You’re Not Alone – Music Video

by John Flores

April 20, 2015

in Elvis, Main, Penny Lane, Wally

3 Comments

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Growing up, my parents always used music to describe how they were feeling. I don’t quite remember how old I was but my parents had got into this huge argument. I don’t know what it was about but my dad went out to Tower Records (yes, I’m aging myself!) and came back with a 45 record of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. It brought my mom to tears and they never quite fought that bad again. Ever since that day I realized the power that music has.

So one day, about 6 months ago, I decided I wanted to further spread my message of “Educate, Advocate, and Never Discriminate” even further by making a music video. But for this to happen, I had to incorporate 4 groups of people to come together…

Dose of Adolescence

About 5 seconds after I made the decision to make a music video, Dose of Adolescence, posted “You’re Not Alone” on their Facebook. It was like they were almost telling me this was the song to use. I had managed them for about 3 years so I kind of had an “in” with them. I called Jimmy up that morning and he was all for it. What made this even sweeter was that the 2 brothers in the band (Jimmy and Timmy) owned a pit bull named, Fender, and our first show together was actually to benefit a Pit Bull Rescue so their love of the breed definitely matched what I was looking for.

BrainfreesTV

I’ve known David for over 10 years now and he is actually the first person who told me I needed to start a blog. He had no idea what I should blog about as this was years before animal rescue was a thought in my head but he was always pushing me to do more to connect with people. We had always talked about doing a project together but the right situation never came up…until now. When I explained my idea to him, I don’t think he quite grasped what I was trying to do but he agreed because I know he could hear the enthusiasm and excitement in my voice. I told him I would write up a treatment and we set a meeting.

I must add, that during filming, David “got it”. He admitted to me that he bought into the media hype on the negative stereotypes of these dogs and didn’t realize how powerful the “pit bull” community really was and he was blown away the amount of support we received for this video. He poured his heart and soul into this video and it definitely shows!

Priceless Pet Rescue

Later on that day, I called, Mandy Stover. She’s one of the directors of Priceless Pets and the head of the Priceless Pets Pittie Crew. I needed her blessing to let me use her rescue. I also needed her and the rest of the Pittie Crew to be in the video. I NEEDED people who were just as passionate about the breed as I was to be in this and what better people to use than our local no-kill rescue and their volunteers!!

And finally, there was one more group of people I needed to help make this project a success…

The Pit Bull Community

We put out a post asking the pit bull community to send in pictures of their pitties with their favorite humans. We received over 200 photos from all over the world showing their support! Along with those people we had other groups like Project Blue Collar, Stand Up For Pits, Urban Suburban Apparel, the Upland Animal Shelter and Bruxie all give me their blessing to appear in the video.

Now all we had to do was put everything together and turn my vision into a reality. So I called up my team and had them come over to pitch my idea. After I was done, I told them that 6 months from now we would look back at this night and all give ourselves a pat on the back because no matter what happened with this video, it would forever hold a special place in our hearts.

Throughout this crazy ride, I found out that Elvis is quite the actor. It was almost as if he knew what we needed from him and he just did it. He even did things we didn’t ask him to do and there were numerous times during filming we all just kind of looked at each other in amazement at the things he was doing. Who would have thought this “pit bull” who was supposed to be euthanized a year earlier would end up being the stand out star (no offense, Drew!) in a music video.

After all was said and done, we went from having a music video to a 5 minute short movie.

So aside from the obvious messages you will get from watching this video. This video is about decisions. It’s about beginnings and endings. It’s not only about working together but coming together. At the end of the day, we are all going through a battle. And if there’s 3 words we all want to hear and if there’s 3 words I could say to all these animals it’s, “You’re Not Alone”, which just happens to be the name of this song.

**Dose of Adolescence will be donating .25 of every download purchased on iTunes back to Priceless Pet Rescue!**