As told by: Ben Knechtel
Me and Carly go back a few years now. I
work at 604 Records, which is Carly’s Canadian record label. I’ve known
her since 2008, and this has been the same team all along. It’s cool to
see everyone still together and working on such a large scale now. I’ve
actually directed her last four videos. I did the first video with her
on a shoestring budget, and that got me in the door with her management
and label and with her, and ever since then we established a great
working relationship. She trusts me.
I heard the song for the first time [in
August 2011], which is pretty crazy. The song wasn’t out yet, and they
asked me if I wanted to write a treatment. So I got to listen to it
really early, and I remember saying to my wife, “This song is going to
be huge.” But I was thinking it’d be big in Canada. You can’t really
gauge or anticipate it being such a giant song worldwide. But I remember
saying to my wife that it was going to be a huge song, and it’s been
incredible to see her go on this journey to pop superstar.
COLLECT ALL 4 HOBBIT COVERS:
I wrote the treatment [for "Call Me
Maybe"]. When I was in college, I made this little video for a school
project where I was washing a car like Jessica Simpson in The Dukes of Hazzard. I
was in these Daisy Duke shorts, and I had borrowed a bikini top from a
girl in one of my classes. It was just a ridiculous over-the-top parody
of the classic car wash scene. It’s super embarrassing, but I think you can still find it online somewhere.
I always thought that was funny, and people got a kick out of it back
then, and I always wanted to find an outlet to do that sort of thing
again. “Call Me Maybe” ended up being that outlet.
The dude’s name is Holden Nowell, I think everybody just calls him “Hot Dude.” He’s a model and actor, and a rapper as well.
We put up a casting call, and I think we saw 10 guys. Carly was at the
casting call with me, and one by one, a guy would come in, and we’d meet
him, and he would take his shirt off. And then Holden came out and took
his shirt off and Carly was just like, “Uh, yeah. That one.” He’s just
naturally ripped. It’s crazy.
It was a relatively small video shoot. We
shot it in 12 hours in Langley, British Columbia, which is about 40
minutes outside of Vancouver. It was the day before Halloween, because I
remember we had to take down some Halloween decorations because we
wanted it to be a summer video. It definitely was not summer — it was
freezing cold. I think it was raining four days beforehand, and it
stopped raining one day and that’s when we shot the video. Then it
rained for the rest of the week. That’s Vancouver for you. I was wearing
a winter jacket, some of the crew were in parkas, and poor Holden
couldn’t wear a shirt.
I’ll probably never experience anything
like this. I remember calling my mom when it hit a million views, and I
called home and got really excited about one million views. And now it’s
over 300 million and everything is just kind of gravy now. But I was
impressed when it hit a million views!
