The Legion of Justice Heroes

So a few months ago, my friend Sylvia invited people to come partake (in a few months, ie, last week) of a murder mystery party. Sylvia doesn't buy these in a box from a store; she writes them up from scratch, creating all the characters, their motivations, their interrelationships, EVERYTHING. I don't see how she does it.

Anyway, she had a fairy tale murder mystery party a year or two ago, and it was amazing, great food, great backstories, and people had an amazing time fleshing out their fairytale characters and acting like complete nutballs. (Aaron and Fiona as obnoxious-accented Hansel and Gretel were particular standouts.) I participated in that one, and was an old man whose mission was to get rid of a magic amulet before midnight. I palmed it off on Bryan Barnes, and he aged like 120 years in seconds (and then we had a hilarious slow-motion chase around the theater.)

ANYWAY anyway, a few months ago, Sylvia invited me to do the superhero thing, but I was feeling all "wah-wah, whine-whine" antisocial and obnoxious, so I politely declined (even though I had had a ball at the fairytale one).Turns out Aaron couldn't make it either (as he had to infiltrate some conservative sect and steal their liquor and down pillows or something...) so Sylvia cast him as the superheroes' sidekick (who I dubbed "The Amazing Wonder Keck") and asked me to film a simple scene of him being tortured; something for the heroes to fight for.

Well, you know me: always happy to help a friend out when I can, and if it involves video and campy superheroes, well, always happy to make it eighteen times more complex and giggle the whole time doing it. So I volunteered to do a kidnapping scene as well, and we brainstormed and created some visual gags, some taunting scenes, and the mandatory use of Burgess Meredith Penguin Gas. (which turns out to be fun & easy to do in After Effects!)

I also decided to attempt to make a Superfriends-style animated opening as well, and wanted a Legion of Doom group of villains. Somebody came up with a name that I vetoed, with me saying I wanted a "Man From U.N.C.L.E." style acronym. Aaron, being a smartass, said "why don't you just go with A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.?" Me, being a smartass, said "yeah, right, why don't YOU come up with a cool name that long, with those letters?" Aaron, being a genius comedy writer, came up with one in like four minutes, and it got included in the video (and I made us buttons!). I had fun coming up with all the villainous characters; they were supposed to be illustrated, but got axed due to time constraints. The heroes DID get illustrated; Sylvia sent me Facebook pix of the various folks involved, and I drew my best attempt at them, costumed as their hero. I would draw one person, show it to Jason, and he'd show me what could be improved to make it actually look human ("You got the boobs wrong AGAIN.") Pencils were scanned into Photoshop and cleaned up, then imported into Toon Boom Studio for inking and colouring. I had already designed all the logos for the heroes and the villains in Illustrator. I also had a great time writing the voiceover script for the animated opening, trying my best to channel Ted Knight.

The live action stuff was filmed over at Casa Keck (after kicking Fitz out, for secrecy reasons). It was insanely hot that day, so filming exteriors whilst wearing longsleeve black "Goon" shirts was less than pleasant for me and Miss Toth, but we had a blast. Got in some good visual gags and some blooper material. Moving inside, we set up my new chromakey screen and suspension stands from Digital Juice (which were AWESOME--I wanna do more chromakey work now!) We filmed the restaurant scene in front of Kit's colelction of Multiple Man sketches, which made it look like a sort of superhero Sardi's, which I thought was funny. We also managed to include our fabled Old Bay Seasoning (in-joke.) After we finally beat Aaron until he learned the actual name of the superhero group name, and after I learned how to fake out to the camera so you could read my shirt, we had that scene in the bag. I had found some great cotton batting that looked like oversized comedy rope to tie Wonder Keck up with, so that looked funny. Aaron got into character quickly, and adlibbed most of his stuff. I took several takes to ramp up my own energy and get into the part (the early takes on the blooper real are painfully low-key.)

Breaking all the equipment down and heading home, it took a week or two to find the time to log all the footage and get it roughly edited, then another solid week to add the music, supers, graphics, and special effects (did I mention the Penguin Gas?) Matching the virtual table movement to the zooming and panning of the camera was difficult, so it looks a little rough--but darn good enough for a one-shot party, I'd say! The important thing was the comedy. Sylvia did a bang-up job of making a ludicrously large plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and Aaron made an annoyingly hilarious pesky sidekick.

Finally it was party day! We headed over to Sylvia's gaming friends Will and Allison's house (they were very awesome, with a cool place, and I need to hang with them more.) Kit arrived about the same time we did, and everybody else managed to arrive by twenty minutes later (by which time, Kit had not yet entered the house. Everyone else was scared to go out and find out why, so I was delegated to go check up on him. If you know Kit well, you wouldn't be worried--he was just putting together a rather complex outfit.)

Everybody seemed to really enjoy themselves. The videos played quite well through the XBox 360, and seemed to add to the mood (screaming during the Troubalert klaxon has now become an ongoing bit). Kit's character, Vector, had size-changing powers, so Kit creatively (and amusingly) replicated that by having a series of different-sized action figures to represent him. Fiona made for a hilarious FDR Lass: "We have our four freedoms: Freedom of speech, freedom from fear,...and the other two freedoms." The guy playing DYRE (think Incredible Hulk) was fabulous. At first, I thought he was an utter buffoon and a shallow actor, as his Hulk-ish character was pretty simple. But then he reverted to his "Bruce Banner" identity (by putting on a suit and tie) and revealed his brilliance (both his character's brilliance and his own brilliance at playing the character!) The plot ended up going in directions we couldn't have imagined, with an explosive ending. Sylvia did an amazing job giving everybody fun characters to play with interesting motivations, and creating a world for them to live in. (And she invented an awesome supervillain off the top of her head: The Great Molesto.)

Oh, and I have to mention that Will infused his own liqueurs, which is awesome, and he was kind enough to let me try his basil liqueur, which was satisfyingly evil-looking with it's cloudy swirls of dark green--it tasted amazing.

So here's the stuff:

Videos are here (now including bloopers from the filming!)
(it's a playlist, so you can either watch them individually or let them all play through.)

Stills from the video production are here.

Pix from the party itself do be here.

Enjoy!
-Ted

Seuss Wars

Ok, so my sister is brilliant. At many things, really, but in this case, writing. I knew she could write amazing Stephen King-esque horror stories, but had no idea she could write clever nostalgic comedy stuff. (I thought *I* was the comedian in the family--she's stealin' my act! If she starts doing wrestling announcing, she'll get no combined Birthday/Christmas presents this year!)

S'anyway, I saw a blog post somewheres about a guy who was doing Star Wars illustrations in the style of Dr. Seuss. They were pretty excellent, and I thought my sister might dig 'em, so I sent her the link. She guffawed and promptly sent back a couplet of how she thought a Dr. Seuss Star Wars book would start off. It was PERFECT! Funny, clever, and dead-on Geiselesque. I told her as much, and basically begged her to write more. And she did. Here is what she has so far:

Our story begins on an ordinary day,
With a boy in a galaxy far, far away.

The boy's name was Luke - no more than a teen,
He lived on a planet they called Tattooine.
His parents - so tragic! - they both were long dead,
Young Luke was an orphan (at least that's what they said).

He lived on a farm with his uncle and aunt,
Luke wanted to leave but they both said, "You can't!
"We need you for this and we need you for that!
To bring in the crops and to hunt the womp rat!"

So Luke waited and stayed and he stayed and he waited,
And helped with the work on the farm (which he hated).

At night he would stand and gaze over the dunes
At the one setting sun and the two rising moons.
He would sigh as he'd think to himself, "It's not fair,
That I'm stuck on this rock while my friends are out there!"

But destiny had a few tricks up her sleeve,
Luke stood, gazed, and waited… but soon he would leave.

Not so far away from where the boy stood,
Was raging a battle of evil and good!
Imperial forces with their mighty hand,
Were crushing the Rebel Alliance's band.

The rebels had stolen the plans - newly minted -
To the worst weapon mankind had ever invented.
The Empire wanted to get their plans back,
So they gathered their troops and went on the attack.

The Stormtroopers, gleaming insidious white,
Swarmed through the whole ship, just to fight, fight, fight, fight.
The rebels, outnumbered, outgunned and outlasted,
Had only two choices: give up or get blasted.

But one of them wouldn't let herself concede
Without first performing one most crucial deed.
This rebel - a princess! - before they could shoot her,
Hid the plans deep inside one small android's computer!
And with it, a message, of limited scope:
"Help me, Obi-wan, you are my only hope!"

With the droid and his counterpart now on the run,
The princess was hit with a blaster (on stun).
And though she resisted, the stormtroopers made her
Confront their feared leader, the evil DARTH VADER!!!!!!

And the two little droids? Where are they next seen?
You guessed it! They both wind up on Tattooine.
The droids - R2-D2 and C-3PO,
Cannot both agree on which way they should go.

The two turn their backs and go opposite ways,
Though they meet up again in a matter of days.
They're captured by "jawas" (they're like roving peddlers,
Who travel around selling scrap to the settlers).

And who do the jawas encounter? No fluke!
None other than our Uncle Owen and Luke.
(When shopping from jawas one thing to avoid,
Is the "big bargain" or "fixer-upper" android.
C-3PO was a steal for a translator,
But they got an R2 with a bad motivator!)
In the end it worked out, R2-D2 was sold,
And Luke spent the evening polishing gold.

She admits she was getting a little off track towards the end, but overall, this is BRILLIANT!!! She gave me permission to post this, and said she'd write more if she got positive feedback, so PLEASE comment on this post or email me or something. I want her to write the whole episode!!!!!

"We need you for this and we need you for that!/To bring in the crops and to hunt the womp rat!" HA!!!!

Recent Videos for DSI

Two new videos up now, one on YouTube and one on Facebook.

First is is the new intro for Season Two of our acclaimed DSI High show, a sort of improvised sitcom. I based it on last year's video (which, strangely enough, I don't seem to have blogged about or even posted!) I used Pulpmotion to do the yearbook bit at the beginning; I may recreate that whole thing on my own, so I have a little better control over it. I like the character introductions (it helps that the adult/student ratio was more even than last year); separating them into "teachers" and "students" makes the characters esier to identify. The "running through the halls" scene turned out quite nicely. I just shot that as a hand-held video on my still camera, and then used Quicktime Player to save selected frames into a folder, using Photoshop to format them for Final Cut. The group shot at the end was fun; I just had to pull Spencer's face in from a different shot, do a lot of lighting readjustment, and slap a brick wall behind them. There's a faded, peeling walrus mascot sort of hidden on the wall; you can see a better still of that shot here. Lastly, I re-edited the Bowling For Soup song so it ended with the end of the video, and by accident, the line "here we go again" lined up nicely with the introduction of the DSI High logo. Yippee!

Second is the first draft of the DSI Witness News intro. I meet with Zach tomorrow for revision notes, but was asked to upload the current version as a promo for the next show. You can find it here. I used a new program I bought recently, Kinemac, which is awesome. I tried to make the video as slick and as-like-a-real-newscast as possible. I plan on adding some animated tubes snaking around on the "News/Sports/Entertainment" page; we'll see what else ZW wants for the video. I particularly like the 3D animated logo, with the extruded words appearing as the cube rotates.

George & Gracie

You might know I'm a fan of oldtime radio comedy and vaudeville. So a couple of weeks ago, I had been bidding on a hard-to-find book by George Burns, written about his wife Gracie and entitled "I Love Her, That's Why". I forgot that the auction was ending soon, and got sniped by some last-minute bastard. I love the way Burns writes, and particularly love hearing him talk about his wife (the easy-to-find "Gracie: A Love Story" by Burns is the most romantic book ever and will make you cry, guaranteed) so I was a bit irked that I hadn't won the auction for "I Love Her, That's Why".

Well, another one came up for auction, and once AGAIN I forgot to check on the auction as it was ending. But guess what? For some weird reason, nobody else bid on it, and I won! And as a bonus, this copy is autographed by George Burns himself! Hurrah!

Spock's Surprised Bread

Long ago when I had cable, I was addicted to the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway. It was always entertaining, had crazy games, and some wacky talent in the form of people like Paul Merton and Tony Slattery. There was one particular episode that has stuck in my head for all these years, featuring two comedians that *weren't* Whose Line regulars, and thus were hard to track down. Well, I finally found the particular clip I've remembered all these years, and it's right here. Enjoy it with me, won't you?

The segment has two guys being given a suggestion of an object that they have to build the scene around, and then Clive tells them they have to do it as the characters of Kirk and Spock. The guy doing Spock isn't particularly thrilling, but the guy playing Kirk, Jim Meskimen, is hilarious. He really nails the Shatner timing and sound. Ever since I originally saw this ten years ago, I still occasionally find myself wandering about and muttering, "Why Spock, I'm...surprised you eat bread."

The Wrath of Grapes: The Trailer

So a few weeks ago, my friend Ryan Locante invited me to join in on a project he had devised. He came up with an idea he called "Scrambled Video Eggs", where a bunch of folks would get together, divide into teams, get a suggestion, and then have 24 hours to script, produce, film, and edit a short film. Well, only a handful of folks showed up, so we just made up one team, and decided to leave the editing until later.

The personnel assembled were Ryan, Megan Stein, Nick Borgerding, Joe Stanton, Lisa Palmisano, and myself. Our suggestion came from the great state of Ohio and one Austin Nava. We started brainstorming, and with such a diverse bunch of minds, we came up with some wacky ideas. We ended up making a movie about a guy who really hates it when people eat grapes, so much so that he murders them...using grapes.

I've just finished editing the trailer, with music from the fine folks at Fenario Sound Recording. You can view ninety seconds of thrills and chills here. The full movie should be finished within the week, and I'll notify you loyal readers when it's up. Enjoy!

Gryphon Doors Shirts

So my friends Kit, Katie, and Tommy put together a great act that they did the past month at DSI. They created avatars in Rock Band, dressed like their characters, and played Rock Band songs live but whilst singing parody lyrics. Amazing and great. I thought they deserved concert tour shirts, and so made this up for them. Eitan Lees was always roughly treated by the cruel (and British) Kit FitzSimons as he ordered Eitan around as a lowly roadie, so Eitan got a special shirt that reads "ROADIE" in humongous letters on the back.

See if you can figure out the reason I called it the "Double D" tour.

The Real Basil Fawlty

Thought about posting this on the DSI forums, but I thought more of the folks here on The Transmutation Effect would enjoy it. If you're a fan of Fawlty Towers, you'll enjoy this video clip of John Cleese on Parkinson. Cleese tells some amusing stories about the hotelier that was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty.

I'm Famous Again

It's been a weird couple of days...some great stuff, some surprising stuff, some wistful stuff... premieres, revelations, regrets, a lot of laughter, far too many tears, and more alcohol than usual. Overall, I think everything is going to be fine. There's lots more projects on the calendar for the near future, with special CageMatch shows, a dvd I'm producing, a music video I'm directing, and of course, Christmas and all the hoopla and merriment and family wackiness that surrounds that. So I have hope that things are going to be good.

The latest bit of positivity is that it turns out that Patton Oswalt DID see the Kinda Patton II: Werewolves and Lollipops project I did for Jason a few months ago. And now I have my own page on Patton's website! Chekkit out here. (Dig that animated header!)

And also this weekend, my friend Matt sent me a copy of the documentary they did on our old OMEGA wrestling promotion (as detailed here) and I've watched a few minutes of it. It looks like it's going to be really, really good. Tells the story of how a bunch of kids from rural North Carolina got together and made one of the best independent wrestling federations in the country. And best of all, I host all the segments of the documentary! I'm in the extras too, talking about how I met the boys and got involved. I haven't watched the whole thing, but I'm told Matt puts me over hard, which would be really cool. It's nice to have one's contributions recognized.

I also just got a dvd in the mail from Mr. Erik Martin that he wants me to produce a promotional video for, so that'll be fun. And this Friday I'm going to try to start work on a music video for Jackson's great song, "Cigarettes On The Ground".

Gotta stay busy, or you'll go insane. Believe me, I know.

Rappin' Disaster

Okay, this is probably the most embarrassing thing I've done since...well, the LAST time I recorded a rap. And that was a loooong time ago, when my friend Tim and I wrote a rap about "Fratty Baggers", the fratboys who would hide their beer in paper bags like winos---not because they didn't want you to know they were drinking, but they didn't want you to know they were drinking cheap beer. (Bad for their rich image, I guess.)

Anyhoo, this little ditty was born out of a email that one Jeff Scronce sent around to me and a coupla pals. Jeff linked us to this site, featuring a guy rapping about the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was amazingly stupid and funny. Ethan Kaye then responded by saying

Sounds like that old-school 80's hip-hop. "My name is XXXXX
and I'd like to say..."

Well, for some reason I found that inspiring, so in the next fifteen minutes or so I wrote the following lyrics:

My name is *FEMA*, and I'd like to say,
I can rap about disasters in a *MILLION* ways!
Hurricanes, tornados, and a big ol' flood,
Fema gonna be there in yo' neighborhood!
Dolin' out cash for b-boys and b-girls
Helpin' y'all while the turntable twirls

The F is for "Fresh", 'cause we're cool like dat,
The E is for "Excitin'", 'cause we're the hot cats,
The M is for "Da Most", most from coast to coast,
And the A is for "Awesome" like butter on toast!

Wave your hands in the air, 'cause you know we really care!
Whoop-whoop! Whoop-whoop!
The roof! The roof! The roof has been repaired!
Whoop-whoop! Whoop-whoop!

Problem is, when I got home, I was still thinking about the stupid thing. Aaaaaaand I ended up recording it.

And here it is! The cool thing about Box.net is you can either download it or play it right in the browser! (You can also get the file here.)