The punk chimera of CLUB VIDEO
Club Video is a quarterly video showcase featuring short-form experimental comedy from independent creators. Started in 2021 by Whitley Watson and Micah Phillips, this DIY event has already launched numerous critically acclaimed shorts. Club Video is hosted in a converted woodworking studio in industrial Williamsburg. They offer complimentary beer and close the show with a DJ-ed afterparty.
Contributor Sylvea Suydam visited a recent Club Video showcase (Show #9), where she spoke to the organizers and participants and soaked in the multifaceted and irreverent scene.
By Sylvea Suydam
At 7:00 pm on a recent Saturday night, a half dozen people in sequin dresses and suits were chatting in a Bushwick warehouse behind a sliding metal gate. They popped open the side door and welcomed me into KLN Studio, usually a metal and woodworking space at 79 Grattan St. Still, for tonight only, it was Club Video, the semiregular multimedia comedy event produced by Whitley Watson, Micah Philips, and Marshall Louise. Featuring a roster of amateurs, professionals, cohorts, and strangers, around 30 participants have a short period to create a new video for the event, including some mic comedy, DJs, and a dance party.
Among the shelves of lumber and tooling equipment were buckets of free beer on ice and a handmade step and repeat banner with CLUB ♥ VIDEO in craft letters. A disco light rotated behind a table wrapped in brown paper scribbled with prices: Jello shots 2 for $1, Cake raffle $1. One could also procure mixed drinks, t-shirts, or an “Orange Flavor” comic book.
I asked filmmakers and comedians Whitley Watson and Micah Phillips how something like Club Video comes together. Watson told me, “Micah had a show going with similar rules to this that I attended, and I really liked it.” Philips chimed in, “We did it in a co-working space, and it was a similar idea. People are making new stuff and just trying to keep it as cheap as possible.” Watson continued, “...so when that ended, I really wanted to have a similar thing because I enjoyed it so much, and I talked to Micah, you know, just sort of asking how he did it, and he offered to help with this. And I had a friend, this guy I used to work with at another fabrication shop, who offered this location to us, so then we kind of turned it into a much bigger show. We really don’t have a budget or anything like that for a venue this size, so James hooked us up with this space.”
She motioned over to James Lepkowski, the owner of KLN Studio, and added, “...they've even rearranged their shop and made some special things for us to make it easier to put on.” Whitley pointed behind us towards the back. “The screen is their forklift.” And it was. The Club Video audience watches a 15 ft high screen held up by a forklift parked in the rear of the space. I thought it was great.
Micah adjusted the digital projector as people trickled in, and conversations grew from a murmur to a buzz. I walked over and met James, who was hanging out in the back by DJ John Swan as they grooved on house music and watched the seats fill up. I asked him what the highlights of hosting an event like this were.
“Just bringing in a good crowd is a highlight,” said Lepkowski, “and obviously the videos are good too. I figured we had a large space and a good area for it, so why not? It’s a fun thing to do that we don’t usually use the space for.”
It was the unusual combination of location, content, and people that gave Club Video an authentic charm. Part warehouse dance party, part underground comedy show, part experimental video showcase, Club Video is a punk chimera. It felt dangerous in a non-threatening way as if you sort of expect the cops to show up at some point. Sharp tools still hung on the walls as co-producer Marshall Louise played usherette with a strap box, walking through the crowd selling cigarettes, candy, glowsticks, and free hits of poppers— “You can’t monetize a sniff!” The cardboard Please, Don’t Do It! sign on the ladder up to the warehouse shelves could only mean that, at one point, someone had.
I asked Whitley what I should expect. “Turnout’s usually like 200 people. Last time, we were turning people away. But we haven't done it in nine months or so, and we've also chilled on the ads. We haven't pushed it as hard because it's at capacity already, so we'll see what happens tonight.”
Real estate is as valuable inside Club Video as it is in Brooklyn, and the coveted seats filled in fast. Like lifeboats on the Titanic, the ten or so rows of folding chairs had room for about a third of attendees, the rest was standing room only—I made sure to claim a lifeboat in the back row upon arriving early. I chatted with Maya in the next seat over, who came with friends Andres and Matthew, two of the filmmakers in the lineup. Everyone I talked to seemed enthusiastic about the show and excited to be there. Club Video definitely felt like a social club as much as a video show. I got the sense there’s a real community there, the space transformed into an exclusive but welcoming clubhouse for its members and nonmembers.
Billed as a black tie evening (complete with a sidewalk paper roll red carpet) I saw more people wearing Canadian tuxedos than suits and ties—as well as paisley, polyester, velvet, and thrift store ensembles of all varieties. There were, however, some people in tuxedos, evening gowns, prom dresses, and wedding suits. “We wanted to do something special tonight since we’ve been away for a while.”
Whitley and Micah said there was no theme to the evening’s content. The only parameters were that they had to be under three minutes and minted exclusively for Club Video. “It's experimental comedy, we're trying to curate stuff that feels less like web sketch and more akin to arthouse video. Something more experimental and strange, but you’re still laughing. We've had people who've never made films before, people who've never made cartoons before. We have a recurring group of people that screen their work and it can be difficult to narrow the selection down, who makes the cut...”
The duo stepped up to the mic, and the mushroom design projected on the screen changed to a solid blue rectangle. After a little back-and-forth routine and reminders about the free poppers and ugly cake raffle, it was show time. There may not have been an official theme, but I did notice trends among the video submissions, whether coincidental or part of a behind-the-scenes collaborative effort by participants is unclear. Poking fun at brands and logos was a running gag throughout the videos, with frequent references to Uber, IKEA, Zoom mics, Shopify, and many more. There were also several magic-themed submissions, one with absurdist number “tricks” and another featuring ‘Spectaculo’ and his partner at couple’s therapy to address his use of magic as an avoidant defense mechanism. Eventually, he disappears from the screen. Where did he go? A man in the audience several rows in front of me stood up. It was Spectaculo in the flesh! The crowd ate it up.
At intermission, the throng spilled onto the sidewalk in a vortex of vape clouds and cigarette smoke, as the line for the single workshop bathroom grew into a long snake. I watched the large industrial-size trash bins fill to the brim with beer cans and solo cups. Whitley and Micah did some more bits on the mic and announced the award for “Winner of winner of the cake raffle.”
Overall, I found the videos somewhat of a mixed bag of quality and substance. Many were filmed on crisp cameras with decent mics. Others were shot vertically on phones. Cutesy animation, gory animation, and humorously disturbed generative AI were interspersed with musical shticks, mashups, and montages. There was a deep-fried, Tim & Eric anti-humor to a lot of the content, and I admit I didn’t grok everything that I saw, but it was raw and irreverent, and I did genuinely laugh out loud quite a lot, more than is usual for me.
When the show concluded, the audience stacked their folding chairs under a lumber storage unit, and the music got louder as Club Video evolved into a dance party hangout. Like a pumpkin at midnight, or whatever hour of the morning it would conclude, its final transformation would be to an unassuming fabrication workshop off the Morgan L stop.
Now, with nine shows under their belts and a crowd that packs the space to the point of overflow, I wondered what Club Video's future holds. “We're not really sure,” Philips said. " We would prefer to keep things cheap, and expanding definitely means charging more. But we're happy right here.”
Watson told me, “To us, it's important to keep it accessible, and space is so expensive that it almost makes it a necessity, staying in this space. And we don't make any money doing this. Our business model is 'poor' haha. The idea is to have fun with people and share their work, and that makes it a really good community vibe.”
Philips adds, “We're still figuring that whole thing out, but we like this space. It's cheap enough and you get what you pay for! So if you're fine with technical difficulties or getting sawdust on you, it's perfect.”
Check out Club Video’s site and Instagram for more info and updates
All photos by Sylvea Suydam
Sylvea Suydam is a Brooklyn-based producer, filmmaker, and writer
