CageMatch Report

Ah, I keep forgetting to put this up. My mind seems overwhelmed by pollen, so I've been quite absent-minded lately.

Anyway, here's the poop on the latest CageMatch video. Go watch it here, and then we will discuss.

So this whole concept was dreamed up and executed in 24 hours. I've been busy working on a short movie for another project, and wasn't able to even think about CageMatch until Wednesday. Fortunately, it all seemed to come together rather nicely. Mano is Greek, and when I was doing the "Flavor Shot European Tour" video a few weeks back, I had intended to have one of the European teams be from Greece, naming them "Mano A Mano" and just putting two pictures of Mano's face up there. I ran out of time on that video, so I was pleased as punch to be able to do a flashback to the European Tour and use it as a part of the plot for this video.

I agonized over what to call the Greek team for this video...I made a list of all sorts of terms and names that popped into mind when I thought about Greece, and even asked other folks what they thought of when I said "Greece". Then I started thinking about Greek mythology, and looked at a list of Greek gods. When I got to Ares, the choice seemed obvious: good pun, Greece is also known for pottery, and I love the game "God of War". Thus was born "Ares Potter".

The rest of the video was pretty straightforward. I liked the two shots of the amphitheatre, with the voiceover about how the rioting crowd destroyed the place. The rippling effect on Flavor Shot that was overlaid on the soldier picture turned out rather nicely. I had to buy a screen-capturing program (ScreenFlick) to get Mary's video off the Rooftop Comedy webpage so I could use it in the CageMatch video. That part went over well. The final logo animation wasn't quite as fancy as I had originally planned, but I ran out of time.

The music at the end was a mashup of the Knight Rider theme and Eminem ('cause Mano A Mary is M and M). The opening sound was "Proud Mary" by CCR. "But Ted," you say, "you left out the other half of the team!" Nope--it wasn't the stereo version of "Proud Mary"....it was the mono version. (Man, I'm so clever!)

I got nice compliments from Mano after the video was shown. He said his mother would love it because it made him look like a good Greek boy, and that I used traditional Greek music. I thought that was darling.