Sgt. Kraulis
From Videoville
Artist: Martin Tielli
Director: Scott Cudmore
Label: Six Shooter
Year: 2004
treatment
The location is outer space and two satellites are communicating at each other by blinking their lights and bleeping their bleeps. A little video screen on the side of the one of the satellites displays images of various things: Earth, a forest, a confused and disoriented Martin Tielli, a keytar. These images flick past on the small screen, when after a few moments the other satellite fires a laser beam from a small cannon near its bottom and the camera follows the beam to the Earth with a very quick movement of the camera.
“The sun came up on Wednesday morning…”
Earth, a large empty field in the daytime. The sun is out. The laser beam smashes into the ground, and up springs a very bewildered and shaken Martin Tielli. He looks around nervously. His movements are spastic, quick, and almost robotic. He is wearing a silver suit of some bizarre fashion. He stands, and another laser blast hits the ground nearby. Martin runs over to that spot and pick up a white keytar (keyboard guitar) from the grass. He looks at it funny, smells it, studies it a bit before hanging it around his neck and running off towards the nearby woods. As he runs towards the woods, the camera tracks next to him and Martin turns to face the camera, grinning like a mad child (“I never did this on purpose…”)
“I was way the hell off duty…”
Martin stalks into the forest, apparently looking for something. The camera swings quickly around to show a large stuffed squirrel, sitting on a log, reading the newspaper. Martin glares at the animal. He approaches it and plays a few licks of keytar for it, which seems to ignite something hidden deep inside the core of its being. Upon hearing the music of the keytar, the squirrel cocks it head quickly to one side, cocks it to the other side, puts down the newspaper and from behind the log retrieves a hand grenade, more or less an old WW2 model. He shows the grenade to Martin, who smiles from cheek to cheek and shakes his head around wildly like squash balls are bouncing off the walls of his cranium. The animal, receiving confirmation, stands up and follows Tielli deeper into the woods.
“Have a good day…Merry…”
A giant stuff bunny rabbit is leaning against a tree, staring off into space. Martin and the squirrel approach and Martin plays the keytar for the rabbit. It suddenly snaps into life and pulls out a machine gun from behind the tree. Some other animals, who have heard the sound of the keytar also emerge from the woods now and snap to life. They too pick up weapons; one of them retrieves a belt of bullets and the other a large bomb.
“Make me visible you fucker!”
Martin now stalks through the forest playing the keytar with now what is a large group of animals following behind him. All of the animals carry weapons of some fashion; machine guns, bombs, night vision goggles, etc. Martin sings this segment of the song directly to the camera. They pass by a small group of animals who have set up a drum kit and amplifiers, and they hold guitars. They are playing the music. Martin acknowledges them on passing with a psychotic shake of his head and wave of the keytar.
“The sun went down on Wednesday morning…”
A large cleaning in the woods. The stuffed animals sit on the forest floor in front of Martin who sings this portion of the song directly to them, as if delivering instructions. In outer space the satellites continue to transmit signals and bleeps and video images. The animals nod in appreciation and acknowledgement of the directive they are being given.
“We are opening packages…”
The animals are now involved in serious work. They are building things, nailing blueprints for various things to the trees, drawing obscure maps and diagrams on large sheets of paper spread out across the floor of the clearing. They put strange objects into boxes and pass them down a line. Martin sits on a stump or a rock and tries to put together a rubix cube. The satellites continue to transmit information in space. One of the animals approaches Martin and puts a large, hand-crank style drill into the side of his head. Another animals shine a bright light on him. They remove his head, and push the rest of his body to the side. Perhaps they even ruthlessly kick it to the side. The animals carry the head in their hands, towards what appears to be a large, crudely constructed robot of some kind. They open up the belly of the robot and place Martin’s decapitated head inside. They close the belly. The robot starts to move its arms, and various lights on it start to flicker and glow. The camera moves back, far away from the robot as the stuffed animals congregate around it, and the terrible machine comes to life.
Cut to black on “Of”.
