What a Bunch of Turkey!

I have been waxing long-winded about stuff here lately, so here's a nice fluffy post that will mean nothing to the future of humanity, as did the others.

I got an e-mail from a friend who obviously does not subscribe to our large, easy-to-see iTunes podcast. He was asking me, "Hey, what does Guy's shirt say in the Thanksgiving short?"

On the off chance you have the same question because, like my friend, you obviously do not subscribe to our generously-sized, clear-as-a-crisp-New-England-winter-day iTunes podcast, here it is, in all its easy-to-see glory (click to see it even bigger):



Ah! Turkey! On board! I see! On board! A turkey!

Glad to clear that up.

We have a long and illustrious history of making custom shirts for Guy to wear. "Daddy's Boy" for episode 5. "This is My Best Shirt" for episode 6. See? Long and oh, so illustrious! When it came time to do a Thanksgiving short, we knew Guy had to wear something Thanksgivingy, and the chances of just finding something ready-to-wear were slim. Especially in September, when we actually shot the thing. Not much turkey going on in September.

I came up with two T-shirt phrases, probably just one morning in the shower. Or maybe while making graham crackers and apple butter. Though, come to think of it, I have not made graham crackers and apple butter in a few years, and I have showered recently, so it was probably more likely the former.

Two choices. Yes. The first was what you see above, and the second was "I'm with Turkey," also having the same arrow pointing to the stomachal area. (There's a veiled reference to episode 8 in that last sentence. Bookmark this page and come back in January to see what it is!)

We chose "Turkey On Board" because we had to choose something. We had trouble deciding, really. "Turkey On Board" is silly, ridiculous, and conjures a pretty amusing though unoffensive image. "I'm with Turkey" is a triple-fronted assault, referencing the famous "I'm with Stupid" shirts, pointing at a stomach full of Thanksgiving turkey, and, most disturbingly, suggesting that Guy is pregnant with a turkey baby.

It is perhaps that last item that made us go with the easier-to-digest (ba-dump BUMP!) "Turkey On Board."

Just so we can have some fun, I have re-designed the graphic, and we can now see what it would have actually been like had we chosen the other phrase. Enjoy!

Goin’ Nuts

Peanuts that is.

It’s time for another “New Music Wednesday!” This week I’ve got something that I’m pretty proud of.

If you’ve watched LFTI you probably already figured out that I (and Tanya and Steve, and Kathy when she was producing) like to create little “homages” to other works and styles (and if you don’t watch LFTI then what are you doing reading this?! Go watch!). Most of the time they’re not very specific, but in last year’s Halloween special and this year’s Thanksgiving special the tributes to Charles Shultz’s Peanuts are pretty obvious.

For “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Mason” I did a little Vince Guaraldi-esque theme and incidental music (and there was a tick-or-treater wearing a Charlie Brown ghost costume). We also created a “wall scene” at the end with cutout images from the short.

This year there were plans for another wall scene. But I wasn’t happy with the quality of the cutouts. They just weren’t right. So I got the idea to Peanuts-ize the cast. I think it was fairly successful. Especially since I was really rushed. In fact, in order for it not to turn out a total shambles, we pushed back the launch of the Thanksgiving short by a day.

The music was again a very important element and one that I looked forward to doing. Of course, once I actually started writing the music I had second thoughts. This kind of thing always seems so breezy, but I have to tell you, it’s incredibly stressful. Anyone who has ever stared at a blank page or lump of clay or white canvas or jeans that don’t fit anymore will know what I’m talking about (that last one may just be me). There’s the excitement of achievement mixed with an almost overwhelming despair that the result won’t meet your own expectations.

Incidentally, I think that initial feeling of despair is the reason that most people don’t do things of an artistic nature. It’s a high hurdle. In fact, in my opinion, it’s the only hurdle. How many times have you heard people say “I can’t draw (or whatever)! Nothing that I do ends up looking (sounding…) like it ‘should’!” What those people don’t realize is that almost everyone has the same thought. Even great artists (I’m not including myself here). The only difference is that they went ahead and did it anyway (and then, in some cases, tortured themselves for not living up to their own impossible standards).

Okay, so the music: Luckily, I was able to get over the early speed bumps and get the music done. It always helps to have a deadline.

This is pretty much the same type of deal as the music for ITGP,M. Only this tune is more upbeat. I once again incorporated a portion of the LFTI theme Fine Print. This time I used the bridge of that tune for the “b” section (or chorus, if you will) of this one. Now I think that I have culled all of Fine Print, so I don’t know what will happen when I write another special! I cross that bridge when I come to it I guess.

I’ll do another side-by-side comparison for you and you can hear for yourself. If you know the LFTI Theme then you may recognize what I mean. It’s the section that goes “They never told you the catch, some restrictions come attached…” You can hear a repeated and transposed cycle of that basic melody in the middle of this song.

So, without further ado, New Music Wednesday, Life from the Inside and I are proud to present the theme song from Thanks for Nothing, Mason, aptly titled…Thanks for Nothing, Mason.

Fine Print:

And also for your listening pleasure, here is the theme from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Mason:

As always, check back here for other exciting blog posts and new music!

Just so you know, I only yesterday received a new recording interface and it pretty much kicks ass. So the music quality will only go up (at least the recording quality, I can’t vouch for the content)! In fact I predict that the music for Episode 8 will rock. Some may even say it’s bodacious, bitchin’ and/or rad.

Stay tuned…

ROBB

Indie = Ingenuity

This past weekend, we finished shooting episode 8. Thrilled? Oh, good! I was hoping you woudl be.

[An aside: I seem to have a very particularly dyslexic issue when I type. Ninety-five percent of the time, I transpose the "l" and the "d" in the words "should," "could," and "would." I am constantly right-clicking to correct my misspellings of those three words in particular, and it bugs the royally-sanctioned crap out of me. Just for fun, I'm going to not correct those misspellings if they occur in this post, just so you can see how prevalent the problem is. Thank you.]

This weekend saw some firsts for LFTI: first on-location shoot that was not a friend's apartment complex; first speaking extras roles; first car shoot; first blue-screen shot.* Yes, we were really pulling out all the indie stops this weekend. Our location was craftily secured by using a tiny little white lie so that we woudl not have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in fees. We had to shoot in a car without the proper mounts, which again saved us who knows how much money. And our blue-screen was more like blue-flannel.

I went to film school in Boston. Most of the projects on which I've been involved then and since have been low or no budget, just like LFTI. When you have no money to spend on all the tools and talent and equipment and rights and licenses and fees and protections that come with a huge budget shoot, you have no choice but to get creative. I genuinely mean "creative" here... creativity is not only key to a good script and good acting, but also good shots and lighting and music and editing and so on and so forth et cetera. The creativity that goes into writing and acting and art is a bit different than the creativity that goes into cinematography or editing, say. While technical prowess is usually helpful in any facet of life these days, it definitely helps on a shoot, so you know what equipment you have and how it works. From there, you can use your limited resources in ways for which they may not have originally been designed.

One teasingly fine example is the blue-screen we concocted on Sunday night. Yes, we needed a blue-screen. Why? Never you mind why, just enjoy the tale.

We had two choices for shooting a particular part of our script: Do some guerilla shooting on a real location, or create a cheesy facsimile using a blue- or green-screen. The cheesy facsimile seemed to fit best, so we chose to shoot against a screen. Robb and Tanya ended up having a blue sheet that, while not the exact blue of your finer, more expensive blue-screens, was just perfect for what we needed. We used two light stands to frame the sides of the sheet, then a third light stand taped across the top to finish the frame. Voilà! A simple blue-screen set-up.

Sorry for the blotches in the picture. I must have had something on my lens. Thank goodness you can still see our make-shift blue-screen set-up. (More-hyphens, any-one?)

I mentioned that we shot in a car for the first time over the weekend. I have had to be very creative in cars before, including sitting in an open trunk to shoot a car behind me as we drove through an industrial park. But Sunday was a challenge. We needed to get useful shots of Lou and Jennifer having a conversation in a car, and normally that woudl require using a follow car or a fancy hood mount. We can not afford such things as hood mounts, and we coudl not shoot on some little-used street somewhere with an illegal follow-car arrangement because the story required the car to be driving on a major road. The only way to get decent shots of Jennifer and Lou was to position the camera in front of them, near the dash, as we drove down Culver Boulevard.

We first tried a two-shot, with me holding the camera in the far front corner of the car from the back seat to get Jennifer very close up on the left of the shot and Lou in the distance on the right. That looked too peculiar, so we had to get the camera on the dash more toward the center of the car. This was simple for Lou's shots; I just sat in the passenger seat, leaned far forward, and held the camera by the windshield. When it came time to shoot Jennifer, though, I coudl not sit in the driver's seat and shoot and drive. So we did this:

Robb drove while I crammed into Corrie's footwell. She had to act with her knees almost in her face while I held the camera out on top of the dash, trying not to get my own bushy-ass hair in the frame. Kinda hard, but it was the only way we coudl do it without literally hanging out the window or something worse. I had to duck a few times as cop cars passed us.

Oh, and because there coudl be no one in the back seats, tanya had to sit here during shooting:

I understand it was rather uncomfortable and cold.

LFTI is about as independent as you can get. Often this means "MAJOR SUCK." But not for us. We want to be sure the show is as good as possible. That requires much of the aforementioned creativity, in things like the blue-screen and the car, but also in any number of things like music, credits, editing, graphics, props... I mentioned last time how proud I am of our show for the small details we add, but I am also proud for how hard everyone on the show works to get it just right. I can't wait for everyone to see episode 8. It'll be sometime in January, which is a ways off, but it shoudl be worth the wait!

[Seven. Yes, seven instances of the transposed "l" and "d." That's 100%, not 95% as I'd said. Perhaps I need more fiber in my diet, or a larger nightly dose of radiation.]

____________

*Though some keying was done for the Mizz Chi erotic workout video, I believe this was the first time something other than a white wall was used. Forgive me if I'm wrong on that point. Robb or Tanya can correct me.

Twas the Night Before Filming

We're gearing up for another weekend of filming around the old LFTI household.

No, we don't actually all live together, weirdo.

What does this mean exactly? It means we've been emailing each other all day, reminders of what we still need to pick up, what we need to bring, etc. I spent my lunch hour on a walk with Robb, going over my lines.

See, the excitement is building because tomorrow we shoot on location. With extras. I KNOW!

This may seem pretty "par for the course", but we've only shot on location once before. And we've never had extras. So tomorrow is going to be very fun for us. And hopefully the extras too.

I'm not sure how much else I can tell you without giving the fun stuff away. Oh, I made a rather large order at Papa Johns today, so I can tell you that we will have lots of pizza on set tomorrow. And lots of neon colors. And pastels. And baked goods. And 1 rather large piece of cardboard. And someone doing an impression of a dead celebrity.

Oh yeah, it's going to be fun! And maybe a bit scary.

Tanya

Thanks for Nothing, Mason

Now if your name is Mason, that headline could seem like an out-of-the-blue insult. Rest assured, it’s not.

It’s the title of out latest Holiday Special!

That’s right! Last year’s Halloween Special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Mason, went so well that we decided to do another, similarly themed, short this year.

Personally, I love these little holiday specials. They’re a lot of fun for me. I especially enjoy the music. It’s a good excuse for me to get my “Vince Guaraldi” on. Not that I need a good excuse, it’s more like I need motivation. And there’s nothing like a looming deadline to actually get me to do it.

So, I hope you enjoy our latest video.

And I hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Don’t forget to vote today!

ROBB

Answer: This Post

Question: What’s a striptease without the strip, Alex?

You see that? I started this post all Jeopardy-like. I was just feeling a little like game show host Alex Trebek. You know…Canadian. I feel a sudden urge to speak only in answers…and québécois, eh.

Before we begin, let me just take this opportunity to speak out about something that has actually bothered me for quite some time: The “answers” on Jeopardy.

For those who don’t know, Jeopardy gives a series of answers to which the contestants must respond with the correct “question.” Example: Answer: “Americans drink its milk more than any other animal.” Question: “What is a cow?”

Seems pretty straightforward to me. But most of the question/answers aren’t that simple, and for good reason; the show would be incredibly lame. Also the show wouldn’t be a rallying point for the country’s intellectually snobified.

Oh, you think I’m being too hard on Jeopardy-watchers, eh? Well, let’s deconstruct the show a little and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

If I were to ask you, “what is Dublin?” You’d probably answer, “It’s the capital of Ireland.” Then I’d ask, “Why is Ireland the richest country in the world?” You’d look at me expectedly and I’d continue, “Because it’s capital (capitol) is always Dublin!” And we’d laugh! Oh what a time we’d have! Being real.

Now ask a snobby Jeopardy-watcher “what is Dublin?” They’d say something like “in the early 70s, U.S. airplanes were granted landing rights in this city northeast of Shannon.”

And all reasonable people just slowly shake their heads at the pomposity. What kind of answer is that? I didn’t ask about landing rights or geographical proximity to other large population hubs. “What is Dublin?” It’s a simple question.

“What is horseracing?”

“In 1974, of Baseball, Football and Horseracing, it’s the one that drew the largest live attendance in the United States.”

Hmmmm….

Now tell me that Jeopardy-watchers aren’t a bunch of academic show-offs!

Anyway, I can’t sit here indulging my own sense of outrage forever, I have editing to do! Which brings me to the point of this post, to tease the next LFTI video! Yeah!

So here it is:




Teasy!

I finished the music yesterday and I’ve been torturing the cast and crew with it since. You’ll also have the opportunity to be tortured, two weeks from today on New Music Wednesday!

Can’t wait can you?

ROBB

Sweating the Details

Do you know what I really like about our show? Do you know what makes me very proud to be a part of it? Our attention to detail, and, through that, our nearly masochistic habit of giving ourselves lots of tiny challenges for each episode and short.

In pre-production for episode 8, we have already found many humorous tiny little things to add to the show that are not necessarily called out in the script. Each "tiny" little thing requires some extra work: looking for a weird prop here, constructing something from scratch there, designing a logo yonder... However, I can't really talk about episode 8 yet. I'd hate to ruin any of it for you. So let's consider something from the series of shorts we just finished up that introduce Lou.

We have a nice little back story for Lou, and though she's still quite a mystery even to us, there are some clues to her character sprinkled about. The most enlightening one of these is her briefcase.

Lou met Kate in Tori Spelling's garage. At least that's her story. We decided to assume it's true for the purposes of getting ourselves out of a logic loop. Now, Lou says verbally that she lived in Tori's garage, but what could we do to support that visually? We decided that the briefcase Lou uses should be an old one that Tori's dad, Aaron, used to use. Lou "borrowed" it from Tori, who, for all we know, is living in Aaron's old house, and the briefcase was just there on a shelf in the garage for decades.

Okay, that's a fun, simple idea. Lou has Aaron Spelling's old briefcase. Right. So here's where this one small decision creates a pile of tasks.

First, we had to find a suitable briefcase. It had to look expensive, since Aaron was rich even in the '70s, but it couldn't cost us too much. We are a no-budget show, after all. Tanya and Robb secured a fairly cheap one that looked good enough to pass for pricy. But how were we to pass it off as Aaron Spelling's briefcase? Well, obviously, it needed to be monogrammed. The initials A. S. mean nothing, so Aaron's whole name needed to be on the briefcase. How could we do that without sending the briefcase out to actually be monogrammed? Paint! We had to find just the right size and style of letters we could use to get Aaron's name just so on the case. From among several choices, we decided to use some small Garamond letter stamps from Michael's. We tested the letters with some silver paint, but the paint did not stamp well. It was gloppy and did not look good at all. Luckily, during a late afternoon trip one day to an art store, Robb and I found just what we needed: a silver-inked stamp pad! The silver stamp pad worked perfectly. We positioned the name in a place where it would most likely be seen when the briefcase was on-camera.

Okay, so the briefcase now had Aaron's name on it, but what more could we do to hint at the case's history? The answer for us was to include headshots, publicity stills, and a shooting script for the pilot of The Love Boat. Yes, Aaron was using this case during casting and pre-production of The Love Boat, but had stopped using it soon afterward. It hadn't seen any use until Lou absconded with it, perhaps only hours earlier. Fine. Sounds great. But now there was that much more to work on. I found some great photos online, one of Gavin MacLeod as Captain Stubing, and one of the whole original Love Boat cast. I also happened to have the font used for the Love Boat "title treatment" (an annoying term we use inside the industry), though I had to use an O from another font.

I put these together to create fake publicity shots. Then I created a cover page for the original Love Boat script, complete with coffee stains and such. You don't even get to see the script in the final short, but it's there, it adds heft, and when Lou starts pulling all this crap out of the case, the dimension it adds is tangible

That was all quite a bit of extra work, just for a smidge of detail. And each video we shoot has quite a few of these "little" items. One might think it's sad to put so much work into these details, and then have them never be noticed. What I think all of us agree on is that it is worth the extra work. If someone happens to be on a second or third viewing (which our marketing department assures me is quite common amongst our fan base), they might start to notice these little touches. But even if they never notice them, the atmosphere the details create works subconsciously.

And that, dear reader(s), is why I am proud to work on this show. If you like, go give "*subject to change" another viewing and pay special attention to the briefcase. Or watch any of our shows. You'll see a lot of love and time and care in each one.