The emo/pop punk Monkees. Here to take the musical world by storm. And maybe make you laugh a few times or more. The idea for The Social Casualties began as a quick visual gag for an unfinished project for my Video Editing & Post-Production class I took my sophomore year of college, where the main character of the skit had a band. Although the project was never finished, I ended up using the band footage that was shot and made a project out of it (see Pushover). Inspired by The Monkees and pop-punk, for the rest of my video projects that school year (minus a few), I would expand the band’s lore and whatever ways I could. The Social Casualties consists of myself (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Jeremiah Colbert (lead guitar), Gunner Liero (bass guitar), and Dana Cofield (drums/percussion).
This was my second project for the Video Editing & Post-Production class I took my sophomore year of college. For this project, we had to do to cut to music or make a music video of sorts. I was originally going to make a skit revolved around “My Stupid Mouth” by John Mayer. I had about half of it shot but the audio was terrible and it was scrapped (although I later repurposed the idea for one of my Advanced TV projects). One element of the original idea, however, wasn’t cut. The main character in the skit had a band. At the time I was binging episodes of The Monkees on YouTube and I ended up wanting to create something similar to that. And thus The Social Casualties (the name comes from a lyric in John Mayer’s “My Stupid Mouth”) was born. All the band stuff from the original short was already shot and I ended up making an “in-studio hijinks” music video set to “Pushover” by Jimmy Rabbit & The Karats, which I discovered through a Ski Week YouTube Ad. I edited the video, did some of the camera work, and starred in the video as the lead singer of the band. The camera work was primarily done by Ruth Sharga and my longtime collaborator Miguel Rodriguez.
The Casualties’ next appearance was in my second project for my Multimedia Graphics and Animation class. For this project, we had to create an opening for something. My friends and I had a lot of fun shooting my “Pushover” project for our Video Editing class, and I decided to expand the lore of The Social Casualties. Like I said earlier, I was heavily binging The Monkees on YouTube at the time and wanted to make something similar to their opening, which lead me to the idea of making The Social Casualties a Monkees-esque TV show. I was also listening to Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity at the time, more specifically the album’s lead single “Lucky Denver Mint” (the Tom-Lord Alge mix for any JEW fans reading this). I thought of The Social Casualties as a pop-punk/emo version of The Monkees and thought that Lucky Denver Mint would be the perfect opening song for them. I edited, animated all the effects, appear in the video as the lead singer and mostly shot the video. The additional camera work was done by Ruth Sharga, Miguel Rodriguez, and Gunner Liero (who appears as the band’s bassist). This has to be my favorite project from my time at NCC.
This was my third and final project for the Multimedia Graphics and Animation class I took my sophomore year of college. The project could be whatever we wanted as long as we hit certain criteria. I decided to expand the lore of The Social Casualties once again with a network promo for their television show. I edited, animated all the effects, narrated, appear as the lead singer, and mostly shot the project. Additional camera work was done by Ruth Sharga, Miguel Rodriguez, and Gunner Liero (who appears in the project as the band’s bassist). It was right around the holidays when I was editing and animating the project and was heavily listening to The Maine’s Christmas EP “…And A Happy New Year” and used their song “Mr. Winter” for the project.
The Casualties’ latest appearance was in my final project during my time at NCC, a quick sketch called “A Dating Casualty”. As I mentioned earlier, the plot for this short was repurposed from my original idea for the music video project, which birthed the idea for the series. This short is actually unfinished. I shot a bunch of more stuff for it and it was supposed to be longer but I ran out of time and edited the key parts of the plot together. I directed, edited, and appear as the lead singer of the Casualties. The camera work was primarily done by my longtime collaborators Gunner Liero (who reprises his role as the band’s bassist) and Mackenzee Warnkee (who plays my character’s date in the short).