Teens Hope "Crunk" Seniors Take Ke$ha Contest
17-year-old director Joseph Rodriguez would like to study film, and is waiting to hear from colleges.
Fizzion Films
When pop tart Ke$ha decided to hold a contest for fan-created "amazeballz videos" set to her fun-trashy party anthem "TiK ToK," a South Florida teen set out to show everyone our local seniors can be as lively and wild on camera as the 22-year-old artist fresh off the hook of Flo Rida's massive single "Right Round."
And hopefully win, of course.
"We thought winning would give a good boost to our careers...but I didn't know many seniors," admits 17-year-old Joseph Rodriguez. "Both sets of my grandparents are deceased. I posted a casting call for volunteer active seniors who danced, and over 200 people responded. The seniors were great."
Rodriguez and his producer sister Jessica, 16, may still be in high school, but that hasn't stopped them from using contests like Ke$ha's to get a head start on their careers.
"I wanted to do film my whole life," the elder Rodriguez says. "I figured the best way was to start my own website. We've been making films and entering contests since August of 2008."
The duo and their friends found instant success with their no-budget productions, earning a runner-up nod in a Tobacco-Free Florida contest with their first official project. They recently earned a $1,000 grand prize in a global competition to produce a commercial for Sony.
Enter Ke$ha, for whom the two and choreographer Alexa Evans, a fellow WPB Cardinal Newman student, filmed their fun-loving volunteers partying down to decidedly non-senior lyrics:
I'm talking about everybody getting crunk, crunk / Boys tryin' to touch my junk, junk / Gonna smack him if he getting too drunk, drunk / ...Or the police shut us down, down.
Poetry!
But we digress. The would-be future contest winner:
Rodriguez is happy to report the only accident over two days of filming at G Star Studios, which allows students to use facilities for free, was his. "We had just done a perfect take on one of the choreographed scenes. I stood, camera in hand, ready to declare we had captured what we needed when I suddenly noticed that I had never hit the record button! Talk about a 'senior moment!'"
"TiK ToK" contest submissions are due to YouTube today. The five with the highest view counts will be selected finalists, and the woman formerly known as Kesha -- she earned that dollar sign, ya'll -- will choose the grand prize winner.
What will Rodriguez get if old-girls-gone-wild is chosen? According to Ke$ha herself (so much sic), "You and a friendd will fly to meet me and we'll go shopping and dumster diving and stuff."
"I'm not at all reluctant," said Rodriguez of being outfitted by a woman could easily show up dressed like like a prostitute on safari or sporting a mustache, "but I'm definitely taking my sister."
