Dark Lord Funk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbdvogFyZZM

When I was a TA for 267 last school year, one of my students asked if they could use the makeup room for a personal project, and asked if I would help her since she had never applied a bald cap before. I said sure, of course, and the two of us and another friend of ours helped in creating Lord Voldemort (He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but you know "Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself" says Hermione) for the student-made parody of Mark Ronson's song "Uptown Funk" which was titled "Dark Lord Funk". 

This is probably the coolest thing I have had the opportunity to work on. None of us were aware of how popular this parody would become until it went viral the day the director and lyric writer, Keith Allen (aka: KFace) uploaded it to Youtube. It has been incredible to see the success and feedback of this little film, and has been the most rewarding project I've worked on to date.

Among those who commented on this parody were J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, and Jason Isaacs who played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.

screen-capture taken from https://www.ksl.com/?sid=34070064

Screen capture taken from Twitter.com

One of the most rewarding moments for me on this was when my husband and I went to a Yule Ball event last December where the DJ played the parody and everyone in the audience knew the lyrics and danced along with it. It's just remarkable the kind of influence you can have on the world with your talents when you work together as a team to bring something so positive and uplifting to the world, and you get to see the outcome and realize the impact it has had on people--people that you don't even know! The most rewarding thing is being part of something that is bigger than yourself.

This parody has gone on to receive a nomination for the 2015 Global Music Awards and 2015 Utah Music Awards.

You can check out the Behind the Scenes video and see all the hard work that went into creating this short film here (if you fast forward to 2:14, you can see myself and some of the other makeup artists hard at work painting Voldemort's handsome, bald head)--seriously, though, Elijah (the kid who played Voldemort) is hilarious, ridiculously talented, and so much fun to work with. This project was amazing.