Shower Jams: Ghostbusters!

Here it is, the grand finale to our month of Halloween carols.

I've been excited about doing this for weeks, ever since I discovered all this weird stock footage of Russian kids hanging out in arcades.

I have a hard time articulating why this video is a thing. It's not exactly a prank that I'm pulling, by springing an extremely over-produced video on the Shower Sweeties. But it's... it's not not that. Sort of in the way that it’s not showing someone the room you’ve wallpapered with eyes clipped out of magazines. Not exactly.

Production fact: This installment took me 5 or 6 times longer than the average video. There are over 40 VFX shots.

As far as that aspect goes, two versions of the video were edited in Premiere: first, a completely post-able, perfectly good cut of the performance. The Wheat Squares of shower jam videos. Then a second version collaged from found footage shot by all of the fine individuals (or collectives!) named in the credits was laid out on top of it. And then the Dynamic Linking started…

I wish I'd run a screen recording of making this, because it would have been a tidy collection of tricks and techniques for tracking, quick composites, and a bunch of different styles of tv effects. But also, it's very wise that I did not record any evidence of this, because I let myself get away with some abysmal practices in file and after effects project management. Just for fun. Nobody should see that kind of thing.

Finally, and this is also kind of hard for me to explain correctly, I almost don't want to even share this video around. I have, in fact, posted it to more places on the internet than the average week's videos, but like, I know that people don't watch these. Not in the numbers that would justify this kind of thing. And there's something kind of appealing to me about the sacrifice of hours poured into it. Almost in a mystical sense. I’m storing mana for the future in these shots of televisions.

I'd like to unpack whatever that feeling is, but I've got to get started on next week's video.

Frequency Earth 107: 100 Days

This show came out of the idea to start a sketch group. I thought I’d get a group together, we’d write stuff, fight over it like you read about in retrospectives on famous sketch groups, and then record stuff. Maybe we could do it every week!

Turns out it’s super hard. After a bunch of failed meetings, I decided it would be faster to just write the whole show myself, and we’d cast performers we knew, who were much happier to lend us just an hour here and there to read words from a page. And with no regular cast we could work with all kinds of people!

So half a dozen episodes in, once we’d decided we were making a good show, and wouldn’t be wasting anyone’s time by involving them, we set our sights higher! I’d had a working relationship with Matts Besser and Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade, and both were extremely kind and game to be a part of the show.

Also, we spent years recording all of the pieces for KILL MORE HUMANS, and it’s my favorite in this episode that also features a scene by Asterios Kokkinos, Wondermark’s David Malki !, and YES Network reality star David Brand. Enjoy!

#2,386: Wind River

The Mars Generation - ★★½☆☆
I like to do a joke where I say that I bet there was one week each year at Space Camp when every kid there was a Double Dare champion. Like, you'd want to keep those game show winners away from the serious space kids seen in this movie.

The problem, of course, is that for younger audiences nothing about that joke makes any sense. The smart thing to do would be to tell a different joke. But what I usually do is try to dig my way out of the hole by explaining it to them. Space Camp, I'll say, doesn't exist anymore, but it's a place where you used to be able to send fancy children so that they could pretend to be a part of the Space Program, which doesn't exist anymore, but used to be a scheme organized by the government to shoot United States citizens. At the moon. And it worked! Except that some people don't believe it, they think it was all a hoax put on by Stanley Kubrick, who is a filmmaker that doesn't exist anymore...

Somewhere around this time I realize that the college kids or whoever are just staring at me, having learned nothing because I started in on the wrong part of the sentence, and for some reason I start again. Double Dare, I'll say, is a game show that doesn't exist anymore, where the grand prize (so named for its size compared to the other prizes) was a trip to Space Camp. Of course, I'm talking about original, proper Double Dare, not Family Double Dare, Super Sloppy Double Dare, or Double Dare 2000, because as we all know, the grand prize of these latter-day Doubles Dare is a trip to Universal Studios Florida, also known as: the place where Double Dare was taped.

That's right! If you somehow got on to one of these shows, played your ten-year-old heart out and won? You got to go outside. To the theme park you already paid to enter, so that you could be on Double Dare.

What I'm trying to say is that I learned from this movie that Space Camp still exists. It looks like it's pretty fun if you're into that sort of thing.

20th Century Women - ★★★★½ 
Wow, Annette Benning is great in this. I hope she won a prize for it. I would have given her a prize. Wow.

Wind River - ★★★★☆
Hawkeye continues to mentor the Scarlet Witch (here using the winking pseudonym "Jane Banner"), this time in dealing with the casual horror regular humans are capable of perpetrating on one another. It's a little unclear whether this takes place before or after Civil War, although my money's on before if they're operating under the auspices of the federal government.

It's refreshing to have one of these smaller, quieter side stories without Robert Downey Jr. zooming in to save the day every few minutes. Sometimes a regular man with impeccable target shooting skills is enough.

#2,341: Operation Avalanche

Hide and Seek - ★★★☆☆
Four young adults disengage from society to go live a big, crazy, all-consuming art project. They make themselves outsiders, but nothing gold can stay.

The Lego Batman Movie - ★★★☆☆
I don't know if it's on the page, or in the hands of the animators, but there are a delightful sack of deep cuts in this thing. DVD buying freeze-framers, if they still exist, are going to have a lot to look for. Maybe that's the secret to selling DVDs.

Somehow this movie still wasn't immune to the DC light-and-noise ending - I think I might have started to doze a little during that part.

Operation Avalanche - ★★★☆☆
Operation Lune - ★★½☆☆
A very moon-y double feature.

I tell a joke in my stand-up, "I think there must have been one week each year at Space Camp when every kid there was a Double Dare champion."

And sometimes I make the mistake of telling that to college kids. It's the kind of sentence that will make a drunken 19-year-old just stare at you. 

But the real mistake is that I don't just move on, I get the idea that I should unpack it for them. 

"Okay," I start in, "Space Camp is this thing that doesn't exist anymore, but it was a place where you could send fancy children so that they could pretend to be a part of the Space Program, which is this thing that doesn't exist anymore, but it was this thing we cooked up in the 60s and it was a plan to shoot United States citizens at the moon. And it worked!  Of course, some people don't believe it, they think the whole thing was faked by Stanley Kubrick, who was a filmmaker that doesn't exist anymore–"

Eventually I realize that I have not so much lost them as never regained them in the first place, because I had unpacked the wrong part of the sentence. 

"Okay," I try again, "Double Dare was a game show, that doesn't exist anymore, where the grand prize, so named for its size compared to the other, lesser prizes, was a trip to Space Camp. Now obviously, we're talking about original Double Dare, and not Double Dare 2000, not Family Double Dare, and definitely not Super Sloppy Double Dare, because as we all know, the grand prize of these latter-day Doubles Dare was a trip to Universal Studios Florida. 

"Also known as the place where Double Dare was taped."

That's right, if you someone found yourself on the show, played your ten-year-old heart out, and won?

You got to go outside.

To the theme park you already paid to enter, so that you could be on Double Dare.

At least runners-up got a home copy of the game, which, if they took it home and played and won, they could put away! And take an all-expenses-paid trip to their kitchen!

Showreel 2017

Regularly scheduled blog service for 2017 kicks off with this new demo reel, for all of your effects and graphics needs.

If you need help making your thing, I can help you make your thing! Look at all of these other people I helped with their thing! That could be you!