Yesterday, Sergio and I expanded our acting resumes and spent the day on the set of the Blue Scholars' music video shoot for the song "Loyalty."

As many of you know, Sergio and I were featured as dead soldiers for another Blue Scholars music video, "Back Home," the first single off their Bayani album. So, we jumped at the chance to get in front of the camera again. What we didn't know was what a long, chilly and mostly confusing day we were getting ourselves into.

We started the day early, leaving at 7:30 a.m. Sergio was in complete shock by the hour he had to wake.
We got out to the conservatory behind Husky Stadium by 8 a.m., where it turns out we were not only meeting, but shooting. No one told me or anyone else that we would be standing in a marsh all day long. I would have worn different shoes to start. Those New Balances were clean.

The conceptual idea was that the group of us would be wearing black shirts over colored shirts. The marsh maintained location neutrality and contrast to the colors. We took off the black shirts off, showing the various colored shirts, somehow representing weakness or disloyalty? I never really got the idea, to tell the truth, but blindly trusted the director, Zia, because his previous works have been really powerful.

We didn't actually start shooting until 10 a.m. Even worse, I was really far back for the first set of shots. Somebody call my agent.
I was kept company for the first couple hours by a 40-pound water rat/beaver hybrid. Somebody call my agent, seriously. What happened to my urban, thug shots?
Some hippies interrupted the shoot to tell the 75 of us that our marching all over the conservatory was somehow hurting the environment. They bowed down to the permit Zia had received from the UW for the shoot, but we had to relocate to a different area. By this time, we had been out in the elements for four hours, but had shot less than a minute of footage. Sergio, Can-U and I headed back to the bus for a break, bitter and cold.

Mind you, it was 40 degrees outside. I had lost my motivation, and feeling in my toes, after the second hour of shooting. The whole idea of this shoot would have made a hell of a lot more sense in the spring or summer. This was just plain cruel and a burden to those who came out to volunteer to be in the video... I mean, uh, those who came out after long-winded contract negotiations.

After the equipment had been re-positioned, we headed back out.

Sergio practiced his best modeling poses in between shots.
I was placed a lot closer for the final shots of the day, which made me happy. Thank you, agent.
We got to see some of the video after shooting had wrapped, and it looked excellent -- heavy slow motion and desaturated blues and greens. I never quite grasped the concept of the sequences we had shot, but I'm sure it will all come together in the final product.

I think I'd rather had just stayed home, but that would have been selfish. Only Sergio and I could deliver the graceful marching, falling and running that the video shoot required. Duty called, we answered... and froze our asses off.