FuzzyCo

When Paul Thomas called and asked me to be in a video for his band Lola Balatro's song Rockstar I knew that he was only asking because I have my own banana costume. I knew this because he said so. But once I was there, I think I added my own special touches to make the video, shall we say, Fuzzy-riffic. (Of course, I have no idea how many of my antics will actually make it into the video. They shot a lot of antics.)

The shoot was a lot of fun, not least because I knew just about everyone there. It's hard not to have fun hanging out with Ken and his butt.

Welcome to Blewtville test render from Blewt! Productions on Vimeo.

Erica and I went out on Saturday to do our small part for a video shoot that Steve had organized for a meeestery project. He's posted just the barest teaser for the project, and if you stare reeeally hard you might see us in there.

Lightning Bugs from Fuzzy Gerdes on Vimeo.

I'm a little shy about this, but here's a little song and animation that I made for Erica for our second wedding anniversary this week.

As soon as I was done helping Noah with Pollywog in a Bog, I turned my attention to a music video that I had actually agreed to do before Pollywog took over our lives. My friend Tim (who's the captain of the Austin Metblog) had been looking for someone to make an animated music video for one of his band's (The Bad Rackets) songs and I stuck my hand up. The song is called "Somebody Dropped the Baby" and it posits, more or less, that Dubya must have been dropped on his head as a baby -- how else could we be in such a mess?

The design brief was "a Flash video like a Monty Python animation". I actually ended up doing all of the animation in Final Cut Pro and Motion and I like to think I've come up with an animation style that's inspired by Terry Gilliam while still being my own brand of crudeness. The baby body was provided by some friends of mine who I'll leave anonymous, in case they don't want it public, but I owe them a ton of thanks. All the president heads and so on are from government photos which are, by law, free of copyright. Hooray!

You can watch the video above, or you can go to YouTube and then click on "watch in high quality" (directly underneath the Views count) to more clearly see my crude animation.

This week's QuickTime Guide -- available both as a webpage at Apple and inside the QuickTime Player itself (if you open the application without choosing a movie) -- features Barenaked Ladies' Snacktime. If you click on the album picture, it takes you to a high-quality Quicktime version of the Pollywog in a Bog video, where you can really see all the detail we shot in HD.

So a couple of months ago Noah IMed me that he was sending the Barenaked Ladies a proposal to make a video for a song on their new children's album, Snacktime. "Awesome," I said, "Go for it. Dream big*. Can't hurt to ask. Just don't, you know, get your heart too set on it because... what? They said yes? Yay!"

The next month was pretty frantic for Noah, building a whole host of puppets (with the aid of his mom, Sue Ginex), building props (with the aid of his dad, Joe Ginex), and organizing the shoot (with the aid of J.P. Riley). A week before the shoot BNL was doing an in-store at a Borders out in Oak Brook and we got to go out and show them the in-progress puppets. It was invigorating to see how excited the band was by their puppets. They had exactly one suggestion for making the puppets better (different glasses for the Tyler otter) so we knew that we were on the right track.

The day of the shoot was... long. Very long. 22 hours long. We had a nice photo studio to shoot in; we had a great group of puppeteers from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Phoenix; we had an incredible for-reals film crew assembled by J.P. -- and we had them all for one day. So... we shot and shot and shot. (Well, they shot and shot and shot. Mostly, I made sure people had food. Yep -- Team Gerdes was craft services.)

A lot of the mystique of movies is focussed on the shoot. And obviously, it's very important to actually get the images on video. But even at 22 hours, the shoot was a definite minority of the time involved in making this video. After that day we took a few days off and then launched into a solid month of editing. Noah did the majority of the work, but I did some bits as well. For example, when all the pollywogs sing "Stump, stump", I animated all their tails by hand, frame-by-frame. That's right -- I'm that guy.

Noah and I also did a day of b-unit shooting: heading down to North Pond to get some actual nature stills and footage to layer into the video. We had been talking about trying to get out to a Forest Preserve when I remembered that there's a great nature preserve nestled right into the city. We had to get some careful angles on some of the shots to avoid getting buildings in the background, but I was really pleased with the way it all came out.

I think the hardest part of the whole thing was not talking about this huge project for two months. I wasn't under NDA or anything, but I'm kinda leery about talking about projects in progress, especially when it's not really my project. And now that I can talk about it, I can't remember half of the interesting things that happened along the way. Maybe next time (next time we're working on a video for international rock stars!) I'll secret-blog the whole thing and just make them public when it's all over.

So, anyway, the video is out! You can watch it at Yahoo! Kids (where it came out a week before anywhere else) or watch the short or extended version on YouTube. The short version just has a 28-second shorter intro, so unless you're really pressed for time I'd suggest the extended version.

Oh, and since I know there's been some confusion on this score, I'll lay it:
Tyler - otter
Steve - owl
Jim - fox
Andy - a shorter fox
Ed - flying squirrel
Kevin - possum

* As Jason Sudeikis says that Snoop Dogg said, "Dream big. You may never wake up."

Don Hall has been posting videos for the last week of the cast of Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue trying to explain the layered and complex DADA play. But today he finally posted one that just makes plain sense.

You may remember Ken's magic trick from the pilot -- here's another goof getting goofed by the exact same trick. Goof!

I have much more to say about this, since it took over our lives for a month or so, but here's the Barenaked Ladies video that Noah made (and Team Gerdes helped).

Seriously, if you take a single candy out of a pack of Mentos, is that a Mento or a Mentos?

(Thanks to Phil of Ruth Buzzy - recording as Dogrocket - for the soundtrack.)

Oh, what hilarity is the Goof Gang up to this Monday?

The Silly Funny Goof Gang is back! Erica and I edited some old footage the Gang shot last summer and we'll be releasing one a week for the next 7 weeks.

I don't know if you can tell in this photo, but I've just been hair and make-uped, for my first commercial shoot. I am now a paid commercial actor. That's right, jerks*.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Ken answered a Craigslist ad about a casting. In conversation with the casting agent, she asked if he had other comedy friends who might like to try out -- he said sure and invited our comedy writing group over to his house that Saturday afternoon. We all trooped over (on the rather confusing telephone-tag invite that "this casting agent wants to film some comedians who use YouTube") and were happy to discover that it was a casting for a national commercial for a name-brand technology company**.

With any sort of audition, I do my best to be grateful for the opportunity and then put it out of mind. So it was a surprise when a couple days later I got a call from the casting agent with some questions about my schedule. Yes, I'm going out of town on the 16th. No, I can't reschedule this trip, even for paid work. OK, thanks.

So then it was even more of a surprise when I got another call a few days later scheduling me for a wardrobe 'fitting'*** and a meeting with the director. We did have to cut our trip to the Dells just a hair short (we had breakfast on the road on Sunday instead of eating somewhere in the Dells), but Erica agreed that it was worth it.

The fitting went fine -- they asked me to wear the same shirt I'd been wearing in the casting (I have a small suspicion that the cleverness of the shirt might be why I was cast at all). And the director explained my part of the commercial. As far as I understand, the commercial is going to be about how pervasive the company's communications products are in people's lives. I was going to be a 'hardcore gamer', playing online with my friends. To get 'honest reactions' from me, they wanted me to bring my own gaming PC (which, for me, happens to be a MacBook Pro booted into Windows using BootCamp).

So, Wednesday morning Erica dropped me off at the shoot in Uptown. The commercial is filming all over town with dozens of actors, but that day's shoot had taken over an apartment building in Uptown. (I chatted with one of the house's owners -- twin sisters had married brothers and the two couples and their kids all live in the 6-flat as a single house.) There were two trailers and several trucks parked in front of the building, craft services tables, and so on. It was a for-reals production!

When you're just 'talent', it's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. I was done with hair and makeup by 8:45 and then waited in one of the trailers until 10:45 or so, twittering and playing Zelda on my DS. When I finally went inside, it was fairly whirlwind getting my laptop setup with a gaff-tape-brand monitor and keyboard and then I started playing Unreal Tournament. I had been planning to do some prep for the shoot, but I'd been having issues with my Windows install the night before, so it was a fresh install of UT. I got started playing as soon as I could to get through the early levels and get to something actually challenging, to give some good reactions. (I mean, I can act -- I'm an actor. But since I had the game in front of me, it seemed easier to give honest reactions actually facing a tough battle instead of just yelling "Oh yeah, take that" while shooting at a wall or something.)

And then all of a sudden they were filming. We got a couple of takes of me being excited ("Take that! Oh no!"). Then the director wanted to get some over-the-shoulder shots, which of course had to be of an approved game. There was a tech consultant on hand who had another computer set up with the approved games on it. Except that they weren't. So there was some hurried installations and then some really exciting footage of me playing the first 5 tutorial minutes of a game ("Here's how you use your gun, soldier.") (I suspect that footage won't be that usable.) A couple of shots over-the-shoulder with the monitor turned off so they can put in anything they want, digitally, and then they were done. And the cameras were off to another part of the house and I tore down my system and was officially 'released'.

I'm guessing from the number of people they were filming that I'll be a frame or two in the final product, but we'll see in a couple months.

* Sorry, none of you are jerks.
** I'm not under an NDA or anything, but I'm always superstitious about saying anything definite in public until it's all done.
*** In my own clothes. Is that normal?

Erica had the idea and directed, and I shot and edited this little teaser for Season 3 of Impress These Apes.

(Thanks are due to Kevin MacLeod, supplier of fine royalty-free music.)

Erica and I spent our Sunday acting in a short film written by our friend Matt Larsen. Should this be our Christmas card this year? More photos from behind the scenes.

It's nearly Halloween and so for a spooooky Wednesday afternoon I'll repost this zombie movie we made last year for the Fast Forward Film Festival. Boo.

So, I'm shooting a music video for Ruth Buzzy (remember them from our wedding?) this weekend and we need a small crowd to be "the people in the bar" and I'd love for you, FuzzyCo reader and friend, to be one of those people.

The shoot is Sunday, September 30 at the Town Hall Pub (3340 N Halsted, Chicago). I'll be shooting crowd scenes from 3-6, so that's when I could really use you.

I'm going for something of a "timeless" feel for the crowd, so please wear clothes that aren't very modern or period-specific.

There are spots for a couple of "featured players" who will interact with the main character of the video. In usual FuzzyCo practice, I won't be casting those parts ahead of time, but simply grabbing people as needed.

If you can come, please shoot me an email so I have an idea of about how many people we're going to have.

This week was a little different than the other weeks of Impress These Apes were (and are going to be) because by the time we got to the theater we were done. During last week's show we were randomly assigned a song and we had to shoot a music video for the song and bring it on DVD to the show. So it was very relaxed in the green room before the show. No last minute going over of lines or checking props -- all we had to do was sit back and watch.

I had the song Dirt Bike by They Might Be Giants. It was pretty much perfect for me -- in contrast to the more rock-out numbers most people got, it was an odd, dreamy little number whose lyrics don't really make sense. But one listen and I started to get a picture in my head of what it needed to look like.

I'm proud to note that this was a one-man production. I filmed, animated, and edited the whole thing myself (except for the footage at the end, which is from four different films at the Prelinger archive). Some of my friends offered to help, but I politely (I hope) turned them down. I do need to thank Jacque who made the finger-puppet of Jose. And the Knights for giving us the weird coconut-tiki-pirate-ukelele guy.

So, anyway, the judges liked it -- it got 39 out of 40 points (the extra 10 possible points this week were from the guest human judge - Miss Mia of Chic-a-go-go). I actually got a little light-headed when I got the 3rd "10". (And as impressive as that might be, I was out-scored by Brady, who got a perfect 40.)

For next week we have to make a puppet and then perform a 4 minute stand-up routine with it. S'awright.

All of the videos:
Amanda: Outkast - Hey Ya
Brady: Weezer - My Name is Jonas
Erin: Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like a Woman!
Fuzzy: They Might Be Giants - Dirt Bike
Jarrad: Skid Row - Youth Gone Wild
Jenny: Stray Cats - Rock This Town Tonight
Kristen: Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK
Margaret: Amy Grant - Every Heartbeat

Here's something I've been working on: Silly Funny Goof Gang is a new Blewt project and I've been filming and editing these 'goofs'. Erica choreographed the title sequence, so there's some bonus Team Gerdes content for ya. We're calling this the 'pilot episode' and I think Steve will be entering it into a contest. But here it is already for your viewing pleasure.

I seem to have left the cable to connect my camera at the theater, so you'll have to wait to see my awesome Dr. Baron Ludwig Von Evilschlager costume. But I got a spit on a spit-light night, and the audience seemed to like the Doctor, so I'm riding pretty high. As is likely to happen at festivals, we followed up the show with lots of hanging out and we're just getting back to the hotel room now. Time to sleep up for tomorrow's show.

I'm not sure I've heard anyone complain about being up on a weekday at 8 am as much as Jin.

This morning Shaun and Jin came over at, yes, 8 am to make a short video. You see (deep breath, because I'm not sure there is a good explanation for this) on Tuesday Ze Frank used an intro that had been submitted by the MSU improv group Lab Rats. He issued them an assignment to film some short form improv with what we used to call a "tower of suggestions" -- "OK, so you're in Disneyworld and you're scouting for a major league pitcher, in the style of a soap opera, and one of you has bad breath." Shaun decided that we should take those suggestions and turn in a video, too.

So we stood on my back porch in the early morning cold and... did not improvise very well.

And then I uploaded the video in a format that Ze Frank's Gallery doesn't understand (MP4! It's very standard!) and so no one could watch our video unless they downloaded it and changed the extension from _mp4 to .mp4. Which is very unlikely.

Anyway, the Lab Rats did their video, too.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get this video online, but here it is:

Forgotten Heroes: McGuillicutty II is nominally a sequel to Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action, though the name is spelled differently (oops) and the only character who has returned is the villain Elvis (Shaun Himmerick) who seemed to be dead at the end of Ted. Like Ted, Ted 2 is an entire action movie compressed into a few minutes, though this time instead of taking place within a single apartment building, the action is spread over the city of Chicago. We also re-used our notion of having one actor play "everyone else" with Sean Cusick taking on multiple roles. Brian Goodman rounds out the cast as our hero, Joe McGuillicutty.

Like many of our short films, this one was filmed for the Fast Forward Film Festival.

Bagel and Croissant are spreading lies like they were cream cheese. It's time to spread a little truth:

Sean and Atom were smart to schedule their horror-themed edition of the Fast Forward Film Fest for the weekend after Halloween -- what costumes and supplies were left at Walgreen's were all 75% off. We bought all the fake blood they had.

But, backing up half a step, the really crazy thing was that when we got to Atomix Coffee to pick up the topic suggestion for our film, we discovered that Shaun and I need to communicate a little better -- we had both signed up for a slot for FuzzyCo. I like to think of mistakes as opportunities, so I said we'd do two movies.

We got, then, two topics: a "Zombie" movie with the sub-topic "no public restrooms" and a "Monster" movie with the sub-topic "fired from a part-time job". Erica pretty instantly had an idea for the Monster movie, and I had a simple idea for the Zombie movie. We went back to Shaun's place to meet up with the rest of the crew: Shaun, Kristen, Jin, and Don Hall. We brain-stormed around our ideas for the zombie movie for a while. That is, for a little bit too long. But once we got in gear, everyone suited up as zombies really quickly and we hit the streets to film. I all the shots pretty well visualized in my head (which is so nice when that happens), so it was just a matter of capturing them all on video.

We finished filming that first film at around midnight and sent everyone but Jin home. Erica and I dragged Jin over to the Old St. Andrew's Inn and then back to our place to film the shots that had both of us in them. Then we let him go, too, and stayed up until 2 am or so filming each other.

In the morning, editing went really fast. Erica did sound effect research on her computer while I zoomed through the video on mine. We were done with both movies by 2 pm and when we got over to Atomix to drop the movies off, we were the second group to turn in our films. Yay us!

The screening was at Dessa Kirk's studio, which was pretty awesome. I've been a fan of Dessa's work since I encountered some of her pieces in Grant Park last year, so it was cool to be in the space where she creates those things. And she turned out to cool, too, which is always a bonus -- I can separate the artist from the work, but it's nice when you don't have to.

And then, the screening. Both of our films were well received. (And it made me feel a little smug when the second FuzzyCo logo came up and someone in front of us said, "two films in one night? That's not possible.") And then the judging and...

Zombies! took the second prize! $80, a pound of coffee, and an Atomix travel mug. And we're award-winning filmmakers (again)!

And, finally, here they both are:

Zombies!

Maneater

For, like, 5 frames. I recorded an intro for his show out in front of
"Z" Frank Chevrolet and he used a tiny clip at the start of today's show.

Cooking with Tou Khen, Ethnic Reporter. Written by and starring Jin Kim. Off-camera voice by Kristen Freilich, camera by Shaun Himmerick, and edited by Fuzzy Gerdes.

I'm trying out YouTube for hosting these little videos. Is this easier or harder for y'all than when I host the videos myself? To my eye, the quality is lower, but do you care?

Anyway, this is Thor Skørvald, the producer of The Local News, with a Public Service Announcement.

I love having friends who ask, "are you busy Saturday morning? Can you come shoot a video for us?" and then have the edited video done by Saturday afternoon. Presenting, The Clapkees!, a Blewt! production (with camera work by yours truly):

Steve has set up a Blewt 'channel' on You Tube and he's filling it up with episodes of Talkin' Funny (Erica and my appearance is here) and with the appearance, finally, of Silly Horse Whisperer.

SHW completes the Silly Triology. Each of the videos consists of 30 people doing something for two minutes in front of a green screen. Steve added crazy backgrounds and royalty-free music to each and the result was an hour of... comedy? bewilderment? something. (I was in Silly Faces but missed the taping of Silly Dances.) The only problem with the You Tube videos is that they're divided into the 2 minute segments, which means that you lose the "what?! there's more?!" quality of watching the DVDs. But that said, here's Erica:

And Cowboy Fuzzy:

And who's hidden under that handsome gorilla mask?

Trip Odom 7.15 m
Moving Avg 13.7 m/h
Time-Moving 31:26

Not bad.

We've dipped under 60 days on the wedding counter, and so, vanity, vanity, I'm trying to get in shape so I'm not all puffy and blobby for the wedding photos. The wedding is one day, but the wedding photo is going to be up at our parents' houses for-ever. Hence the yoga class last night, and I'm trying to ride my bike to work more. And I love riding my bike anyway, and I always want to be riding to work. My rule is that if it's over 50° and not raining and I don't have anything really heavy to carry to work, then I ride my bike. Except I break that rule all the time. Today was the fourth time I've ridden to work this year. Pathetic.

But hey, I got my new Tony Hawk HelmetCam (why? why not!) and so I shot my whole trip into work this morning. And then sped it up to make it one minute long. And added a delightful midi sound track of the song that you are required to add to sped-up video (it's a law). The camera's not really that bad, but somewhere in the compression to make it not a 26 meg download, the whole thing acquired this sort of soft-filter, dream-like quality. Which I don't think is actually that bad for this sort of video, so I'm not going to fix it. Anyhoo, Fuzzy's Commute (2.6 Meg Quicktime movie).

In the Challenge, you get 14 hours to write, 24 to shoot, and then 34 to edit. And, um, just between you and me, I didn't need all that time.

A number of people on the team offered to help me edit, but none of them edit, so in the absence of just trading-off the editing suite, there's not much someone else can do. I dove in alone and had a finished video by 5 pm on Sunday night. I went back to it about an hour before it was due on Monday and tweaked a few bits of sound, re-exported it and handed it in. That was the trickiest part -- the films were due at 400 E Randolph, on Upper Randolph and I kept getting turned around trying to get there. And leaving, I discovered that over by the lake there's Way-Totally-Lower Wacker -- a Wacker Place under Lower Wacker Drive. And you can't get anywhere from Wacker Place. I think I'm still there, driving around and around.

So now, we wait. I'm not sure all the whys, but after all that hurry-hurry, the showing is not until Sunday, July 2 at the Lakeshore Theater. The showing will be judged by Image Union and winners will be shown on that program.

Saturday was Production Day for the Challenge -- we got up Saturday morning and emailed off our script and received a different one. (That's an innovation for the Challenge -- previously, there was one big meetup each day of the Challenge. Now, each team is responsible for doing the hand-off to the next team however they want, which for the scripts meant email.)

The script we received was titled "Weddings are Cool" and was basically a single scene of things going horribly wrong during the preparation for a wedding.

We've done enough of these things now that it all seemed pretty standard -- Shaun and I read through the script separately and then had a quick phone conference. Shaun called everyone to coordinate the costume pieces they needed to bring and then he and Kristen emptied out their spare bedroom to turn it into our set. Meanwhile, I made a prop run, heading down to Strange Cargo to get a titular shirt made for Shaun and a tuxedo t-shirt for me (I want to get one of these full-length screen-printed ones, but on short notice Strange Cargo does an iron-on that they can go on any shirt. Is it weird that I kinda want one on the back of a work shirt?) and then over to CVS for a disposable video camera. The script called for the videographer character (me) to be using a "disposable video camera like from CVS". I guess we could have used any of my other crappy video cameras, but I thought if it was available, we might as well be faithful to the script-writer's vision. The camera was rather pricey for a one-use camera with 20 minutes of storage ($30), but fortunately it can be hacked for re-use.

We all got together at noon and applied hideous amounts of make-up to Andrea. With only one location, there wasn't much need to build a complicated shooting-list, so we just started stepping through the script getting closeups and wide-shots of each line. It took longer than I thought it would, but not as long as Shaun thought it might, and we were done by 4:30 -- plenty of time for Andrea and Erica to make it to their KOKO show at the Playground.

FuzzyCo is doing the Challenge again this year, and I just got home from writing our script. The Challenge is the oddest of the fast-filmmaking contests we enter -- over the course of this long weekend we'll make a third each of three movies. The script we wrote tonight will passed off to another team tomorrow morning, and we'll get a script that was written for our team's actors. And then Sunday morning we'll hand off the footage we've shot to yet another team to edit, and receive footage that we'll edit.

The past two times we've done the Challenge, I was exempt from doing the writing portion since I was going to be doing the editing segment all by myself. This year, though, we had a couple last minute back-outs and the writing team was down to just Shaun. So I said I'd help him. Thinking I was excused, I had already planned on going to see X-Men 3 tonight. Driving from picking up the suggestions we needed to base our script around (genre: sci-fi comedy, target audience: desparate housewives) to the movie, I got a flash of inspiration and so I had a couple of phone-conferences with Shaun to get him started working on a script based on my brilliant ideas. When I finally met up with him (awesome movie, by the way), he had been unclear enough about my ideas that he had decided to just wait for me. Well, heck, it's my blog so let's just say that I wrote the whole thing while Shaun played Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and failed, over and over, to get past Moloch.

Oh, here's a weird thing... the actors we were (I was) writing our script for: we know them all. Megan Grano, Allison Bills, Bumper Carroll, and Pat McKenna. All four great improvisors, so we thought for a minute of just handing them a script that said "say funny things here".

OK, I'd better get to bed, so I can wake up in time to do the hand off in the morning and start filiming.

When I started my little vodcast (Video-pODCAST) back in November, I thought I'd be posting a short film a week, since I planned to just start by working my way through the FuzzyCo back catalog. Well, it's May and this is the fourth film I've posted. Oh well.

But to get things started back up, here's FuzzyCo's hit -- Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action.

We filmed Ted back in January 2003 for the Fast Forward Film Festival. You can read the entire story of making the movie here. Since that time, Ted has been selected by the producers of the Fast Forward for their Producers' Choice DVD, won an award at the Chicago Really Short Film Festival, been shown on WTTW's Image Union and screened at the Music Box Theatre as part of Image Union's Short Film Showcase, and was a semi-finalist in the Second City Shortcuts Film Festival.

Anyway, here's Ted ...

Click to play 10 MB Quicktime movie - requires Quicktime 7. (You can also right-click here to download the movie.)

Vodcast XML file (for your newsreader or aggregator) or subscribe with iTunes.

Here's It Had To Be Me, the Vidiocy-winning video from Phillip Mottaz that I'm not in:

That movie Phillip Mottaz made that I'm not in? He won. So I'm not saying that your films will win awards if you cast me but then edit out my footage, but it's worth considering, isn't it?

(And Cesar Jaime borrowed my camera and he came in fourth. My perhiperal involvment in your project is just good luck, people.)

Phillip Mottaz's latest Vidiocy project, It Had To Be Me, has made the semi-finals of that contest, which means that it will be shown this Wednesday night at 8 pm at the IO Theater and is eligible to win fabulous prizes.

I filmed a short scene for that movie a couple of weeks ago. I drug myself out of the house, dog-sick, I might add. But my scene didn't make the final cut of the movie. I'm sad, but I'm happy, too, because I've seen plenty of Vidiocy entries that treated that contest's 10-minute limit as a challenge to fill the time. I'm glad that if the scene just didn't fit that Phillip took the needs of the whole piece into account and chopped it.

(Or maybe I was just terrible.)

Your FuzzyCo weekend:

The FuzzyCo short film Dog will be screened, along with other "Best of Split Pillow" selections, at the Around the Coyote Arts Festival at Rodan (1530 N Milwaukee) at 6pm on Friday, February 10, 2006 and Sunday, February 12, 2006.

(I think I've remarked before that for a producer of mostly live theater, films are this odd thing that they're still there months or years later, unlike a stage show. And they can go places without you. Dog was selected as a Best Of for this festival without me having to lift a finger. (Jason of Split Pillow is, I'm sure, working like a dog*. Which is one of the reasons he's great.))

Friday night at 11 pm FuzzyCo and Lavender Cabaret present SINema at the Improv Kitchen. People are making noises about extended runs already (the show has sold out both weeks, so reservations are recommended), but we're still only contracted through the end of February so I'm going to say Only Three Weeks Left!

Saturday night at 10:30 pm at the Playground it's your favorite crazy live game show, Don't Spit the Water. This week Erica will be performing as Cutie Bumblesnatch and I'll be filling in for Timekeeper Willis. As Clockwatcher Fuzzy or something.

* No pun intended.

Jason Stephens of Split Pillow writes:

The Around the Coyote Arts Festival, one of Chicago's biggest festivals, is having their winter show in Bucktown Feb. 10-12. As part of the festival, they screen short films at Rodan (1530 N Milwaukee) at 6pm on both Friday the 10th and Sunday the 12th. This year, the festival asked to screen exclusively "The Best of Split Pillow." A movie you were involved with has been selected by the Festival selection committee (we gave them every short film Split Pillow had ever had a hand in producing and they made the decisions). Congratulations.

The FuzzyCo film being shown is Dog. It was filmed for Split Pillow's Challenge, so over Memorial Day weekend 2004 we filmed a script written by another team (Jamie Pilarski & Lauren Austin) and we handed off the footage to yet another team to edit (Jennifer M. Fah). The FuzzyCo team included Shaun, me, Sarah Pappalardo, Andrea Swanson, Clifton Highfield, Jin Kim, and Ryan Stone.

I live-blogged our efforts, so take a little trip down memory lane with me:

Challenge - first night & day
Challenge: 1st Location
Challenge: 1/3 done
Challenge: 2nd location
Challenge: Editor Friendly
Challenge: 2/3 done filming
Challenge: Exteriors
Challenge: 99% done
Challenge: 100% done (filming, anyway)

Click to play 14 MB Quicktime movie - requires Quicktime 7. (You can also right-click here to download the movie.)

Whoo-oo, I've posted the second short film, so now it's really a series. Very occasional, but a series none-the-less. (And if you have already subscribed to the FuzzyCo Shorts vodcast (or via iTunes) you would have gotten this short last night.)

Candyland is a short we made for the Vidiocy short film festival/contest back in July 2004. We were given a single word suggestion ("Candyland") and had 21 days (or so) to make a film under 10 minutes long. We made a two-minute film that's a sort of a parody of Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece The Seventh Seal, only with (and I'm giving away the only joke here) the game Candyland instead of chess. (Remember in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when they play all those games against that bald Death guy? Same thing, only Shaun wouldn't shave his head.) But then we added onto that 2 minute film another 2 minutes of "alternate endings", and then another 2 minutes of out-takes. The interstitial screens are supposed to be like you're watching the special features on a DVD. Does that come across?

The Vidiocy fest pre-selects 8 films out of the 50 or so that are made to be screened for the judges and actually be in the running to win their prizes and Candyland made that cut, but didn't get any farther in the judging. C'est la vie.

If you'd like to go back and read what I wrote about the making and showing of the film in July 2004, it's here: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4.

Ben Taylor home-studioing his little heart out creating the soundtrack for First Kiss.

Click above to play First Kiss, the movie we made for the Fast Forward last weekend (5MB Quicktime movie, requires Quicktime 7) (you can also right-click here to download the movie.)

This is also the first movie in my new vodcast -- occasional FuzzyCo short films delivered straight to your favorite newsreader or iTunes. I'll be working through our FuzzyCo back catalog -- I'm hoping to post a movie a week -- and as we film new shorts they'll show up on the vodcast also.

Vodcast XML file (for your newsreader or aggregator) or subscribe with iTunes. (Hmmm... looks like I'll have to add a link for iTunes later...)

I'm burning the DVD right now to go turn in -- this may be the earliest I've finished one of these. And it's been an easy process.

Last night Erica and I had a lovely evening shopping at Rotofugi and having a bite to eat at Cleo's and then picked up our topic ("First Kiss") and Dan Hendricks' as well (his Fast Forward plan involved drinking to celebrate his birthday and then filming under the influence). We met up with Dan and his friends and Shaun at Hopleaf, and then Shaun, Erica and I brainstormed as we walked back home. Jin and Kristen came over, we were done filming by midnight or so, so Erica and I went home and watched this week's America's Next Top Model. What a weird judging...

So this morning I got up later than I wanted to (10 AMish) but I had a first edit done by noon, took that over to Ben Taylor's house where he composed and recorded an original score, came back to add the music into the mix, final tweaks, and the DVDs (gotta have a backup) are done now and so I'm off to turn in our movie.

Come see our short (and 24 others) at Open End Gallery (2000 W Fulton) tonight. (Or, you know, I'll probably have it up on the web on Monday or so).

Noah asks, "Why were you by the Division Blue Line?"

A couple of months ago, Ben Taylor introduced me to Seth Boustead, the executive director of Accessible Contemporary Music. Seth was putting together a concert of silent movies with new scores written by ACM members and he was looking for shorts for the project. It was mentioned that some of the musicians might be improvising their scores, so I suggested that it might be cool if I improvised some video as well, shooting just before the showing. I hit on the idea of making a sort of portrait of the Milwaukee, Division, Ashland intersection, where the Chopin Theatre is located. I think Seth was a little skeptical, until he came and saw the Neutrino Project and saw that we really could shoot quality video very quickly.

So, on Thursday night, Erica and I got off the train at the Division Blue Line stop and starting exploring and shooting. All the edits were done in-camera, and about an hour later we had a 4 and a half minute silent short and we headed over to the Chopin.

I was introduced to Jason and Ryan who are We Can and We Must and gave them a quick overview of the short. There wasn't any time to show them the short before the show started, so they just, you know, improvised.

Here's the short again, now that I know how to make a poster frame. It's a 11 meg Quicktime movie that (probably) requires Quicktime 7. (You can also right-click here to download the movie.)

FuzzyCo's award-winning short film Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action will be shown at the Music Box Theatre (3733 N Southport Ave) at midnight on November 4 and 5 as part of Image Union's Short Film Showcase.

I'm heading OUT the door to go to NYC with Don't Spit the Water, so if this doesn't work, I can't fix it.

But this should be the movie we made last night, scored improvisationally by We Can & We Must

Click here to view the movie (or right-click to save it to your computer).

Oh, and you probably need Quicktime 7.

It's a week chock-full of Fuzzy, but in unusual ways...

Tonight (Tuesday, 10/11) I'm going to be on Talkin' Funny on Chicago Cable Access, CAN-21 at 7:30 pm. Talkin' Funny is hosted by Don't Spit the Water's Sasha and the Noob (in character). I'll be talking about producing non-mainstream improv shows like the Neutrino Project or Cinema 2.0 and the show takes audience calls (though, hopefully not as many as they took last week when Don Hall was on) so if you have a question, call on in.

Wednesday night (10/12), I'll be shooting a short movie around the intersection of Division, Milwaukee, and Ashland (doing Neutrino Project-style in-camera editing) and then taking it inside the Chopin Theatre (1543 W. Division) where it will be shown and improvisationally scored as part of Accessible Contemporary Music's Sound of Silent Film. I'm a little nervous because I've stuck to my improv guns and resisted every opportunity to prepare material ahead of time. Erica and I will be showing up at the Division Blue Line stop at 6:30 with a camera and a blank miniDV tape and minds open to the possibilities of the neighborhood. Eek.

Friday night (10/14) Don't Spit the Water will be performing in New York at the UCB Theatre (307 W 26th) at 8 pm. Erica (as Cutie Bumblesnatch) is one of the featured comedians. I'm tagging along to help out with gear and video cameras and such. And if you see someone in a gorilla costume...

Saturday night (10/15) we'll be back in Chicago to see Mike Doughty and his band at Park West. You'll be able to recognize me -- I'll be the one in the audience.

That $10 tux is serving me well. Last week I got an email from Phillip Mottaz asking me to come be an extra in a wedding scene. He and Chris Vander Wal were making a Vidiocy entry (and I had blown off being an extra in a court room scene the weekend before). I emailed him that I had a tux and asked if that would be too dressy to be an attendee at the wedding. "A tux? You're the groom!" he replied.

So Saturday I stood around a gazebo in a park at Western and Montrose and got 'married' to Phillip's wife, Rachel, who had pulled her actual wedding dress out of storage. Actually, all we did was stand around and do the best man's toast over and over. We nearly ran out of sparkling grape juice.

The good news is that the film, Long After, is one of 8 semi-finalists (out of 31) for Vidiocy 9. The 8 films will be shown, judged by judges, and then the finalists will be voted on by the audience, this Wednesday (September 28) at 8 pm. If you happen to be at the showing, maybe the splendor of my tuxedo will hypnotize you into voting for Long After?