Paul Gale is not your typical Senior on the Brandeis campus. He’s a tech-savvy guy who uses his smarts in order to make online videos that will guarantee to give you a 6-pack from laughing. His videos have hundreds to thousands of hits on YouTube that not only feature himself as the star, but also the Brandeis Student Body in a comical way. From his interviews where he wears a horse’s head to his dramatizations concerning drama on campus, Paul never fails to get a smile plastered on your face.
His talents are now being expanded from random videos that he puts together in his spare time to an actual autobiographical, comedic webseries. The webseries consist of five 5 minute episodes that you could find on his youtube page starting this April. Want to learn get behind the camera and learn more about Paul and where he gets his ideas? Read some more!
Year: 2012
Major: Film
Hometown: Manalapan, New Jersey
Q: What groups, activities, and or clubs are you interested in on campus?
A: On campus, I am the co-coordinator of my sketch comedy troupe Boris’ Kitchen’s writing team, as well as Crowd Control (improvisation). I also run a monthly comedy showcase at Chum’s called “Thursdays with Morrie.” Most recently, my friends and I started a satirical website called Brandeis Basement. It works like Her Campus, in the sense that there’s a parent company that oversees “sub-sites,” on college campuses. Our first video, Sh*t Brandeis Students Don’t Say [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flyRLVYxl4I], just got about 5,000 hits in its first 12 hrs on YouTube. We’re blown away by the response.
Q: You have a popular YouTube page that features tons of videos that vary from crazy music videos, fake commercials, pranks, and comedy interviews. What made you decide to pursue something such as this?
A: I think comedy is a really great tool that anyone can use to relate to the world and to expose the really dumb things that we all experience. I started my first YouTube page in 2006, when I made a video that was a mash-up of the Numa-Numa song and Sadaam Hussein’s execution, and it got 6,000 hits. Someone blogged about it on the New York Times, but it was taken down. The video was in really poor taste, but that’s about when I started to put material on YouTube. But it wasn’t until sophomore year [of college] that I started to upload things that I am willing to share.
Q: What and how do you get your inspiration for all of these videos?
A: I have a program on my phone that I just write down about 4-5 notes a day. Most of them just stay notes, but some of the notes become videos. For example, the Purell commercial was an idea that I had written down 2 years before I made the actual video. Channel 101 asked me to make a fake commercial for Purell, and it was super convenient to dip into that “Barney Bag,” of ideas. For the videos that I made recently on campus, such as the C-store video and the Admitted Students Day video, I came up with those the day of. I chose those because they’re communal events that people pay attention to. I wanted to add my voice to the event and expose the over-eagerness of the admitted students or Aramark’s about the new C-store.
Q: You have a popular YouTube page that features tons of videos that vary from crazy music videos, fake commercials, pranks, and comedy interviews. What made you decide to pursue something such as this?
A: I think comedy is a really great way to relate to the world, to expose the really dumb things that we all experience. I started uploading stuff in 2006. My favorite video from that year, or at least the most infamous, is a mash-up of the Numa-Numa song and Sadaam Hussein’s execution, it got 6,000 hits in its first day. I found out years later that someone blogged about it on the New York Times[http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/it-can-be-too-early/]. The article denounces the video (which is, by the way, in poor, poor taste). Cool to be decried at 14 years old by “Da Grey Lady,” though. It wasn’t until sophomore year [of college] that I started to upload things that I am willing to share.
Q: Did you ever do projects similar to these before YouTube?
A: I made videos on iMovie with my friends in the 7th grade. One of them had two of my friends fighting with bats and I synced up sounds of lightsabers so that every time the bats hit each other, you would hear the lightsabers. However, I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was 13 and I moved away from it, but now I’m back. The reach of the videos is really always amazing. This newest one has about 1000 hits in a week. I could never be able to have 1000 people actually come to a live show, even if I paid them. But with YouTube, the numbers aren’t that hard to get.
Q: What is something that most readers would not know about you?
A: I am incapable of love.
Want to see Paul’s hilarious videos? Click Here!