of us.
Because there’s 3 members of the Ghoulies, myself, and Joe
and I think we were at our pizza dinner before the sun went down.
-Wow… -So, yeah.
-That’s crazy. Oh, my gosh.
Go to JoeGillis.com to watch all the remastered
Groovie Ghoulies videos, and more behind the making of them.
-Thank you for watching our interview. -Thanks for tuning in.
