12.27.08
Posted in Life at 11:08 am by Rob Schultz
Later, a compilation of videos and things I’ve worked on out on the internets. But today:
Rob: Hey, Hombre Ocho
Luke: Hey.
Rob: allons a la lune?
Luke: Pas a la lune!
Rob: aw…c’est magnifique, la lune. Tu vas aimer la lune!
Rob: allons!
Luke: Je ne veux pas aller a la lune.
Luke: Il va faire froid sur la lune.
Luke: Mais, ici, nous avons 60+ degres F.
Rob: je ne crois pas cela
Rob: la lune est super-chouette!
Rob: mais, pas “froid”
Luke: Aussi, la, il n’y a pas d’atmosphere.
Rob: oh! l’atmosphere! Tu et t’atmosphere!
Luke: Quoi?
Rob: “Bonjour! Je m’appelle Luke. J’aime respirer Tous! Les! Temps! Regardez-moi!”
Luke: Ouai ouai.
Luke: Tu l’aimes, aussi, mais tu ne le dis pas.
Luke: Tu as un amour discret avec l’atmosphere.
Luke: Mais tous le monde ecoutent tes respirations!
Rob: alors, je n’est pas une jeune fille
Luke: Ca ne fait rien.
Rob: allons a la lune, s’il vous plaît?
Luke: Tu as les poumons!
Rob: il y a gâteau.
Luke: Si tu as les poumons, to ne peuz pas aller a la lune (sans quelques chers choses a porter).
Rob: (le premier cadeau de la saison)
Luke: Je n’aime pas le gateau de la lune! Je ne suis pas un astronaut!
Luke: Je ne veux pas des enfants du fromage de la lune!
Luke: Je ne veux pas manger l’hamburger avec un paille!
Rob: arrete
Rob: je suis désolé
Luke: Je ne veux pas les astronauts, qui defient la force de gravité devant nos enfants!
Rob: je ne tu appellerais jamais un astronaute
Rob: c’est trop
Luke: Tu m’invites a aller sur la lune!
Rob: je ne pense pas
Luke: Tu es mechant.
Rob: j’ai pensé un vacance a la lune seraient amusement et un delight
Luke: Evidement, le ‘matinee’ a la Cedar Lee finit a seulement 2:00PM!
Luke: Il n’est pas amusant, un vacance sans oxygen.
Rob: aussi, aux Cinemark a 3h-quelquechose. J’ai un certificate!
Rob: je voudrais payer pour nous tous les deux, parce que j’ai vende un Dialysis cette annee
Rob: (il serait amusant pour un peu de temps, meme sans l’air)
Luke: (Je ne vous croix pas.)
Luke: Ou a ‘Regal Crocker Park’ a 3:10.
Rob: “Crocker Park?” Es tu certain qu’a assez l’atmosphere pour tu?
Luke: Peut-etre.
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12.22.08
Posted in Movies at 9:19 am by Rob Schultz
Say what you will about the Coen Bros., but I really like their nihilistic streak as of late. I didn’t like this as much as No Country for Old Men, but for two movies in a row by people I thought I didn’t like, it’s almost enough to make me want to go back and check out some of their older movies again, in case I’m the one that changed.
I did change my location: I’m in Cleveland for a few weeks. It’s a winter wonderland!
Other movies I’ve seen lately:
Notes from The Day the Earth Stood Still – seen under some delightfully bad projection (“It’s okay Bill, just make sure most of the image is actually on the screen!”). – The helicopters looked weird at all times, but I wonder why you’d assemble a team of the world’s finest scientists and then put them in the air at the expected blast zone. – There was an 800 number on the screen that I didn’t quite catch – The US Dept. of Defense is still using a “mainframe?” Really? Still? – obligatory christ pose – stolen clerks gag – running from the bugs at the end made no attempt to make sense – The big thing here was that 10-15 minutes in I was genuinely wondering when Will Smith was going to show up, and then the movie has his kid in it, talking about how his dad would be fighting the aliens, except that he’s dead. It seems that the entire movie was kind of an elaborate meta joke. – Keanu got to do his matrix birthing scene again, but I think Norm MacDonald would have been as good or better as Klaatu.
Punisher: War Zone – This was an absolute cartoon. Even the kills weren’t particularly interesting or exciting, might as well have been video game footage, except that they lose points for recreating a move from Boondock Saints of all things. Luckily, I mixed up the times on a trip theater hopping, so I walked out around the time the Punisher was punching his wife’s grave in favor of…
Bolt! In 3D! – I do like the 3D in a movie. This one was a bit too long and repetitive, I say. No Meet the Robinsons here. The show-in-the-show scenes were pretty great. Weird that they just lifted the goodfeathers wholesale though. Overall, I liked it, but I would have rather seen the movie that Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders was going to make.
The Visitor – This movie offers the message that Yes Man seems to offer, and I’m sure it does a better job of it. It could have ended about 20 minutes sooner with no distinguishable difference to the outcome.
Stuck – For an accomplished director and lead actress, this was surprisingly amateurish. Bleah.
The Mist – I expected to dislike this one. Heard bad things, and the opening was a little Happening-like. But then it was quite good. They just kept doing things I liked. Right down to the ending. Well done.
Ghost Town – First time I’ve seen Ricky Gervais not playing Ricky Gervais. Few directorial things I thought were neat, too. And featuring Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller’s pal Cameron) in a new spin on the role of Ghost Dad! And (highlight to read spoiler:) a lot of people getting hit by busses, which I always love to see in a movie.
So…5 for 8. That’s pretty good. According to IMDB, I’ve seen about 40 movies released in 2008, but I don’t know that I’ve seen enough that I liked to make a top 10 for the year. I guess I should actually see some of the movies topping everyone else’s lists so I can like ‘em too.
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12.18.08
Posted in Life at 11:00 pm by Rob Schultz
Everything you hear about that’s eh, about this large, [gesture], is said to be ‘the size of a deck of cards.’ Unless it’s really small, then it’s ‘as big as a pack of gum.’
But you look back a few years, and you’ll see the truth, which is that ‘the size of a deck of cards’ is a euphemism for ‘as big as a pack of cigarettes.’ I mean, you’ve seen cards, you know, but that’s not what they’re really thinking of when they say it.
Eventually, will things be ‘as big as an ipod?’ I bet they won’t, because you’d have to get into a chat about what kind. The one I got the first time my car got robbed is about as big as one of those flat packs of gum, like stride or 5. This new hard drive I picked up is as big as a moleskine notebook. And my old ipod, the one I bought? That seems huge now. It’s, like, the size of a deck of cards.
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12.17.08
Posted in Life at 2:33 pm by Rob Schultz
Sometimes it’s the little things the internets have to offer that make them all worthwhile. Eighteen years ago, when he was popular, I would have never dared to dream (for any number of reasons) that THIS message would one day arrive:
Hi, Rob Schultz.
Hammer (MCHammer) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Check out Hammer’s profile here:
http://twitter.com/MCHammer
Best,
Twitter
However, I definitely remember my dad having the mistaken impression that I was a MC Hammer fan. Maybe he knew something I didn’t, all along…that Hammer was actually a fan of ME!
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Posted in Life at 6:32 am by Rob Schultz
I’ve been playing a little bit of Type Racer lately. So far, I’m averaging 95 wpm over 150 races. Winning a race is a nice way to add a little sense of false accomplishment to your day. The other reason I like it is that it’s an oracle every now and then, giving you a paragraph to type that you need to read right now.
I got this one last week:
“Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner. Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.” -Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
The week before I got that, I did some recording of improvisers improvising, based on the Random Article button on wikipedia. The idea was to release a daily improv scene via podcast. The hope was to give a variety of improvisers that I know a chance to play and since by now I know a bunch of ‘em, it wouldn’t be too much an inconvenience for anyone.
The week before I set out on this quest, I contributed to the hastily thrown together idea of De-Gifting. I like the (jokey) concept, but certainly I didn’t or haven’t yet committed hard enough to really drive the site around the internets. It’ll come back around later, but it’s probably less interesting to me right now than Burritos Against Terror was (and it’s a shame that bit of performance art / political statementing / out and out hoaxery didn’t get more than 24 hours to be perpetrated…) because, future topic for discussion #1: I’m not sure if I have any beliefs at the moment.
So a couple weeks after getting the site online, I’m sitting around spending a lot of time on syncing audio tracks and wondering if I shouldn’t just cheat and cut up these scenes to be shorter. Or sharper. Or something. And along with getting the podcast thing going, I notice that the work vs. reward, and especially the opportunity costs, are not stacking up favorably.
What I learned is that this particular project is not as simple or as trivial as I had thought. There are some challenges and techniques specific to audio-only improv, and the more the cast rotates, the more cast members will meet these challenges the hard way. Without a practiced radio team, time is more a requirement than a luxury – we should be able to throw away scenes we’ve recorded if they’re not up to scratch. You look at your Whose Line is it Anyway?, synonymous with improv in the public consciousness, and they record at least five times as much material as they air in order to make sure the stuff that goes out is good enough to make you doubt it’s improvised.
Whose Line is short-form: they tell you what game they’re about to play, and then they play it. My would-be show had its sights set on long-form, which begs a single suggestion from the audience and then explores and plays with it for an arbitrary length of time. Different games and characters may come and go, the goal isn’t a laugh every 5 seconds, but over time the ideas that accumulate are often more satisfying. When played well, longform scenes can (should?) be as good as sketches. And a good sketch, like good standup, should not only explore an idea but do so immediately, not meander around the topic, circling like a dog preparing to nap.
A live audience will accept slower or weaker portions of an improvised show, because they can see it being created from nothing, and to be in the room when it happens gives an audience the not-entirely-inaccurate impression that they are a part of the creation taking place before them.
An audience that has been asked to take a moment to watch or listen to a prepared clip is not so forgiving. There is always the struggle to convince the audience that the clip is unscripted, maybe because the semiotics of TV and film tell us that nothing we’re shown is by chance. And from there the question becomes ‘if this might be, could be a scripted performance, why isn’t it better?’ Unless it is better, which only reinforces improv-doubt.
Topic for future discussion #2 is a theory of Trying that I’m stitching together. When I prepared a scene that I was in, and I was editing together the outro (all of the episodes would have the same introduction and ending, with the performers names cut into the closing segment), I found myself wondering if I couldn’t just leave the names off because the scene wasn’t that good. This is a problem.
There’s no point in releasing work done for free that I’m reluctant to put my name on, but it’s foolish to divert time and resources to create such a thing when there are other, better projects waiting in the wings. Time spent hitting a daily deadline would have been time not spent editing Amy’s Prank, or would continue to be time not spent on the forthcoming podcast (which is very real, and scripted, and scheduled to be at least 10 installments starting next month.)
This post is long and light on jokes, but there’s something ingrained in me that balks at quitting a thing just about before it’s even gotten started. In this case, it happens to be the right move, and now I can explain why. We recorded about a dozen scenes, and I’ll probably post some or all of them in the near future, though with less promotion and fanfare than they would have gotten as a de-gifting promotional tool.
I had planned to suggest that if comedy theory instead of actual comedy was a let-down for you, you check this out, but I’m pretty sure the sync manages to fail every which way, so you might want to try a different video clip.
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12.16.08
Posted in Life at 12:14 am by Rob Schultz
I made some small changes to this page recently. I noticed that some blogs I keep up on are little more than someone saying “here’s my favorite web page I looked at today.” To the extent that I do that, I mainly do it on my Google Reader shares. So even though it doesn’t repeat my comments, just the links, there’s now a space on this page that repeats the last few links I’ve shared.
Also, I’ve added a feed of what’s going on with GreenGlassDoor. Twitter is kind of fun in a not-THAT-much-fun kind of way, but I totally think Bill Corbett does it wrong, posting 6 messages at a time to get around the character limit.
Anyway, what all this means is that I have a new video out today, which I’ve written about in a blog post that I’ve shared in Reader, meaning that post is linked to in its own sidebar not once but twice since GGD also mentioned it.
So….I guess that’s what Web 2.0 is. Perhaps I should also compress the video into the right codecs to be streamed as a live mobisode as a supplement to my forthcoming podcast. That would be a great opportunity to synergize the brand while the iron is hot. This is the kind of social, long-tail, forward thinking that won me my recent Award For Excellence!
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12.15.08
Posted in Comedy Jokes, Life, Work at 5:43 am by Rob Schultz
It’s new video time! We spent around an hour shooting this last weekend, and I put it together this weekend. It’s about Amy, and the tricks she plays on her neighborhood.
It so happens that we have all the right props (literally, props) to be entered into the YouTube Project: Direct 2009 contest. I imagine that for any number of reasons, this isn’t quite the kind of video they’re looking for, but there’s something that seems very silly to me about a direct-to-youtube video with a credited Director of Photography and three Key Grips, so maybe it should be.
If it turns out that it is, then I assure you, you’ll hear about it when the voting starts. (Judges narrow down the contestants who are then voted on by the Internets) Until then, I recommend you watch it anywhere else.
- Vimeo – For best quality
- Funny or Die – if you like it, you can vote it ‘funny’ here.
- UCBComedy – Everyone in this has UCB ties! And sweatshirts!
- YouTube – Because I thought it’d be fun to enter a contest
It’s a little bit heartbreaking to spend time adjusting colors and finessing a video just to have the YouTube automatic video ruining system add its own ‘washed out’ color settings and a light blur over top of everything. It’s almost enough to understand why 1) most internet videos look terrible 2) people don’t bother with white balancing or microphones. I mean, macroblocking? Really? Even in ‘high-quality’ mode? It’s a series of stills, for pete’s sake. (EDIT: I’m told that there’s a longer wait for the site to process things into high-quality playback mode, and that it ought to look better sooner or later)
Anyway, I hope you like it, and that you get the film nerd joke in the middle. It was fun to do, and I’d shoot this style again sometime. Now if you’ll excuse me, I actually finished something, and a little bit of sunshine is in order. (I was going to go for an irony-free closing here, but I stumped the MTV site)
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12.13.08
Posted in Life at 1:09 am by Rob Schultz
A Quinnipiac University professor of journalism asked his class a question, like you do when you happen to be a teacher, and when one Michael Kataja answered correctly, he was rewarded with a book of travels. Specifically, Tim Brookes’ Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow, in which the author attempts to recreate the path he’d hitchhiked through the USA some 20 or 30 years previous.
The prize was probably awarded to Mike in 2002 or 2003. He never actually read the book, but he did give it to me instead of throwing it away. In the spirit of the thing, I slipped it under the back seat of my pal Kevin’s car on our way to a Bad Plus concert (standard ‘man, that guy is fast’ and ‘look! ET dolls!’ comments apply). I also left a note inside suggesting that future readers drop me a line when they leave it for someone else to read.
Now, at the end of 2008, I’m pleased to report a kind of modern day miracle. One of those fun little things that takes off and you read about and you tell your friends and everyone takes a moment to think of how neat that is and oh I should do something like that myself some time. Yes, lo these many months and years, I have heard stories and tales of the book’s travel. To be more specific in fact, I have heard from:
1 person. In 2006.
Even by that volume’s standard of spending a year with an owner before moving on, that’s slow. I wonder where it is today.
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12.12.08
Posted in Comedy Jokes at 2:15 am by Rob Schultz
Not to brag or anything, but this blog, website, and author have been graced with a Merlin Mann Award for Excellence in You! award as of December 2008. With a little luck, I’ll still be eligible for 2009 as well. It’s no Monty Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
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12.10.08
Posted in Movies at 11:35 pm by Rob Schultz
Alfred Hitchcock’s thing was planning. Scheming. Preparing. His job was to take a scenario, coax it through a writer into a script, and then figure out the geometry of the thing. Camera angles, lens lengths, the shapes and colors of the foreground and background. He took notes, he storyboarded, he imagined and decided and determined and produced. By the time the first frame was shot, he was essentially finished. He had produced a specific plan, and filming was just the tedious process of capturing all the little snips of colored thread so that they could be sewn into a suspenseful needlepoint later on.
He didn’t shoot coverage, he didn’t run a dozen cameras so he could make up his mind later, he didn’t waste film on anything; he just shot the plan. This way, if he was fired before the edit was done, the movie would still look like he planned, because there would be no alternate footage or angles to choose from. Actors – props that eat – were expected to know their roles, literally and figuratively, and do their best not to mess it up. (I don’t think Hitchcock would go in for the creepy Zemeckis-favored animation thing though, that’s giving whole staffs and departments worth of people the chance to screw up the performance.)
In theory, if you had all of Hitch’s notes and storyboards and perhaps, in the spirit of planning, you discussed his intentions with him, he wouldn’t even have to show up. Someone else could relay the same set of decisions, made in advance, follow the boards, shoot the plan.
So how did Gus Van Sant screw up Psycho? I’ll admit, I haven’t seen his remake since it was in theaters. It might be better than I remember it, what with all the laser pointers and people yelling, bur probably not by much. They not only had the original materials, they had the original film to look at! But maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe too much effort was spent on imitating the original cast instead of acting. Maybe it was mis-cast. Maybe part of the problem was that it was shot in color – Hitchcock certainly could have shot it in color, and had already done several color films; the black and white was a choice.
So….what? Imitation is flattering, but lousy art? There was more method to Hitchcock’s madness than met the eye? Does the meaning of the film change when the audience goes in knowing the surprises on which the original was hinged? Was the movie actually okay, just not able to stand its own weight, in the form of the original’s legacy and the criticism that comes with touching it?
On a somewhat related note, did anyone actually see that Twilight movie? There’s a mountain of press on the subject of how popular and oft-mentioned by the press it is, but I haven’t seen anyone discuss whether or not it’s any good. (although rotten tomatoes suggests it’s twice as good as Punisher: War Zone, or half as good as Bolt.)
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