By Monika Sidhu
He goes around from lecture to lecture all across Ontario with a single flower in hand. With a guitar player right behind him, he sings love songs to female students, making their hearts melt, like a man straight out of a win-the-girl-back scene in a romantic comedy.
His name is Kyle Forgeard, a first-year film student at Ryerson University, and he claims these aren’t exactly romance-based stunts.
“We like to entertain people. It’s a hobby of ours,” he says.
The “we” refers to Forgeard and three friends who run a You Tube channel called NelkFilmz:
Nick Martinovic is the serenading guitarist, while Mark Martinovic and Elliot Slater are the ones behind the camera. They’ve been making comedy sketches together since the ninth grade.
So far, the shtick has won a few hearts. What gal wouldn’t love being given a rose and having an adorable stranger sing Mario’s “Let Me Love You” to her? But not all professors are as crazy about the idea. With only three hours of class a week, they may feel irritated when a student interrupts their lecture for reasons irrelevant to course material.
“I think I would feel differently if he wasn’t doing it to obviously be ‘videoed’ and distributed – if he just sang and disappeared,” says a professor who prefers to stay anonymous. The professor felt that the men of NelkFilmz were performing a selfish gesture. “It’s dangerously close to a vanity project aimed at pure self-promotion.”
Third-year radio and television arts student Selina Fiorini says she understands where the professor is coming from but appreciates the entertainment behind it.
“That’s what makes it interesting and grabs viewers. People want to see the reactions,” she says. “It was overall a nice gesture for the girls and made for a funny video.”
Forgeard admits he enjoys the attention the video has received.
“Who wouldn’t want to create something and get as many people to watch it as they can? That’s the whole point of making videos, and anyone who doesn’t agree – anyone that denies that – is lying, because anyone that creates something wants people to appreciate it too.”
So what’s in the future for Kyle and the men of NelkFilmz? They just hit 10,000 YouTube subscribers, for one.
They also posted a new video, in which they give a trick-or-treater $100 worth of chocolate at their front door.
“We wanted to do a giveback video kind of thing,” says Forgeard. “And yeah, it’s really cute.”
Kyle Forgeard Q&A
Where did the idea for this video come from?
One day we were filming a short comedic sketch and had left over roses from the video. So, on the way home, my friends that I do all my videos with — we just started rolling down the windows and singing to girls for fun. We started getting good reactions so we decided to do a video where we would walk around the streets and sing to girls. We were sitting in class and we thought, ‘Wow. What if we walked into class and started singing to a girl?’ That would be amazing.
You have to be scared walking into a class like that.
Absolutely. The first time I did it I almost chickened out. I was standing in the hallway and I didn’t want to do it. Then some girl saw me. She was walking out and and I was in my suit and tie and she was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Oh, we might do a little prank thing.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh my god, do it.’ So I had to do it. I just walked in. After the first time, everything else was way easier.
How are you reacting to the media attention?
I honestly did not expect that at all. I would understand if it got a lot of views and it went viral. But it didn’t, so [the media attention] surprised us. We love it.
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