I attempted the impossible: making a funny video. I thought, in my hubris, that I could do what no other could, that a video I produced would actually be comically viable for people other than myself. Naturally, I suffered the consequences of the dawning realization that few others would like the video half as much as I do. Well, so be it. It all began when my friends told me I should make a video about crawlspaces at the high school. I said, "Anything we thing is funny or interesting really is neither funny nor interesting to anyone else". But they convinced me. They asked around, found others who also dug the idea. I asked around, found that more people liked crawl spaces than I had anticipated. Thus, I acquiesced to making a mockumentary about one person's search for the school crawl spaces which ends in them discovering an eldrich horror underneath the school. At first, things were going very well. Mr. Brandon Hearn, a school janitor, very kindly met with us before school in the morning to open up some crawlspaces and let us do filming. I must say, the filming went spectacularly. We shot the final scene, and got a truly hilarious sequence wherein my friend Gabe, dressed as a film noir detective, opens up a literal trap door a a crawlspace to reveal my friend Ben crawling on the ground and making weird wailing whale noises. Additionally, we got to actually go down there, and discovered that it's actually really cool down there. There's a giant subterranean expanse, about five feet high, with a rock bottom, no walls, and piping and darkness as far as the eye can see. I'm kicking myself becauseI forgot to snap a photo as we were pressed for time. However, this initial success proved to be misleading. None of the other scene are as funny. We tried; I asked my friend, and one interviewee, to improvise the goofiest stuff they could think of, but being very funny on video is surprisingly difficult. Well, live and learn. Now I know why making funny content is much harder than making serous content. It's just a unique talent that most people don't have and don't learn. However, I do think I did fairly well. My friend (who also acted in the video) rated it about 7/10 for entertainment, which I would say it fairly accurate. But that's enough needless self-criticism. That's also unfair to all the people who I personally think were very funny in the video. I suppose in my haste to criticize my own work, I forget that I criticize my friends as well. Anyway, the technical aspects went fairly well. I learned how to use a boom microphone, which was a lot of fun, and although it picks up a lot of static, that really helped add to the grungy, found footage vibe I was going for. All the sequences are shot as continuous shots to add to his idea that nothing was scripted or story-boarded. Most of the interviews had good composition, although I accidentally had the camera too low on one in particular. I'll just pretend that its low angle was to add drama to the scene. The lighting, focus and sound was solid or very good throughout. However, I think if I were to do it again, I would just do a short film and abandon the whole mockumentary thing. I think it urned into more of a liability as I had to straddle two radically different ideas. But it was a lot of fun. Who knew there really was a whole realm underneath the school? Now if only I knew what the heck is down there...
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November 2018
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