Boom Chicago - Comedy Shorts from Amsterdam

...not the proverbial Can, from 'on the can', but finally all four projects are shot for this week. Last night's shooting of a news segment pilot for Talpa felt like a success, with Greg Shapiro delivering the Boom Chicago News for the first time in Dutch.

The house that stayed seemed genuinely entertained and the support we got from Michael Dieterich, veteran Boom auxilliary player (& star of Holland's version of off-Broadway musicals), was - as always - right on the numbers.

A particular hit was the video on the EU referendum - works in any language, it seems...

Famed Dutch pollster Maurice de Hond (yes, in Holland you can be famous for being a pollster) gave the pilot a 50-50 shot for being accepted by Talpa for a slot in their flagship variety show. Never having done anything in dutch, those are odds we can live with!

Now to editing...

Happily got up our internally controversial "Dukes of Haz'zrad" video, a spoof on the Dukes from the point of view of Al Qaeda. Got that??

I think the best things to come out of the experience were the resolve to never do another one like it, the concept (and probable runner) of Al Qaeda Web TV's entertainment programmming, and the line "Run! Our Jesus is a false god!", courtesy of Jon Rosenfeld.

And a somewhat hastily photoshopped visual for what's (maybe) coming up next for AQTV:



Enjoy! Off to shoot the Talpa piece!

... spent indoors at a computer. Seems that's what I have in store for me in the next two weeks. This could be depressing if it weren't for the fact that I'll making some nice and very necessary extra coin for the work. No tan, though.

Boom got another nice television nod recently when approached by Talpa to pitch a 3-5 minute segment for one of their flagship variety shows. Talpa is backed by En De Mol Productions and appears to be trying to do what Fox did in the States in the 90's (minus the shrill, jackal stench of Sean Hannity) and set up a major new network seemingly overnight. We'll be recording the segment Tuesday and hopefully I'll be able to get it done by Friday. In front of that are three other videos which are due Weds, Thurs and Monday of next week.

Yep, I'd call that busy...

So there are maybe five days in the year that Amsterdam actually sees it proved that the grey glow from above is actually caused by something called a sun. Some here, such as my good friend Jon Meehan, will cower in the nearest patch of shade and rock back and forth with their arms wrapped around their head, wailing about how the gods must be angry and are seeking to punish us with the ball of fire in the sky.

But mostly Dutch people just complain or go to Bloemendaal.

And then complain.

So I'll get all dutch for the moment and complain about how the rewrites to the Dukes of Haz'rad video (islamic extremists reinterpret the classic show) are keeping me behind my desk, working on my TFT tan. And that it's frickin' hot in my apartment...



But it does look nice outside. I'm still getting over the initial shock of Summer not being consistently cloudy, rainy and humid. It's wearing off slowly as I am daring to be optimistic about maybe planning to do outdoor things more than an hour or two in advance...

* Title attributed to Gold Leader, "Star Wars".

As with all things before they actually happen, this may not happen - BUT the inquiry means interest is there from TV-types in the UK. An ITV-associated production company reqested (and promptly received) a copy of our Toy-Ture video for possible airing in November on London's ITV1 hit Tarant on TV. Nothing's certain, but as Pep might say, "I've got a good feeling!"

So yesterday was a BUSY day. Had a morning shoot for what we call a Gold Show - a show we write for a corporate client that has live improv, custom-written sketches and a video made just for the show. This time the customer is a software company that is having a conference closing party at Boom's theater, show and all. The fun part is I got to shoot a sketch in the style of Star Trek Old Series (STOS for the afficionado with way too much time on his or her hands).
Our prop mistress Justine did a great job making shirts and though the store-bought 'Spock' ears were more Green Goblin than green-blooded, what the hell - it's a spoof! An artistic choice, right? Check out the cast and the sweet double-casting in these pics:




After the shoot, I had to hot-foot it to our web distributor's office - ZoomIn is located out near Artis (the zoo) in the east of Amsterdam on an old industrial canal. Had a great meeting with Micheal who runs the business side of things there. Interesting talk which promises more integration of our resources, including the ppossible use of Novum Nieuws' pro blue screeen studio(!). More to come on that...

Well - hello again!

Yep, it's been a while and that's a bit of a fuax pas with blogging, I know. Don't start if you don't intend to commit & all that...

Last week's video was a live action/animation piece we did for the Michael Jackson verdict & it got some good notice, hitting #5 on the most-viewed list of our distributor, ZoomIn, and sweet & sassy Emily of Eatmail.tv linked us in their weekly newsletter - many thanks to the people of Eatmail.tv and Cake for their support. Thanks and we'll be making more! The video can be viewed here. If you get a web page in dutch & no video you have pop-ups blocked and just have to click the link that says "klik hier." Welcome to Holland.

Anyway - we're now in Week 15 of productions here at BCVP and today is script day. The main subject is the War of the Worlds premiere which is the 29th and we're nominally scheduled for our video release on the 30th.

This week's video is a product of an early script that was put in the back pocket due to a lack of pressing timeliness, but kept there because - well - it's just silly. Dukes of Hazzard as dubbed by Al Jazeera Entertainment TV. Pep suggested that these films might play like old war movies from the 40s when we look back on them (look at those wacky assumptions about Nazis/Islamic Extremists!), but really we're just playing on everybody's fears, much like the Bush Administration (so it's okay, right?).

More soon!