David Bunfill's Guide to UCSD
| David Bunfill's Guide to UCSD | |||||
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| Basic Information | |||||
| Release date | March 4, 2020 | ||||
| Runtime | 5m 58s | ||||
| Series | Sketches | ||||
| Cast and Crew | |||||
| Directed by: | Nick Geoghegan | ||||
| Written by: | Nick Geoghegan Lucan Stargiotti Jake Noren | ||||
| Edited by: | Nick Geoghegan | ||||
| Starring: | Nick Geoghegan Lucan Stargiotti | ||||
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David Bunfill's Guide to UCSD is a comedic horror sketch uploaded to the PaulWesNick channel on March 4, 2020. Though this video was the second uploaded in 2020, it was the first created specifically for the PWN channel, as well as the first video Nick directed and edited for PWN since September of 2019. The video serves as a parody of 1980s straight-to-VHS videos, with the character David Bunfill giving a tour of UCSD, in a VHS recorded over what appears to be a snuff film. This is among the darker videos uploaded to PWN, created by Nick with the aid of Lucan Alto Stargiotti for a TTV project. This was Lucan's first appearance on the channel in over a year (with the exception of his brief appearance in the last episode of PWN in September).
Description[edit | edit source]
Plot[edit | edit source]
A tape begins playing. An old-style company logo appears, cutting to a well dressed man before a large building. He introduced the tape, which is titled "Welcome to UCSD". The man, named David Bunfill, is repeatedly bothered by his incompetent boom operator, Franklin. He conducts a tour of the college, showing off the famous Geisel Library. The tape begins to glitch, and distorted footage of someone filmed from a high window appears briefly. Bunfill returns and shows off "Falling Star", an art installation consisting of a large, off-kilter house suspended on the corner of a building. He introduced the Sun God, which he describes as a "pagan symbol" the students of UCSD worship. The tape distorts again, and Franklin is seen walking backwards under the statue. Someone films David from the window, breathing heavily into the camera.
David Bunfill shows off the brutalist architecture of the school, which he compares to Soviet buildings. He also tours the construction yard which tore up a large parking lot on campus. The tape is heavily distorted, and we see the unknown figure rummaging through drawers and smelling clothing. Suddenly, Bunfill enters the room and the man hides himself in the closet, watching the tour guide change. The footage reverts to a series of interviews with UCSD students, interrupted by a shot of the unknown figure watching Bunfill sleep, before stuffing a bag over his head. The interviews continue, with Bunfill asking the final question to each student, "did you get into UCLA?", to which all students respond "no".
The footage is again distorted, and we see a shower, where the figure has dumped David Bunfill almost nude with a sack over his head. He sets the camera down, and we finally see that it was Franklin the boom operator who has kidnapped Bunfill. He enters the shower with the unconscious reporter. The footage cuts as a scream is heard, and the mostly nude Bunfill wanders through a dark forest, seemingly having escaped from his captor who is somewhere close by. He is chased through the rain to where he finds a small wooden teepee in the trees. He takes shelter, where he speaks to the camera and explains a terrible secret he has learned. The unseen Franklin lunges at Bunfill, the footage is heavily distorted, and cuts to a Japanese Dole Banana commercial, before warping and shutting off.
This classic VHS Video-Tour of the University of California in San Diego (UCSD), published in 1986 by Bunfill World Entertainment Ltd, has finally been recovered in the musty back shed of a dilapidated house in rural Wisconsin. Once the prized treasure of many a VHS hunter's collection, this official original release tape includes all the wonderful moments San Diego alumni remember from their youth. – Description on YouTube.
Cast and Crew[edit | edit source]
Nick Geoghegan directed, edited, starred in, and conceived of the sketch. Lucan Stargiotti appears on screen holding the boom, which was the functional sound device for the video. He is credited as "sound recorder". Much of the dialogue was improvised, with several of Nick's lines suggested by Lucan and roommate Jake Noren, who operated the camera for the early shots of the video and who was intended to appear, yet ultimately cut from the final project. The various interviews are conducted with Nick's actual suitemates. Those who appear in the film are credited as follows:
- Nick Geoghegan as David Bunfill
- Lucan Alto Stargiotti as Franklin
- Jose Ruiz Ruiz as himself
- Max Sandoval as himself
- Garett Danque as himself
- Koosha Jadbabaei as Dingye Chen
- Nick Yousefi as Gary
Wesley Davies composed a piece of music for the video, simply titled "VHS", which plays from 0:40 to 2:42. This track was later repurposed for use on PostPWN as the theme song for Data Storage Corner.
Production[edit | edit source]
Nick originally conceived of the VHS tour gone-wrong concept as early as January. He was enlisted to make a solo project of any duration and genre for his TTV internship at UCSD. On January 23rd, Nick called Lucan to invited him down for filming, which he originally intended to do February 21st through 23rd (the week of the 48 hour film festival. Lucan was unable to come that weekend, which ended up working in Nick's favor. The video was shot on a Canon Rebel t7i, with external Røde audio which was borrowed from the head of TTV. The shots in the woods also employed the use of a camera mounted LED panel, which was turned to minimal brightness for most of its screen time.
Lucan arrived on Saturday, February 29th, and he and Nick brainstormed ideas for the project over a dinner at BJ's. They decided to improvise most of the dialogue for the tour portion of the video, but they planned out the snuff film portion in great detail. The name Franklin was chosen for Lucan's character as a reference to President Franklin Pierce. Shooting began the following day after a lengthy location scout at the school, with the tour portion shot from 12 to 4, the interviews shot 5 to 6, and the snuff film and woods portion shot intermittently from 6 to 9. The shower scene was the final segment filmed, around 12 in the morning.
Nick's roommate, Jake Noren, accompanied the pair to help film the tour segments. He was responsible for the panning and zooming in the library and engineering building sequences. He had suggested the mirror scene at the start of the library shot, and helped Nick with a few lines. One segment cut from the film featured Nick walking backwards away from a mobile camera into the school's designated smoking zone, praising the smoke free campus while gesturing to the cigarette butts which scattered the ground. Jake departed the group around 2, and all portions shot after Sun God were done with a tripod and no camera operator. All of Nick's lines were improvised, with occasional aid from the others.
The interviews conducted with the suitemates were unplanned, with Nick asking improvised questions for four minutes with each person or group, receiving unscripted responses. Nick's other roommate, Jose, is also seen being interviewed. Of the seventeen minutes of interviews recorded, only one minute and twenty-nine seconds are used in the video, and a further four minutes are used in the behind the scenes video on PWN 2 (see below).
The snuff film portions were shot handheld on a Sony Handicam by Lucan, the same camera used for every episode of PWN. Nick's appearance in his underwear makes him the second to do so on PWN, the first being Wesley in Bear Grylls Detective. All of these segments were shot in Nick's suite, with the wardrobe where Franklin hides being Jake's actual closet, and the bed where Bunfill sleeps being Jose's. The woods scenes were shot at the northern end of the campus in the eucalyptus grove. It began to rain as Nick ran around shirtless, keeping his pants on but implying nudity. The rain does not register in the heavily distorted footage, but Nick's character does comment on the wetness of the scene. A military helicopter flies over at one point, and the hut which Bunfill stumbles across was unmarked, found well within the woods by the pair as they filmed.
Editing[edit | edit source]
Nick edited the video over a large period of time on Saturday and Sunday. The aspect ratio of the video was 4:3, in a resolution of 720x540 cut down from 1080HD footage. Nick began editing around 4 o'clock on Saturday, editing off-and-on throughout the night, completing a rough cut by 3:30 AM on Sunday. After Lucan departed at 1 o'clock on Sunday, Nick finished the video at 4:40, and Wesley sent in the music on Wednesday. The video was uploaded that same day. Much of the footage is heavily distorted, with a number of Final Cut Pro effects on each clip. In general, the video would feature a highly saturated color palette, a "Bad TV" effect, enhanced sharpness, and a low-level prism effect. The music was given "Car Radio" distortion, and sometimes slowed down or warped to enhance the unnerving nature of the video, particularly during and after the snuff segments. At some points, as many as four audio clips and four video overlays are used to create the distorted transitions. Static is used throughout, and roll effects are added to enhance the VHS feel. The logo for "Bunfill LTD. used in the opening was created from scratch in Final Cut, with the logo sound lifted from a Danish VHS released by IRISH found on YouTube. Other tracks used include Synth Popular, and two tracks from the Wii game, Sim City Creator.
Trivia[edit | edit source]
There are several easter eggs and references to other PWN projects scattered throughout the video, alongside other cultural references.
- David Bunfill was the name of the unseen radio reporter who interviewed Chief Houston in A Hot Lead, voiced by Stephen Weinstock. Stephen actually appears three times in the VHS video, with varying degrees of distortion: he is seen plainly at 1:21, heavily distorted and tinted blue at 2:16, and airbrushed over the lower lefthand corner of the screen at 5:09.
- Within the static transition at 2:19, the face of Minecraft urban legend Herobrine can be seen.
- Despite supposedly being set in 1986, multiple contemporary references are made, the most notably being coronavirus and Jeffery Epstein. The Epstein line was improvised by Nick having not rehearsed anything else, and while a cheap punchline, he and Lucan kept the line in as it began to rain soon after and the pair wanted to leave.