Jack Riewe, The Battalion Life and Arts writer, sits down with supply chain management senior Andy Hurst, who made the videos “Almost Getting a Date to the Midnight Yell” and “Awkward Ring Dunk” with his crew Hamlocke Films as part of a social experiment. The two videos have garnered more than 14,000 hits at time of publication.
THE BATTALION: Why did you start making these videos?
HURST: Well, I’ve enjoyed watching prank videos ever since the beginning of high school probably. I guess you can consider me a bit of a YouTube nerd. I’ve watched a lot of different pranks by different people and I’ve always wanted to do one. I guess I like breaking social norms and I just enjoy watching people laugh while doing them.
THE BATTALION: How hard was it for you to go up to people?
HURST: So in the beginning, for instance in the “Almost Getting a Date to the Midnight Yell” video, it was really nerve-wracking the first couple of shots, so I think that added to my acting because I was naturally nervous when going up to the girls. I had to get used to it, but then after shooting a couple shots of it, I had to act more because I became numb to it. By the end of shooting the whole day and watching the videos a couple of times, it seems like it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to walk up to someone
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THE BATTALION: What were you trying to prove?
HURST: Honestly I wasn’t trying to prove anything; I wasn’t really doing it to prove that Aggies had a specific response to what I did. I did it mainly to see the laugh that just comes with breaking social norms and being put in awkward situations. There’s a joy in that, I think.
THE BATTALION: Did people react like you expected them to?
HURST: I think for both of the videos, I didn’t really know how they were going to react. I had to get into this acting zone, where I wasn’t really thinking about them reacting until I go back and watch the clips and then I realize how awkward a situation it was. Some of the times we would expect a big response and then someone will act like it wasn’t weird at all … and then other people would react really awkwardly to an extent.
THE BATTALION: What was going through your mind when you were talking to people?
HURST: Not a whole lot, I guess I was just thinking of ways to make it awkward in that situation. I’m able to do the pranks because I know that afterwards I’ll tell them it’s a joke and point to the camera. It’s easy for me to not feel weird in the situation because I know I’ll be able to tell them that it’s a joke, so most of the time I’m thinking about how funny it’s going to be when I tell them it’s a joke or ways to make it awkward.
THE BATTALION: Is there a specific group of people you were aiming for?
HURST: No, no, there was no specific group. We were trying to get as much of a diverse group that we could so we tried to go to West Campus, to the engineering side of campus and get some professors like in the first video. So just try to get as many people as we could, and see all the different type of reactions we could get.
THE BATTALION: What were your favorite things about making the videos?
HURST: One of my favorite things was probably just the response we’d get afterwards when we told them it was a joke. Having them crack up at how funny the situation was or they would tell me stories about awkward things that would happen.
THE BATTALION: Did you expect the videos to get this popular?
HURST: No not at all. When we put on our first video, we knew it was an A&M-specific video. A&M seems like it has an untapped market in social experiment videos, it just seems like no one has done them here, which really surprised me. But I knew Aggies like to do anything that’s A&M related. They like to share and claim it as their own. We were not expecting at all to get the views that we got, 4,000-something views in the first two days. We were like, what’s going on? I just put it on my Facebook and sent that to a couple of friends, and it just exploded. It’s crazy how social media works.