By Joel Hanek
If you can make Lady Gaga say "holy sh--" in response to something you've done, then you must be doing something right.
Earlier this week on her Twitter, Lady Gaga sent out that profane message along with a link to a video called "Badder Romance." The clip is a DIY shot-for-shot recreation of Gaga's epic, over-the-top "Bad Romance" music video using only household items. It's sort of Gus Van Sant's "tribute" to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" mixed with the analog heart of the "Sweding" process in "Be Kind Rewind." The result is one of the more clever and creative tributes to a music video on the Internet. If you haven't seen it yet, you're clearly in the minority: The army of little monsters has propelled this video to over half a million views (and counting) in just under a week.
The stars and creators of the video are four friends who go under the collective pseudonym BINK Productionz: Britnee Bloschicak, Nikki D'Albora and Kayle Chin (all 19 years old) and Ian Gonzales (18). MTV News recently got in touch with the collective via e-mail to get a little insight into the video that caught the eyes of the Haus of Gaga.
"We were getting ready to leave the movie theater parking lot when Bad Romance comes on the radio. Britnee started dancing, and Nikki wanted to film it because it looked funny," they wrote. "When we all joined it, [Ian] decided it was time to try to film everyone. It was only after the song ended that we realized he didn't hit record. Initially, we wanted to remake it in the car, but Ian decided that we had to be legit about it. That's when we agreed to remake the actual music video with whatever we already had."
While balancing work and school, these "f---ing dedicated" fans were able to film and edit "Badder Romance" in a week.
Although they have no idea how Lady Gaga came to see their video, the friends were ecstatic.
"I found out while I was at work," Britnee wrote. "A friend came in to see a movie and said, 'Lady Gaga tweeted about your video. Congratulations!' I went upstairs to go on break and I had seven text messages and a very happy, slightly incoherent voicemail from Ian telling me to go online. It was pretty crazy. I almost didn't believe it was real until I got home and saw it for myself."
"I was seeing 'Avatar' in IMAX with my family when I got a text message from Kayla saying that Lady Gaga had just tweeted our video," Ian added. "We had about 20 minutes left of the movie and I was basically dragging my family through the mall toward our car so we could get to Kayla's house and her and I could scream together in excitement."
What do you think? Does "Badder Romance" top the original? What videos would you like to see the BINK Productionz team take on next? Leave your thoughts in the comments!