Boom Chicago - Comedy Shorts from Amsterdam

So the last month has had a few different thigs happen - first off, a vacation for me and a last double-production week to meet our weekly content commitments. I say last as our producer (Andrew Moskos) and I came to the agreement that it was somewhat absurd to grind yourself down as much as possible doing double work so you can go and collapse on vacation, which led us to implementing the idea of putting out older tried & true videos, which led to releasing the 'Terrorists on the Internet' video. It's a favorite I made sure didn't get buried during the pitch days for the 'Boom Chicago Saves The World' show. Rob Andristplourde wrote and is featured in it.




The latest video which had the working title 'MTV Gasolina' (titled for the web somewhat more obviously; "Gasoline is the new Bling") is the product of the new production regime where we now put all our videos before audiences to see what needs to be cut for a last edit run before we release it on the Web.



We'd always imagined that in order to keep our edge as quick-turn-around topical comedy producers we needed to have a new video every week without fail, whether we thought it was great or just ok. Now we're proposing a reduction in output to our distributor ZoomIn to allow for a raise in quality, which they understand, but are understandably less happy about as they are in the business of distributing content. Their content manager has suggested a creative solution of releasing clips from current shows which we will likely go with to keep output up and still allow for 2-3 original videos a month.

Now I guess we'll see how improv regularly edits to video... There's at least one good example...

Interesting process, this topical short video production.

Had to admit, last Thursday when we had our Idea Generation meeting we all thought it was too soon to do anything on the hurricane as it was too traic and also we had no idea what the story was. Two days later we knew it was the slow response by the government and sent around the take (editorial point of view) we wanted people to concentrate their efforts on - and no one came in with that take...

So we had to brainstorm the whole thing over again in the Script Meeting Tuesday and finally ended up cannibalizing a script Ms. Suzi Barrett had written last Friday when GWB finally surfaced from vacationing and took a quick fly-over from his leather recliner in Air Force One. Funny script that we worked into something we could all be happy with, but wow - what a bunch of frustrated, angry comedy writers. No one likes their hard work to be dropped in the crapper even though that is part of the definition of this gig; though rarely are everyone's ideas scrapped - never a popular decision...

Angry comedy writing is great if it is aimed at the subject matter, but not the process (and by process, I mean me, Andrew and Pep!). In the end it turned out well - a good script, but better yet, Pep & I kibbutzed and came up with a better plan for generating scripts

So look for our hi-larious take on disaster response (?) in the next day or two...



On a less frustrating note - last week's animation of Princess Amalia's report to her new little sister on Summer 2005 went swimmingly well. As compared to the Iran Nuclear Song on which production dragged out too long for feedback from the producers (and while good, suffered from lack of notes/criticism before release), this one I pretty much did on my own with Amber Ruffin and a fantastic script inspired by Rachel Miller's original story & concept based in child-like drawings by Amalia on the royal family.

Pretty cool process - it was something we recognized right away as a format we'd like to try and with a main character we'd like to give voice to - and have in the past in Pep & Greg's two-man show from 2003...

So we like to mix up the offering from BCVP and nothing says F-U-N like a singing & dancing romp through the subjects of nuclear proliferation and fundamentalist regimes!



Tim Sniffen comes through with his interpretation of fun-loving Iranian President Ahmadinejad and David Schmoll hits it over the fence once more with his musical support and judgement in the song and how we shape it.

His insight really made us realize that the next time we write a song, it might just be a good idea to include our resident musician when we're writing it to help give it something called structure - a bunch of funny rhymes strung together is one thing, but songwriting actually has some rules...!

As is not said often enough, thank the comedy gods for David Schmoll. As well as [insert name of competent technician] - that also doesn't get said enough!

This week is the week Dutch folks start returning to the Netherlands from their summer vacations - the country really does empty out a bit in August - unless you're in Amsterdam where the natives are replaced by tourists. We're working on a Summer review of Dutch news through the crayon drawings of the House of Oranje's own Princess Amalia. Hmmmm... interested to see how that goes!

So we have had a slow news cycle for our needs - slow?? Four plane crashes in three weeks, an Israeli pullout from Gaza and Iran is restarting its nuclear program. Well... slow for our production schedule, that is...

By the time our next video comes out, the Gaza pullout will be over, I'm maybe too superstitious to make a joke out of a spree of airliner disasters, and that leaves us with the Iranian nuclear topic, which isn't burning up as a story (unless you're a defenseless barrel of yellowcake), but it's what we're going with.

Dutch newsies call these "The Cucumber Months," referring specifically to the months of July and August when all of the Netherlands take shifts in getting out of the country to someplace with guaranteed sunshine or a spot to park the camper and listen to Renee Froeger & quietly sip Heineken. The papers get thin, the gardens are watched while they grow...

I'm feeling like we are all a little burnt out right now and I'm getting grumblings from the video crew that our admitedly paltry 'startup phase' compensation isn't really cutting it considering the time involved. Happily, some of the new actors have expressed interest and might be able to give the veterans a break. I'm hoping I can keep as many as possible from our original crew of actor/writers because it takes a few weeks to 'get' the gig.

Here's a still from the soon-to-be-released short on the latest WWII anniversary: the Filming of Saving Private Ryan...



The tabloids and SAG are right - actors will save the world...!

Or if I remember my Team America correctly, it's the Film Actors Guild... "Alec Baldwin - FAG". Ah, those South Park boys... not sure what they have against Alec Baldwin, but what a stupidly funny bit.

The online chronicles of Boom Chicago Video Productions - a new production company committed to producing weekly, topical comedy shorts - from startup through launch and beyond.

After acknowledging the frustrating nature of Script Day - the day we traditionally bring in fully finished scripts for selection, dissection, group rewrite and finally production - today was the first day we accepted 'treatments'.

The idea was to avoid the frustrating process of an author hammering out a finely polished piece for submission only to see it either rejected by the production heads (me and our executive producers Pep & Andrew) or, if the author's piece got selected, they then got to watch their carefully worked-over darlings killed by the ha-ha committee of his or her peers in rewrite.

SO - today we implemented project 'treatment' (Amber: I'm using definition 3a. in this case... there's no mention of a 30-page minimum. Or ponies. Sorry to disappoint!).

As expected, the most well-defined treatment got chosen, but it wasn't for that reason alone - it had more to do with topic and frankly, that was my responsibility. Instead of the Space Shuttle topic that Tim and Amber both wrote on, we went with a parody of History Channel documentaries on WWII anniversaries as this is what is being hailed as the last Great Anniversary of the Greatest Generation's Greatest War. Great.

The Shuttle will be too old next Thursday in terms of the news cycle to really work - even though WWII anniversaries is a general Summer topic, it still edges the aging Shuttle out...

It was a good experience, I think - it had all the hallmarks of a solid script production: good pitches from all involved, a fairly ego-less defense of jokes, and a well-embraced goal of getting out a good script. Which we did, I think. Watch next Thursday to see if I'm right...!

Well back from a too-short vacation in the States - and two videos done. It's been like pulling teeth getting my rhthym back on production work. And on blogging as well it seems!

Here are a couple of stills from our videos. The Hurricane video was alright - fun, but not our best.



Some suggest it is too American in subject and humor, I just figure it didn't hit a comedic boiling point on a number of levels, including my own. I also had to rush it a bit in shooting it as well as editing it - never a good move, but sometimes necessary. In any event, worth watching - as I said it's still pretty fun.



A stronger video is the Gayfomercial we made in honor of Amsterdam's Gay Pride Weekend - a very funny piece originally written by Tim Sniffen and (recently repatriated) Heather Campbell for Boom's latest flagship show, "Bite The Bullet", which was cut just before opening. I think a final version for DVD will have some titling and a tighter cut around the top of the video.