As of May 19, 2010, Sharpened Crayons has won the People’s Choice prize for the PBS national contest “Your PBS Video Contest” for their video, “Online to Explore.” They were also one of five contest runners-up, and will receive a custom-designed HD Flip video camera and a PBS prize package. PBS has also contacted the group to air the audience favorite video over the summer.
First introduced in math teacher Susan Gradishar’s Algebra 3/Trigonometry class, Henry Basta, class of ’07 and Jay Karolenko, class of ’08, never would have guessed they would become band mates in the coming years. But a chance meeting in August 2008 at JC brought their alliance to life.
Writing their first song for now senior Hannah Close in five minutes titled “Girl in the Batman Shirt” together that very day at JC’s band camp, Basta and Karolenko instantly clicked and transformed into their now band, Sharpened Crayons.
“Seeing how much fun it was to write goofy and catchy songs, we decided to plan a future band practice which led to our first real music video, ‘I Was a Power Ranger,’ Karolenko said. The duo have been writing songs and making music videos ever since.
They have entered many film festivals, including JC’s on March 26, where they won judge’s favorite for the animated music video, “SuperFresh Love,” in which the animations were drawn by junior Brooke Basta. Other festivals where Sharpened Crayons has appeared include Towson University’s 72-Hour-Film Festival, the Bel Air Film Festival, the Virginia Student Film Festival, and the Heritage Film Festival.
Creating hit videos like “Everybody Loves Me (Cuz I Dance all the Time),” “SuperFresh Love,” “Pineapples mhmm,” and “What I Like About Cook,” Sharpened Crayons uses interesting inspiration. “Basically every scene from [Disney’s ‘A Goofy Movie’] was inspiration. Aside from its musical superstar, Powerline, we also draw influence from our 1990s childhood, the computer game Oregon Trail, 007 Goldeneye, PBS, pineapples…really anything that’s in front of us at the moment,” Karolenko said.
Their sources also correspond to how they were named. Though Basta scribbled the last minute name down on a film festival submission form, it fit perfectly. “We figured that with a box of sharpened crayons, you can do and create just about anything – the sky is the limit. It also tied in well with our childhood,” Basta said.
Currently, the band is in the running for a contest held by PBS to create a promotional video to air on the network. Sharpened Crayons, among many others, submitted a 30-second video called, “Online to Explore” that can be voted for until May 7, by anyone who creates an account at PBS. The winner will be flown to Austin, Texas.
As for the future of the band, they “have a book filled with ideas for when we get done with our semester at Towson University. Our plan is to make more music videos, play some gigs, design some t-shirts, and create a webisode series,” Basta said. “Over the summer, we are looking for a number of extras to be a part of our videos. We want our fans to be just as much a part of our videos as we are. Beginning in June, we are going to start filming webisodes in the style of “The Flight of the Conchords.” With the script for the first ten minute webisode completed, we are quite psyched.”
If you would like to support Sharpened Crayons in their contest with PBS, please visit: http://memelabs.com/pbs/ and vote for “Online to Explore.”
They also have a YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSharpenedCrayons in addition to a Facebook fan page: Sharpened Crayons and a Twitter page: https://twitter.com/SharpendCrayons.
Taylor Schafer can be reached for comment at [email protected].