Thursday, November 27, 2008

CageMatch 10/25/08

Well this is WAY overdue. Here's the CageMatch video from 10/25/08, over a month ago. My apologies. Watch it and come back for commentary. Be sure to click the "high quality" links!

Ok, I felt whimsical when I made this. I brought PT over and threw my pith helmet on him, and we invented the character of Julian Partridge, world-renowned explorer and entrepreneur. Basically, I just wanted to be wacky with PT. Not the most dramatic video I've made, but it amused me. PT and I might need to make a weekly podcast video series with Julian Partridge...we had fun with it.

On that same evening, we saw the departure of Troy Sterling from the show. He made his farewell in video form, which you can see here.

I put a lot more effort into the Troy video. Me and Remi spent a good deal of time filming all the various segments. It was his idea to do the "Back In Black" bit, which worked real well. I loved the soft vignette effect of the black and white sections. BTW, that's a CageMatch bumper sticker he's kicking in that one scene. We did another take where he spit on it, which was hilarious, but I thought might be too subtle in a short video. Troy throwing a brick is just great. And I loved the bit at the end where he walks off and has to step down off the box he stands on to be tall enough to frame correctly on the bluescreen. All in all, a fun video.

While we're at it, here's two new videos I made recently, which aren't CageMatch videos per se, but are promos for a former CageMatch champion team: Banana Breakup. Here's video #1 and video #2.

#1 was my idea, Banana Breakup returning from an exploration in outer space to come back and perform at the DSI Comedy Theater again. I like coming up with nonsensical cartoony adventures for the Banana Boys to participate in. The backdrop for the space capsule was inspired by the walls of the Satellite Of Love from MST3K; I gathered together a lot of plastic toys and flotsam and glued them to a huge piece of stiff cardboard and then spraypainted the whole thing white. That was great fun, and the guys seemed to be amused by it. The #2 video was commissioned by Kit, and an idea of Zach Ward's. Easy to film, and a cute video to advertise their shows.

And that's it for today!

Bad Choices in Retail

I haven't blogged in a month. Been busy, a bit worn out, a bit stressed (more on all that later). So I promise to do better.

Let's start back with a new photo set I've created on my Flickr account, entitled "Consumer Culture Gone Wrong". It's along the lines of something Kit FitzSimons used to do that amused me greatly. He would take pictures of odd items on store shelves and then make fun of them on his blog. I can't promise to be as clever or as funny, but I can promise that I will amuse myself.

Check out the set here; look through them one by one to see the descriptions I've typed up. I'll add to the set as the mood strikes me.