Surprising even himself, St. Thomas junior Sam Luloff won a prestigious Upper Midwest Emmy Student Production Award Saturday for a music video he created in assistant professor Peter Gregg’s videography class.

The class gives students an opportunity to work with a client to help their ideas come to life. Luloff created a music video fall semester with his friends, local group The Shackletons, and was nominated for the award by Gregg in 2018.

“I’d wanted to make a music video for them for a long time,” Luloff said. “I didn’t necessarily ask them as much as I told them: ‘Hey, we’re making this music video. It’s for a class.’”

The Shackletons are an alternative music group from Stillwater, Minnesota. Comprised of brothers Colin, Cameron and Evan Campbell, their single, “Happy Boring Life,” was the song used in Luloff’s production. Luloff said working together turned out to be a breeze.

As a communication and journalism major on the creative multimedia track, the assignment served as a perfect opportunity for him to produce the video. He figured if the band liked it, they could use it too.

“It was free. Having it be an asset that they don’t have to pay for was something really big for them,” Luloff said. “It was something they could either hold onto forever and not release or they could release it.”

And release it they did.

Typically, only TommieMedia projects are submitted to the Midwest Emmys. But this semester, Luloff’s class project stood out.

“The categories for the Upper Midwest Awards are rather specific,” Gregg said. “You might have a project that’s really good, but they just don’t align with those categories.”

Luloff’s project garnered strong, positive reactions from his classmates.

“It was a project that everyone was familiar with but also really excited to see,” Gregg said. “It was just a good fusion of style and shape. It really stood out. I was happy to nominate it.”

Both Gregg and Luloff knew the competition would be fierce.

“This is a competitive regional award,” Gregg said. “It’s important and it’s great to have student work recognized.”

The creative process was what Luloff called a “meeting of the minds.”

“They had the idea for the aesthetics,” Luloff said. “I had the meat of what was going on… I also added the part where they were all fighting at the end.”

The budget? Thirty-six dollars for the aesthetics and one dollar spent for comedic effect.

“I went to the dollar store and found the weirdest coloring books that I could find,” Luloff said.

The toys in the video weren’t simply for fun.

“Life in childhood is relatively boring compared to now. Like, how much fun would you really have sitting and playing with blocks?” Luloff said. “Not necessarily the most fun activity, relatively boring compared to what we have to do now. But you’re happy… I think it does keep the narrative of the happy boring life, but it wasn’t meant to be super symbolic.”

Three days of shooting and ten hours of editing later, Luloff didn’t expect his project to stand a chance.

“I was jazzed the whole week,” he said. “The day of, I totally tempered my excitement, like ‘who do you think you are? You’re not gonna win. What makes you think you’re gonna win?’ So I was really pessimistic the whole day.”

As they announced the other videos, his pessimism turned to optimism.

“They announced my name first, which was exciting,” Luloff said. “I had to double check. I looked up, I was like ‘that is the name of my video.’”

After he received his award, the first half of his video was played for the crowd, unlike the rest of the winners.

“This was a blast. It was the most fun I ever had creating something,” Luloff said. “I definitely am more encouraged to do something like this again because of this award, but I was already encouraged to do this again… It reinforces that, I think.”

“I think it’s work that Sam should be proud of,” Gregg said. “I think it’s work the department should be proud of, and I think it’s work that the St. Thomas community should be proud of.”

Emily Haugen can be reached at haug7231@stthomas.edu.