Directors cut: The Rebbes Niggunim #1

hi everybody thank you for joining me my name is time herskowitz and i'm the director of the represent gonna mime we're gonna watch the video together and give you some behind the scenes stories of some of the things you might not have noticed or recognized first off we have to thank double dhamaal key Smetana who have been steadfast than their support in my crazy endeavors and different ideas we like to also thank Eleazar and lubricant Houser Hey look at these big black CT the first scene in Sadie's house and I wanted something that would sort of bring the Sadie and the grandkids together and something they can talk about and a record player and record something I grew up on sort of at the end of my childhood rent this DVD by the way was based off of Ben C office ins original idea of doing the Rebbe is no good him and and having them told in a story form and he had a record player in there and when I saw that I was like this is something that definitely needs to be incorporated it's just it's so interesting this is Dan Egan from balki collocate the drawings were done by Mandy Lewis's RCF in Old Tappan New Jersey and there's lots of people that draw realistic drawings but none of them are really able to capture the read and the feel of Siddim the way Mandy can but this negative darkest all okay no I thought this would be a great opening has a lot of energy [Music] the first person that I thought of who you know always been a good friend I thought of le Marcus and and he really really did a great job this this is one of those in the goodman that the reverend spoke about having a message not necessarily having a story so this could have taken place anywhere so 770 was sort of the perfect place and the perfect setting for this type of Megan also some of the kids who live not necessarily in Crown Heights or have the ability to come to 770 very often you know I felt it was very important to give them that feel and you know give over some of the excitement of highest that they may not get to see every single day Ellie actually tells me all the time you know sort of became his his anthem wherever he goes everybody always asks them to sing darker huh so I'm very excited not just in the way he sang it but also that sort of took on a life of its own this [ __ ] nelly actually sang in studio you sank uh very nicely a couple of times but I wasn't with the power that I knew that le could deliver and I said le you know this is one of these videos that the kids are gonna really watch over and over and over again and I just watched him go into this zone and he sang it and I literally had pins and needles it was unbelievable and I sat there with Fitch I had my mouth just drop for this scene we had le dance with a bunch of friends of mine there's only about ten people in there but nice job giving that look [Music] so besides talking about the actual Megan one of the things I found fascinating was the idea of nagging him in general and there's so much information and so many beautiful vet Lakhan stories that weren't necessarily connected to a specific Megan so this was a perfect fit lots of times when people draw things they'll draw it as a picture but if you really want to get the experience of something being coming to life you really have to layer it and add shadows so for something like this I didn't want to animate it exactly so I didn't want to show the rebus hand being animated I didn't think that was a cover dick but you want to show different motions to tell the story and sort of bring it to life without necessarily making it a cartoon snakin we actually had to film a couple of times in order to get it right in the beginning we had the kids have you know musical instruments a drum an accordion but it became very hard to coordinate between it and to make it look full credit to my Seenu who did the editing and the filming and it makes everything look nice this Negin also it's more about the message not necessarily about the stories this was the first question that I had that I ran into one of the shila's that I got about kid wearing a talisman so for this we ended up switching the the kids playing instruments on the roof of five eighty Crown Royal Moses Thanks besides Fitch Abed shamone who also did the music and an amazing job none of the kids actually played instruments except for the kid who played violin in the early years 770 was expanding had different places that they would do huck office wendy lewis spent a lot of time trying to get the different look and feel but year the revit taught that [ __ ] n-- and where it took place which was fascinating the forum the silicon forum a lot of the schlub commented that their kids came to seoul and stood up by the podium singing the nagging him because a lot of immigrant him that the revit taught over the years were firm from the young in the room and the community members were were amazed that the kids knew them and sang them so beautifully had audio of the rapper singing some aloha annachi but the video was just an early for bringing necessarily was there ever singing some aloha annachi here we put it together based on the years that they write the song it and and the timing [Music] this was actually a very fun scene to film 8th day who are always very lively and energetic and and you know the Marcos brothers always have a big smile on their face this was actually one of the first scenes that we did and and had a lot of moving parts to it it's one of those little secrets and Crown Heights that people don't know about it's literally in the park down east the parkway there's an old historic house and like a little mini historic village with an old wagon and I happened to be in the park with my family and I went around looking for different locations and I walked in there and I was like this is perfect this is exactly what I need to fill up a scene like this you need a lot of props and that big box with all the bread the bottom is is filled with just empty boxes the other props you see are from memo loops they do a lot of old-style decorating and events like that and actually the one of the people that walked by that worked there was like we should really set this up all year round this is beautiful so it all came together very nicely and that energy that 8th day brings really pulls it together we couldn't just have the xavie just play records or they find records so I called my friend avi Richler and he came up with a whole elaborate scheme about the record prayer breaking and needing fixing and stuff like that so it didn't get repetitive and keep the story flowing for this negative Adams me race that's hi I'm Sun cleaning up the books or the Shama Sh hi I'm actually happens to be if you haven't realized by now one of my favorite singers he sings with such clarity and such sincerity and when people tell me that they love an imperious a lot of it is to the credit of the singer somebody like I am that just sings it so well and so nicely we filmed this actually in the show land-based rifka which has that old show feeling with the old wood benches something that I imagine probably a shoal in the olden days would look that way we had a bunch of boys with beautiful voices come to film in New Jersey this studio actually is where Benny Friedman and a lot of the famous singers and a lot of the music that you hear today is actually recorded in this studio woven into this negan is the idea of a beluga and somebody becoming closer to a Shem that's the story of the fishermen and the buckram who come and and learn with him and eventually bring him close with him I was actually a little scared when it came to this [ __ ] being that there's no words that the kids wouldn't really catch on but the boy who sang it did such a nice job such feeling and such emotion that you have kids I hear from parents all the time what are you saying yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and we know you know we know which [ __ ] they wanted to its Jamil yeah this is one of those things where you know all those years in color war finally paid off so you used to be you know build jail cells and then as time goes by you get better at building jail cells and and locks are doing it right took me a couple of days to build that jail cell it's actually a garage on my block made out of wood and spray painted black [Music] this one is one of the kids favorites its asada was to the Sun when I decided to use asado dosa duster for this one I was thinking you know the words are a little complicated but the tempo the beat was very quick so even though it's it's not necessarily something that we would sing on a regular Tuesday and may be limited to Shabbos it was just a very fast pace and lively Nigam that I thought you know what this would be a really really good [ __ ] to include and maybe actually have the kids learn something it's really unbelievable the amount of people that that that love this [ __ ] and lots of credit goes to Benny you know lots of times you have people who are afraid to you know do silly things but Benny was ready but lots of times you know people just follow orders and and Benny has all these things and keeps adding a lot of the shtick and a lot of the different funny parts are stuff that Benny added we originally filmed this with just the Benny's but it really needed something to pull it together some sort of storyline so we had Benny come back and then we went up and down Kingston Avenue going in and out of stores and playing and Benny was a real sport people asked me how do you get Benny so many times and it's called trick photography and basically Benny sits in one spot he does the whole thing then he sits in another spot and does the whole thing and then we cut all three videos together Benny's only in one place at one time it's not green screen it's trick photography and that's it thank you so much for joining and I hope you enjoyed it we're working on volume two so stay tuned with a lot more excitement and a lot more learning and a lot more to go to