I was disappointed to see that Theory Cornerites didn't seem to like "The Romance Reader", but, truth to tell, I didn't really like it much myself. I didn't exactly dislike it, but it just didn't grab me. I spent half the day worrying about this and I thought I'd share what I came up with.
Well, there were lots of flaws in the execution, but that's inevitable when you blog frequently. No, the thing that really bugged me was that my facial expressions were beginning to be repetitious. Close repeated expressions are fine but you have to earn them by doing whole-body stuff. Videos that are all expressions are like a cake that's all icing. It's just too much! Aaaargh! A painful lesson, but a necessary one. I'll see what I can do about it. I can't stop making videos in front of the computer because it's too much fun, but I'll try to widen the repertoire.
Talking about lessons learned, I thought you might be interested to know the painful, horrific story about the making of the romance film. Brace yourself, it's not for the squeamish.
My original idea was for a sketch about a romance reader who compulsively eats liquid-filled chocolates while she's reading. She's so absorbed in the book that she doesn't notice how sticky she's getting till it's too late. She tries to wipe off the goo and only succeeds in spreading the stickiness to her face and hair, the book...everything. Her hair sticks to the book and it begins disintegrate as she tries to peal apart the sticky pages. As the song ends we see her dirty and dishevelled and covered with sticky, raggedy kleenexes and book pages, but amazingly she's still absorbed in the story! I was really happy. It seemed like a fun idea.
Well, little did I know that it was the idea from hell. Those liquidy chocolates you saw in the video were real, and they really were sticky. I mean REALLY, REALLY sticky...sticky as in made with equal parts of super glue and molasses! I got 15 for a dollar and I wondered how the store could afford to sell them so cheap. Now I know. They destroy every room that they're in, and you have to spend forever in the shower to get the stuff off. The keyboard I'm typing this on is still sticking to my fingers. Half the things on my desk are still stuck together, and there are stains on my carpet that just won't go away. Those chocolates were nasty!!!!!!
Well, little did I know that it was the idea from hell. Those liquidy chocolates you saw in the video were real, and they really were sticky. I mean REALLY, REALLY sticky...sticky as in made with equal parts of super glue and molasses! I got 15 for a dollar and I wondered how the store could afford to sell them so cheap. Now I know. They destroy every room that they're in, and you have to spend forever in the shower to get the stuff off. The keyboard I'm typing this on is still sticking to my fingers. Half the things on my desk are still stuck together, and there are stains on my carpet that just won't go away. Those chocolates were nasty!!!!!!
(I'd be curious to know what happened to these destructive chocolates after I threw them in the trash. Maybe the curse continued with a new set of people, like in Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp.")
Now you see the problem. I started filming and was amazed to find that the chocolates from hell really were as bad as I was portraying them. I had to keep turning off the computer when I realized the stuff was oozing onto the floor and all over my pants (sorry to disappoint but I had guy clothes on under the old lady gown). I accidentally spilled and stepped on the chocolates and that led to no end of problems. Finally I had to stop filming and tack on a phony ending just to finish it.
Now, I know what you're thinking...that I'm a wimp because a real actor would have allowed everything to get covered with goo for the sake of the film. If you write me a comment with that idealistic opinion, I hope you'll accompany it with a check for my carpet cleaning.
Anyway, now you know the saga of the romance story. I learned a lot in the making of this video, mostly about coming up with ideas that are actually do-able.
13 comments:
When you watch it again after reading this post,it's funny on a whole different level. The lust was all performance, but the disgust was genuine. If it's a good romance novel, you'd expect to get sticky fingers.
Pappy: Thanks!
Vincent: I accidentally deleted your comment! Sorry about that! thanks for writing!
YES! I agree with Pappy, it adds a whole other dimension which is hilarious. It's like this video of another dude I watched a while ago, with him tossing stuffed animals in a bathtub, but what makes it hilarious is that he's actually Struggling real hard because one of the bears got SO heavy because of the water. That struggle was what made that mediocre skit funny and steer away from mediocredness.
I liked it a lot. In fact, now, I have a similar story.
In my high school science class me and some friends were given the assignment to do a commercial. We were studying the element chart and the class had broken into groups of four and each were given an element to commercialize; ours was zinc.
We came up with a sketch really quickly. We wrote a breakfast cereal commercial called 'Sugar-coated Zinc-filled Lardbits" We came up with the idea so quickly that the sketch was written long before we had done any research, so we went and found a few useless facts about zinc and literally shoe-horned it in the sketch.
My character said this line of information about zinc literally torn from the textbooks: "Zinc is relatively non-toxic and shows no noticeable signs of side-effects" and when we saw that all we had to do was have the kid do something awkward.
So we had him pour orange juice on his head.
Of course it was my house we recorded in. We recorded outside on the lanai late one afternoon.
And there I was, on the day, saying the line..."no noticeable signs of side-effects" and then, all smiles and never taking my eyes off the camera, I picked up a full glass of orange juice and poured it all over my head. Cut!
Now, in the final cut of this video, you notice that it's a little bit darker out now. This is because we shot in sequence and we weren't successful in cleaning up the orange juice that fell on the floor and all over the lanai before my mother found out and completely chastised me in front of my friends for fifteen minutes!!
So from that moment on, we were a little more careful about 'being in the moment' and 'doing it for the comedy'.
We still went there, but only if there was ample time to clean up or recover from something! I also found it was better when my mom saw these videos a few months after they'd been shot.
- trevor.
aaaaawwwww poor uncle eddie....I hope you didn't get poisoned on the cheap chocolates. I'll have to send you some good stuff.
I actually didn't think it was that bad - a little long, but it wasn't that bad.
Pappy's right - the backstory actually made it funnier.
You have my sympathies, but you should also count yourself as very very fortunate. During the famous shoe-eating sequence of Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush", take after take, the perfectionist director and actor Max Swain ate pounds of the licorice candy "shoe leather" and candy "nails", and both got perilously ill from constipation and near bowel obstruction.
The idea of The Romance Reader is a marvelous, one which Chaplin would have loved and had fun with, and perhaps should be attempted again with a few more off-camera personnel on hand, some extra costumes and candy, some Alka-Seltzer and a hose to wash everything down later!
Ah well Eddie! They say animators are all just frustrated actors anyway. We all really enjoy your forays into film making anyway!
Hi Eddie and every other cartoon fan.
Do you remember my cartoon of the cat on a plane which was dedicated to John K?
Well, the animation portal mytoons has selected it as part of the promotion of their new HD format. About 30 short flims were chosen among thousands from all the world.
Now the cat-cartoon is on a contest to be aired on the Times Square of NY.
If you think that this kitty deserves to be on the Big Apple, you can vote for him EVERY HOUR here.
Search it as "Gatin A Bordo (Kitty on Board)"
The contest close this week, so...please hurry!!
Thanks,
Carlo Guillot
Eddie, if I can change the topic?
The following URL is a link to a Nicholas Brothers dance routine from the 1940 Fox musical "Down Argentine Way."
For sheer dance artistry (and vim behind it), plus a smoking-hot rendition of the title number, it's hard to beat this. Comments/reactions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EexOzjz6Gn4&feature=related
I think the chocolate should have been ridiculously everywhere. It would have been worth the sacrifice.
She must've been on a chocolate binge. She didn't even notice that the book she was reading was backwards.
- trevor.
EO: Holy Cow! I thought I responded to this, but I must have forgotten! Anyway, thanks for the link. I watched the video along with some other Nicholas Bros. that were on the sidebar. Sigh! those guys were great, no doubt about it!
LOL you're expressions are always the best Eddie. You really know how to push a look for all its worth...
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