by Nathan Stout
During our Thursday weekly meeting, Chris and I wrapped up shooting Episode 1 of Season 3. The finishing of this episode (as well as editing and posting) was a part of our 10 week goals this time around. The end of the 10 weeks is Sunday so we needed to get things wrapped up.
Chris showed up at my house early, so when I got home from work he was already there. We quickly got to work (after a little dinner, clothes washing, and anime).
We had basically shot everything we needed in just a few short weeks, and then things got complex with our schedules (Chris got a job and I was trying to sell my house). We missed a couple of Thursday meetings, but we were still well ahead of our episode 1 shooting schedule. You can read about the first three quarters of our episode 1 shooting here and the longer detailed bit here.
We started last night with the finish of the Stout Man scene. Chris and I added a bunch of stuff to the scene and began it with the two characters getting out of the car (as opposed to the script version which we already at the person’s front door). Apparently the characters had gotten lost and wound up in Fort Wayne instead of Fort Worth. Stout Man is not concerned with these trivial sort of things… ‘there’s justice to be served!’
I got this idea that Stout Man was full of energy which would give us permission to use one of my favorite techniques; overcranking. Basically Chris would walk very slowly across the yard toward the house and I would sort of run circles around him. Once I edited the footage, I would speed it up to the point where Chris’ slow walk would be of normal speed, and Stout Man would be moving very fast (ala Benny Hill).
I had planned to dress in drag and be the person that answers the door to Chris and Stout Man. We would simply shoot my Stout Man scenes first and the woman’s scenes after. We were running out of light and Chris (for some reason) didn’t want to do the whole drag thing. We just pretended to talk to some woman at the door (in which I would later add my wife’s voice) and the two would walk into the house and finish the scene. The anime we watched earlier gave Chris an idea that he would not let go of. He saw this scene where the main character kicked a globe at a retreating villain. The globe struck the character and knocked him down. Chris was set on doing this to Stout Man. I was fine with it since I wanted Chris to have complete say over what’s in season 3. I just wanted him to be careful with my globe. We shot the scene where Chris takes the globe and ‘kicks’ it. We then faked it flying through the air, hitting Stout Man, and knocking him out. Much to my surprise the globe is still intact.
After that I did dress in drag (shaving off my goatee) and we set up for a scene in the Fort Worth Public Access offices. The scene lampoons Fort Worth Public Access since they show mostly religious programming. I have done this sort of fun-poking before. In the scene, we also make reference to the Fox show that swaps the moms, and the one mom is a religious nut bag.
After that was the final scene to shoot (and the most difficult). We set up the green screen and I did the Greenly Meadows reads the news segment. The script wasn’t all that hard, but for some reason when I have a longish (and sometimes not longish) speech to make I JUST CAN’T DO IT! We began the scene, and I must have messed up the line for fifteen minutes. I got a shot I was fairly happy with and was going to call it a night. hen Chris took the script from me (which I was holding as the newscaster) and told me to try one final time. That final take was perfect.
When we wrapped I took the camera and encoded the footage (my most hated step in the whole process). After getting all the footage, I got my wife to do some audio bits and called it a night.
Now all that is left to do is about 30% of the episode’s editing. Once that is done, I can post it, and we are good to go with that goal! I am hoping I can finish everything this weekend. I really want to try. Finishing a 10 week goal on time is a great feeling.