Check out our latest skit “Wan Percent”. We shot it a month ago with a few friends and had a really fun time organizing a “fauxtest”. I think the neighbors were scared, haha.

In case you are not familiar with the subject in the short, the 99% is a movement that’s happening in the US (it’s highest point was Oct 2011) when they started the Occupy Wallstreet protests, in which thousands of people camped outside of big bank buildings in financial districts around the country. It’s basically a movement that says the top 1% wealthiest people are not paying their share of taxes, and being honest with their finances, and it’s hurting everyone else, the “99%”. Without going into detail about its actual mission, we just had an idea to play on the term “1%” as many of us our age understand; in terms of school. We all know about wanting to be in the top percentile at your school or on test, so being 1% is actually good! In terms of the skit, we were just combining the two into a funny misunderstanding, and also lightly alluding to the fact that real movement itself has been criticized for being a bit unorganized and unfocused. In the case of this sketch, so much so that they completely missed and misunderstood their target wrong.

NOTE: This is not our opinion of the Occupy Movement. To those who are offended or think that we sympathize with the 1% you are gravely mistaken and completely missed the humor of this video. Please understand that this was a satirical skit poking fun at the misunderstanding of the 1% subject (a student, not a dishonest banker/CEO), and that the leaders are actually trying to organize everyone.

We were almost not going to release this short. Why? Because of the recent explosion of the KONY2012 campaign. You see, even though we shot this short over a month ago, before Kony became viral, we couldn’t release it then because we had to edit it, and then go on our huge 2 week tour to SE Asia and Australia. We planned to release it as soon as we got back. But then the Kony video was released a couple days ago, and we were worried that since we were flooded with requests to promote KONY, people would think this was our response to that video…or we were subtly making fun of activism and supporting causes. This is totally not the case. Wan Percent is not our response or opinion of Kony, not even of the 99% movement, and we are also not teasing activism and human rights. For our official response to KONY2012, please click HERE, otherwise just enjoy “Wan Percent” for what it is.

Fun Facts:

• We were considering titling it “The Juan Percent” and using a hispanic kid, but the shoot was such short notice, and we already had a friend who was available.
• “Alex Wan” is the younger brother of a friend of ours, Amy, who’s the girl in a past music video we made “Red Light”
• The house we used is the same house we shot Alyssa Bernal’s “Cali” video (used the backyard) and “Forever Valentine” (used a guestroom/backyard). Now we just used the front. We’re running out of locations on that house!
• Lana and Nathan who play the protest leaders have been in a variety of our shorts. The cooking couple in “Two Weeks Later”, the stylist and makeup artists in “The Christmas Story” and more!