MOST OUTSTANDING VIDEO PRODUCTION NOMINEE
Vietnamese Student Association at Louisiana State University
Date Auction 26 Skit Video
List of everyone involved in this video production. Please include: first and last names, whether or not they attend your school during the time of the production, and their roles during this production.
Actors/Actresses/Writers: Andrew Cao, Duc Vu, Hailee Pham, Hannah Cao, Judy Kong (currently taking a gap year at LSU), Kayu Southichark, Lam-Nghi Nguyen, Matthew Mai, Truc Hoang, Vivian Luong, and Victoria Doan
Director, Editor: Peter Nguyen
Assistant Director, Stagehand, Actress: Madonna Trinh
All are current students at LSU except for Judy Kong.
Please describe the purpose of this dance, including your intention, goals, and creative process.
The Jujutsu Kaisen Cooking Competition skit best depicts the VSA-LSU community's involvement and humor. This year's Date Auction topic was Jujutsu Kaisen. The crew faced a huge obstacle in incorporating the storyline into the script because the plot is quite unpredictable. Moreover, half of the actors were unfamiliar with or bewildered by the narrative. Essentially, the group agreed to create a different narrative that all audience members can connect to while including the anime characters. The skit crew learned to put their fears aside and simply enjoy what they were doing while being themselves after six sessions during school days to discuss scripts and four filming days. Our variety of creativity and involvement is a key component that is valued and connects to who we are as a VSA. Each pair of candidates, for example, developed their own script and came up with their own ideas. Kayu and Duc proposed teleportation, Hannah and Truc liked more anime filters, while Hailee and Lam-nghi preferred a low-budget approach. Each skit member portrayed their anime character by watching the anime and observing the anime character’s personality and attitudes. In turn, this made it easy for the skit members to compose their own dialogue and script lines. Despite deviating from the storyline, phrases such as "Besto Friendo" and "Infinite Void" are thrown in to keep the anime's concept alive. Vietnamese dialogue was also included to provide cultural comedic relief. Logos and images were created in Photoshop to maintain the notion of a culinary competition apparent; voiceovers were added, and several clips were typical angles of food preparation. Despite the difficulty in comprehending Jujitsu Kaisen's complex anime, the crew came up with a simple solution that appeals to all audiences, approached the assignment casually, and, most importantly, portrayed themselves in a lighthearted manner.