This is the third post in the Baseline Wolves series: links to the first and second post.
The CPI song was the only music video we made during our movie-making courses in IIT Kanpur (IITK). For the uninitiated, "CPI" stands for Cumulative Performance Index, a scale from 2 to 10 which measures your academic performance in IITK. The CPI Song started off as an idea to lightly lampoon everyone in campus, from the pot-smoking, devil-may-care sluggards to the hyper-excessively-sincere angels, the "maggus", as we affectionately call them. After a casual viewing of the CPI song, a few people incorrectly infer that our purpose was to mock people with high or low CPIs, but really, all we wanted to do was make fun of everyone without any fear or favour.
The CPI song was the only music video we made during our movie-making courses in IIT Kanpur (IITK). For the uninitiated, "CPI" stands for Cumulative Performance Index, a scale from 2 to 10 which measures your academic performance in IITK. The CPI Song started off as an idea to lightly lampoon everyone in campus, from the pot-smoking, devil-may-care sluggards to the hyper-excessively-sincere angels, the "maggus", as we affectionately call them. After a casual viewing of the CPI song, a few people incorrectly infer that our purpose was to mock people with high or low CPIs, but really, all we wanted to do was make fun of everyone without any fear or favour.
The Lyrics
So we started with the idea of a song making light of all the different types of academic species observed on campus. We decided to use CPI as a structural element and go from CPI 2 to CPI 10, creating a caricature for each one based on our friends and experiences. This turned out to be buckets of fun; I still vividly remember many spasms of exploding laughter that made me stop typing and rest my laughing, bobbing head on the keyboard for a pause of breath between all the maddening mirth.
We put a second chorus in the middle, after CPI 5, to create two roughly equal groups of stanzas. We had only one lady in the video, CPI 8, because of two reasons: actual availability of actresses and the fact that 9:1 is kind of close to the actual sex ratio on campus (the actual ratio is much, much worse, as if you care). After CPI 10, the song was supposed to end with the original chorus. But we were in a rapturous, crazy, experimental mood after all the fun lampooning and decided to add a 'wild card' to our gang. This feral ace-of-spades is so far removed from the CPI system that he possesses a CPI which does not even exist. That's right, Mr. CPI 1 may not be well off academically, but he is a paragon of the entrepreneurial spirit.
The Music
We wanted to make an original, catchy rap beat to go with our merry lyrics, however a lack of time prevented us from doing so. If I remember correctly, we started this ambitious project a mere 10 days before the commencement of the end-semester exams, also known in IITK as the worst-time-of-your-stay-here-by-far. So, to save time, we picked up a song from Youtube that matched our requirements (sorry original creator, we would've passed you some money if we earned it ourselves).
The song was sung with a little help from my friends, as the song budget was $96 million too less to hire The Beatles (performance fee: $96 million). We gave the stanzas of every CPI to a different person, however, just for fun, as far as possible, we made sure that the person singing for a particular CPI was never the person who acted for that CPI in the video.
The Video
The storyboard ideas for the individual CPI stanzas came quite naturally from their lyrics. For all the chorus stanzas, the idea was to "go to all the cool places on campus and do all kinds of silly dancing". Here are some desultory thoughts of mine about the video:
Some of the dancing shenanigans were inspired by Youtube jesters like Jon Lajoie and Remi Gaillard.
For CPI 4, we intentionally wove in Hendrix and The Doors as we knew their larger-than-life tattoos existed on campus.
CPI 9's story is often misunderstood or not understood at all. We were trying to satirize the hypocrisy of the people who study all the time but always try to appear like they never study.
The random-cycle-spoke-zoom shot at 1:47 is a personal favourite.
I also love the flippant and amusing manner in which CPI 8 shoots down the line-up of hopeful Romeos at 2:21.
CPI 10's what-the-%&^#-am-I-watching shot at 2:50 is another cherished chuckle-worthy moment.
CPI 1's packet of cocaine (3:24) is a packet of chuna (lime) obtained at MT, the place on campus where you get cigarettes and tea. And chuna, of course.
Hitler was mentioned in CPI 1's lyrics as a reference to the parody Hitler video we had made earlier (link). Hearing it now, it seems a bit out of place!
The Music Video
I guess that the best thing about the CPI song is the large number of people who make an appearance in it. The song will serve as a fine musical memento of all the good times and fun people in IITK. I'd like to thank all the people who helped us make this memory. I am also thankful for Lady Luck for putting me on a collision course with this music video, and I hope and pray that it is not the last collision I have.
The music video:
The music video:
