Bonus Material

It seems to be just as much work to prepare for bonus materials on a DVD than it is to prepare a film for a DVD. On this point I really commend the people behind those Lord of the Rings DVDs and the newer retrospective collections (Bond, Indiana Jones, etc) because they are so packed full of extra bonus special material features it's mind boggling.

For instance, it baffles me that they are STILL coming out with new behind the scenes of Star Wars books. More pictures show up, more production art, more storyboard sketches, more Behind the scenes footage. Is it fake? Is George Lucas just making ILM fabricate old-timey looking footage of Star Wars using anti-aging, re-bearding computer graphics? Aren't they running out of pictures to publish?

Apparently not- Garnaas came over and mentioned that someone at his workshop came into work with pictures from the Star Wars wrap party. The 1977 Star Wars wrap party. And it occured to me that certain cultural apexes will never diminish. The stuff that was produced, unearthed, and saved for that production THIRTY YEARS AGO has set the standard for what people are trying to accomplish now with millions of dollars.

I love behind the scenes documentaries, but they rarely actually show you what it's like on a set or what is really going on behind the scenes. As a filmlover and a filmmaker, some of my favorite aspects of filmmaking are the on-your-feet, seat-of-your-pants problem solving. Yet it feels like the ego of directors or producers say, "We can't show us fucking up. We can only show the stuff that worked really well." But it's always the sort of duct tape kind of stuff that's exceptionally clever and ingenius. That's the stuff that we like to see.

Going back to Star Wars, I've never seen all the featurettes and documentaries, endless though they are, but I know this: even for as much Star Wars stuff exists, they've never bored you or revealed the ALL the magic behind the production. Those Lord of the Rings mini-docs make you bored because they talk about being in New Zealand for three to five years working and working and it's cool and all, but you get tired for the people that were there.

I'm shooting this short and I want to package a DVD with a bunch of extra features, but I'm realizing that those bonus materials are such a full-time job, it's mind blowing.

What are your suggestions for special features? What are your favorite special features or behind the scenes docs or commentaries on DVDs?

Broken Internet

My internet at home doesn't work right now so I've been living at the coffee shop by my house for the last three days.

Also, I had a great pictorial blog all ready about my messy apartment, but I cleaned my apartment up, ruining this vermillion flash of Goddardian(Star Wars character or French New Wave filmmaker) inspiration.

Also, I've written like, forty blogs and haven't posted any of them, but of course, ironically, one of the unposted ones starts like this-

"Dear Readers, I have decided to deprive you of my blog."

So now I'm posting .... this?

Ugh. I need another mini-cheesecake.

No pix!

I wanted to take pictures of the shoot Saturday (I like behind-the-scenes stuff) but didn't because we were all working. It was fun and fast. I digitized the footage yesterday and set up the Final Cut project. If I can pull off the effects, it'll be pretty exciting and way beyond anything I've ever done before.

Also worked on painting one of my miniature sets that I'm just about ready to shoot; few more coats of "goo" and "cheese" and I'll be ready. There's about three or four miniature sets that have to be shot total and this one is the almost ready.

Last night I took a break from editing work and went to see Pirates 3. Besides being one of the worst movie going experiences of my entire life, the movie was good, lots of fun and excitement. My only beef would be that the plot was too complicated for it's own good. Lots of red herrings(?) or double crosses(?), but in the end, everyone was who you expected them to be, and the movie concluded with an amazing battle and exciting climax.

I need to go plan out my week.

Ready to Rock!

Shooting tomorrow!

I haven't shot anything in a year, of my own devising, since Robot Butler, and I'm excited to get into this short with my new High Def camera. Also, I'm making tons of models and miniature sets too which are looking aces.

I'm also excited about following this one up with a nice DVD to distribute and hopefully I'll have a bunch of extras to add. Huzzah!

I'll try and (take and) post pictures from the (first leg of) shoot next week.

Lots to do! Overwhelmed! Broke! Excited! Sinking! Swimming! Star Wars!

Open Letter to the Intelligent Alien Life That Finds Our Planet After Mankind's Destruction

Dear Intelligent Life Exploratory Committee,

Welcome to Earth! As you can see, we human beings have successfully and irresponsibly destroyed the entirety of our civilization leaving nary a male or female component to procreate and repopulate our species. As we used to say at the apex of our civilization, "Shit happens."

Anyways, feel free to look around and glean what you can from the skeletal remains of our technologically advanced culture. However, it could take years and years and years to figure our society out by looking at all our remains; your alien archaeologists could spend decades trying to make sense of all our material and amoral society, so to ease the scientific process, I've created this indestructible vault and placed in it the most valuable items to help you understand who we humans were and how we worked.

Unpacking the box marked "Open Me First," you will find an indispensable staple of our highly-evolved civilization- A TV with integrated VCR. Sorry, but I was probably holding the remote when my body disintegrated in the nuclear holocaust.

The box marked "Open Me Second," has the other items I have left for you- 600 used VHS tapes from the years 1973 – 1997, the golden age of our supreme high culture.

While it shouldn't take more than 4 Earth months to watch all the videos, which encompass an exceedingly broad spectrum of human emotions and events, I've chosen a few to highlight and expand upon:

VHS #528- Smokey and the Bandit(1977) – Legendary comedian Burt Reynolds and his trademark moustache star in this high-speed, country fueled, 200 horsepower movie set in the American south. While it may seem like a ridiculous movie based on a silly premise, this film shows what Mankind will do for the single most important substance of our civilization- beer. You will notice that many movies include obscene quantities of this substance, as you will also see it's effect on modifying our bodies (Beer Goggles, Beer Belly, Beer Foot).

VHS #005 – A View to a Kill(1985) – While actor Roger Moore plays noted British Spy James Bond, that's not the importance of this movie; what's important is that a 58-year-old(also known as, one foot in the grave) man can do the things he does in this movie including have sex with Grace fucking Jones. I hope your alien species doesn't have a weak stomach-type thing. Also, this movie is 100% factual truth.

VHS #291 – Titanic (1997) – This is the greatest film that has ever been made. The pinnacle of artistic integrity, performance, and vision.

VHS #075 – Weekend at Bernie's (1989) – I hope you're taking notes, gentleman, because you could learn a lot about how humans deal with bizarre and taxing circumstances from this dramatic masterpiece. When forced to deal with his boss's death, Johnathan Silverman must summon the courage to attend multiple social gatherings all the while trying to portray his boss as animated(latin for "full of life"). It should be noted that Johnathan Silverman was overlooked for any achievement award for this brilliant performance. Pay close to attention as he is a nuanced actor, and his emotions sweep the gamut of all humankind has to offer.

The rest of the VHS tapes offer up a broad spectrum to dissect and analyze and when you are done, you'll be able to quite accurately examine how it is our species vaporized much of what had been accomplished.

Good Luck with the rest of the universe and Happy Viewing!

Posthumously your friend,
Jeffrey Alan Crocker

PS- You may have to adjust the tracking on each video as the TV/VCR was in my closet for a few years before I sealed it in the vault.




Friends: What other VHS tapes should I put in the vault? (Besides Red Dawn, a factual documentary about World War III)

Shoot, Score!

Last night, Andy Goldblatt, Chris Tallman, Matt Young, Ryan Smith, Jen Bascom, and Mark McConville, representing ComedySportz Los Angeles, won the Los Angeles Improv Fest's Harold* Competition. Andy promptly took off for Las Vegas to bet all her winnings on black 23. The show was great and everyone rocked it out to defeat Improv Olympic - Chicago. Great work and congratulations all around.

When the show let out, the audience spilling onto Hollywood Blvd., the air was filled with the sweetest smell imaginable- the greasy, sketchy, street hot dog vendor. The guy had parked himself directly in front of Improv Olympic, a comedy club, and Star Shoes, a night club, and was raking it in. For every hungry comedian that had just finised performing, was three rail-thin, twiggy, heavily made-up, skimpily-dressed, totally-sloshed hussie that wanted a hot dog with the works after a hard night of screaming over the pounding bass and overpriced cocktails.

But I wonder how lucrative the street dog vendor business is, especially with a constant built in market like Hollywood Blvd? Do you think the scientologists working late at the L. Ron Hubbard Life Experience get out of work and go, "FUCK! I'm hungry for something delicious and greasy, but I don't want to wait in the line at Pink's."
And the other Scientologist says, "Yeah. If only there were a roving wagon with a built in propane grill that could satiate this late night dog desire."
"LOOK! Over there at Hollywood and Vine!"
"It's our every dream come true, save for becoming a level 19 Free Thetan Warrior with enchanted Sword of Werewolf Bone!"
"Let's get our chiggity-chow on! Woot!**"
"But we can't get kethcup or grilled onions and relish on our pristinely pressed attire, lest we look shabby for Master Travolta."
"Indubitably."
"Let's get ours wrapped in bacon!"

And now I'm hungry...






* Kind of hard to explain, but a "Harold" is a type of long form improv piece which consists of a group brainstorming on a suggestion, three scenes, another brainstorm/group activity, and then revisting the three scenes. When done wrong it can be torture, when done right it's OK.

** It's quite common for Female Scientologists to exclaim 'Woot' when having a brilliant idea for a nosh.

Two Truths, One Lie

On our way back to LA from Silicon Valley, we were volleying back and forth with Two truths and a lie in which you tell two things about yourself that are true and one that is a lie and the other person (who you may or may not have been dating for five years) has to figure out which is the lie. You'd think this game would be easy for two people that have been intimate for so long, but you'd be surprised at how much you DON'T share with your significant other about things like "junior high," "ex's weird eating habits," and "concussions I have incurred."

Here's a fun one: Majors I seriously, for realsies considered during college.

A- Marine Biology
B- Archaeology
C- Anthropology

Some more backstory- I went INTO college knowing I was going to major in film and I left college with a degree in English: Creative Writing. Because the film major was impacted, by the time I had taken one film class, I had already done most of the course work for the English major. I was making movies all the time as well, so I just stuck with the English major since I was having a blast writing all the time(and there weren't any real finals).

Remember, only ONE is a lie.

Let's look a little more carefully- Marine biology would suit me because I love the ocean and Cal State Long Beach has an excellent marine biology department, at least that's what they tout. However, it's a serious, hardcore research science and do you really think I'd be into that?

Archaeology, besides any reference to Indiana Jones, is interesting if you're studying interesting things, plus it's a little like treasure hunting but instead of hunting for money, you're hunting for research; Research don't pay my DSL bill, ladies.

Anthropology is awesome because it's the study of all humanity from forever and one can focus on anything from any time. Also, there are such things as Armchair Anthropologists which you get to be when you're an old guy sitting in a HUGE leather chair, just spouting ridiculous claims that you formulate from sitting around smoking pipes and reading all day.

The lie in there is Anthropology. I never gave a shit about anthropology. Never took an Anthro class. Even though I never took a marine biology class, after I took biology(at a beach school, it might as well have been marine biology) I was seriously considering being the world's foremost authority on sea monsters and creatures of the deep, how fucking rad if THAT was on my business card.

And archaeology- I took an archaeology class from this 25 year old guy when I was a freshman on a whim because, why not, right? It was AWESOME. It was a simple, straight-forward class that I'm pretty sure I got an 'A' in, but it was the little things, the grains of complete honesty that would slip out that made me consider it. For instance, he kept referring to bribing park rangers with cases of beer because "trust me, when you're out on a dig, you'll have plenty of beer." After the second to last class I approached him about what it was to be an archaeology major and he almost convinced me.

(I'm trying to find out what his name was, but I can't find it. All I keep finding is articles about CSULB archaeology students going to dig on Easter Island, which is making me really wish I had changed majors.)

So there are my two truths and a lie.

The concussion story is pretty awesome, too.

Abnormal blog posting

Readers of this blog know that I don't post YouTube clips often, so you can imagine that when I do, it's fucking important.

This is very very important.

OK. First of all, it's called BATTLE AT KRUGER. Perhaps you've already seen it, while I'm tech-savvy, I don't necessarily keep up with every YouTube top video.

THIS IS THE TOPPEST VIDEO THAT HAS EVER TOPPED ANYTHING EVER. (Hyperbole like that doesn't come around often.)

Pride of lions? Check.
Water buffalo? Check.
A fucking crocodile? Check.
8 minutes of an all-out, balls-to-the-wall, animal battle royal in the African savannah, complete with surprise reversals, suplexes, and gang wars? FUCK YES.

EIGHT. MINUTES. OF. FUCK YES.