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! 

Making a Sellable Pilot, Part 2: The Shoot

This week, we're talking about how to produce a TV pilot presentation that a production company or television channel would like to buy and turn into a series. Specifically, we're looking at the pilot for Talk Show the Game Show, which was just picked up by TruTV via Push It Productions. 

Yesterday, we talked about finding the project. Today we're going to talk about shooting it, tomorrow we'll cover post-production, and Friday will be about the business of it all. And at each step, I'll pass along some advice on how to make a project like this one better.

Chapter 2: Doing it Live

After I found out that Talk Show the Game Show was about to happen, and Guy Branum found out that I wanted to record it, I had about 36 hours to put together a crew and equipment. One zoomed-out camcorder in the back of a room isn't going to sell anything, so I ginned up a 4-camera shoot. So I guess your first tip is:

Tip 1: Have a network of connections and access to great equipment! 

Kidding. Sort of. I mean, it's a good trick if you can manage it. In my case, it was actually easier to put together a lot of gear on short notice than it was to get a lot of operators I trust to do good work at the last minute and on an uncertain budget, so here was my plan:

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• That's one camera in the back, shooting at 4k, which means it's both my wide shot, the all-purpose safety angle I should be able to cut to at almost any time, and it's usable as a punch-in without any loss in quality. This camera shouldn't ever move, so I didn't need a proper operator for it, I just needed a responsible person who could stop random audience members from standing right in front of it or pushing the tripod over. 

• That's a second camera, with operator, for covering Guy Branum, the host. He talks and reacts and tells jokes and is the center of the show, so I need good clear coverage of him. (This also happens to be a viable angle on the scorekeeper.)
• That's a third camera for the judges' table. This was intended to be unmanned as well, because the judges can chime in at almost any point in the show.
• That's a fourth camera that I would operate myself that was intended for shooting the contestants.

• The first audio recorder was plugged directly into the theater's sound system to record the voices of everyone speaking into microphones. 
• The second audio recorder was in the room and recording directional mics aimed at the audience. If we want our buyers to think this show deserves to be broadcast, we want them to hear the jokes, and we really want them to hear the audience loving those jokes. 

Notice also that in almost all of our shots, you can see audience heads. I wanted to be sure our viewers never forgot that this show plays to packed, sold-out audiences.

Tip 2: Prepare for Success!

Almost all of the tips boil down to preparation, really. 

• Going in, I'm familiar with the format of the show so I know what the viewer needs to see. TSGS is not a standup show, so trying to shoot it with just one or two cameras is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
• It's not enough to just set up some gear and hope for the best. Live multi-cam shoots need direction too. You need to tell your camera operators who or what to pay attention to, and to stick with that thing. This is your one chance to collect material for the edit, and what you never need in the edit is the exact same shot on every camera. It seems counter-intuitive to have one camera trained on someone who isn't doing anything, but it's worth the trouble if what you need is a shot of that person when they finally speak. 
  • You can shoot with really green camera operators in a pinch if you've got time to explain a few basics: the rule of thirds, shooting across the length of the stage so that you can see faces, choosing one closeup instead of a miserable wide shot with nobody in the frame, and staying on target.

Four-of-a-kind!

• This video is going to be edited. Shoot for the edit. Not every camera needs to act like it's live at all times.  It's fine to have a few frantic useless seconds of repositioning to get the useful stuff faster. Most people will cut that frantic messy part out.  
• Make do: If we had more time or more equipment, we would have gladly used either one. A big fisheye gopro over the scorekeeper might have been a nice touch, and time to adjust or set up additional lighting would have been a real boon. As long as we're wishing, how about monitors for the director and headsets for talking to the crew? Not on this shoot. If we hadn't been able to pull together the gear that we had, I think I could have shot a good version of this on a bunch of phones. 

Tip 3: Prepare for Failure!

Since you know what the smooth sailing version of your shoot looks like, you've got more brains left over for dealing with problems when they occur!

• A production with 6 recording devices is a production with at least 6 points of possible failure. But each device is also a failsafe for the others. And besides all of that, every one of these recorders is a backup plan for the others. Our cameras are recording scratch audio to help sync, but that could probably be a source for crowd laughs if needed. 
• Remember, this video is going to be edited! Shoot coverage. Get inserts. Get whatever you can in between the moments, or even before and after the show. 
• Our video production was almost like a separate show from the Talk Show the Game Show performance. We did not coordinate, they didn't check to make sure we were rolling, or getting good sound, or anything else. It was on us to be ready before they were, and to get as much as we could in one take.
• Particularly if you're the producer (and shooting), you want to keep an eye on the details and the bigger picture all at the same time. At the last minute, one of our stationary cameras became a manned camera. At some point during the show that I noticed the operator had removed the lens from his camera for some reason, or was making some other kind of adjustment. Alarming! But because I noticed, I was able to try to cover his angle. During the judging sections, I changed camera positions to cover the judges' table, because I knew they weren't well represented in the other two shots. 

That was the shoot. From there, all we had to do was break down the gear, back up the media, return all the equipment, edit the show, do some light finishing work, get it into the hands of the right execs, and spend a year making the deals to turn it into a TV series on deep cable! We'll skip a couple of the boring steps and pick it up tomorrow with post-production.

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Part 1: Finding your Show
Part 2: Shooting your Show
Part 3: Editing your Show
Part 4: Mistakes to Avoid

Rob Schultz is an editor, comedian, and really very helpful when it comes to making a thing. He's had a hand in bringing over 300 creative projects to life. If you'd like help creating your project, get in touch.