I uhhh… don’t suppose we know anybody who can sing.
Cause I’ve got a whole theme song worked out that also doubles as a legal disclaimer:
In the not-too-distant future
Or last summer A.D.
There were some guys on-line
who really loved MST
They hung out inside the Gizmoplex
Riffin’ on movies without paychecks
They think their act is covered by fair use
But if you don’t like it, then this is their excuse…
“We’ll riff cheesy movies!
The worst ever made! (la la la)
But only within the public domain
‘Cause we ain’t getting’ paid!” (la la la)
We’re tryin’ to do this whole thing in jest,
And now that we’ve got that off our chest,
It’s time to get back to the picture show
and finish up these credits 'cause we really gotta go…
Riffing Roll Call (celebrity voices impersonated)
Cambot! (Pan left!)
GPC! (Go girl!)
Tom Servo! (Little Fire-Plug!)
Crooooow! (Still Different!)
If you’re wondering if our jokes are lame
or on par with Rifftrax (la la la)
Then repeat to yourself, “at least it’s free,
I should really just relax”
At least it’s free. Cool. I feel like our legal disclaimer should all be in song.
As dare-devil as I am, for some reason I’m getting worried about using the likeness (at least around the edges) of Mike Nelson here. Is it just me?
Anyhow, sheet 1a is ready to go. Old comments have been resolved, which means they are not visible unless you look for them specifically. I won’t bother to highlight the problem areas - you’ll see them. If you don’t, they’re not problems. I’ve also added a few of my own thoughts in comments (plus deployed any comments from the voters to strategic positions).
So, if the BOD would like to work on sheet 1a, we can hammer out our process for the remaining sheets. I’ll work on getting those ready, but it takes about a days each. So please. Take your time.
Hey @ivan and @Lesley ! We’re at a decision point, and we could use some guidance. What is Alterniversal’s stand on fan works which use the likeness of the hosts and bots?
Specifically, we are excited about using a silhouette of the theatre seats, Mike (possibly another host), Crow and Tom Servo. Possibly static, possibly pulled digitally off a pre-existing episode of MST 3000 or the movie. (I’d direct you to the details above, but they will probably have changed by the time you finish reading them).
Some of the team are nervous about that point in particular, and this project is supposed to be fun. So if we have to use Mika Neilson and the bots Raven and Tim Gyro, that’s cool - we just want to know.
Hey @MyWy! We’re checking in on this to get an official answer for you, but my initial guess is that it might be OK for your project to use likenesses of the bots, but that it’ll be easier if you avoid using actual (or even thinly-veiled) hosts from the show, since that gets closer to putting words in the mouths of real people that they might not be OK with. The bots have had multiple personalities and performers over time, so they’re a little more flexible.
However, for whatever this is worth, I’d still encourage the team to create an original host and some new bots – whether it’s Tim Gyro or something more unique – because that would expand the (non-canonical) world of MST3K in a more exciting direction, and give you a lot more freedom to create the best riffs and story without worrying about how well it matches the show. Just my two cents: I think I’d be more excited to watch a fanficisode that was wholly original, and could be appreciated for what it is, rather than how well it matches what I think it should be.
That said, none of this is an “official” answer – we’re checking on that for you, so stay tuned.
Commercial breaks: I laid out 8 sections, which is normal for a full-sized episode, but this is a short movie. If it was an MST 3000 episode, it would need a short, about 10 minutes long.
I never meant my segmentation of the episode to be a permanent thing, and wouldn’t do this on future projects, but it seems like a pain to change it now. Do we want to look at it again, and maybe divide it into 7 pieces (or whatever they normally do for a short movie) of around 10 minutes each?
I’d love to do a 10 minute short to bring it up to length. Kinda wanted to do that anyways if we got to the point where we ended up doing a live action version, so it’s more like an official episode.
I don’t think it’d have any impact on the potential 3rd slot skit I wrote about whether or not the movie has a monster, not quite sure about the 1st slot skit I have penciled out, where Crow tries to convince his fellow SOL inhabitants to give him money to build a diving bell, which is a tough sell, since Tom already owns one (and it’s a real cherry!) but that could potentially be bumped to the 2nd slot, depending on where it falls and what else we’ve got.
If we’re looking for shorts based on time, this list of all Coronet shorts (which I think are pretty universally pubic domain) might be worth looking into, as it conveniently provides the total short length.
I posted a few choice ones in the shorts discussion thread, but I’m in a hotel on my phone with incredibly spotty WiFi at the moment so it’s a bit harder to review anything.
Or we could just leave it as it is now for the “pilot” and worry about reordering things (and possibly adding a short) once we get to later iterations.
Yellow is the final selection (C) and some timing notes for suggested minimum on-screen subtitles (D) and actually timing oneself speaking the lines (E).
I’m just laying out some of the obvious final picks (not irreversible). The directors will need to look at places where there are problems (like two riffs of similar score at the same time). I think DeepHurting also had some idea about the maximum amount of quiet time between riffs.
Comments are still there, but they are for directors. The voter comments are being removed, and their scores and notes are being preserved.
Oh, and I’m bolding things I think warrant your attention.
I am done. Only the tough choices remain. I hope the layout will facilitate the assembly of the final script, but if not, change what you like (plus there is no reason to stay in the Google sheet if you don’t want to).
I did watch the movie once more, riffing as I went, and I’ve called out (in comments) all the awkward riffs I noticed.
Do you think we should each create our own tab with the entire movie start to finish? That way, we can note the agreements and differences. Just thinking how to do this without some sort of zoom call or something.
I’m back in town now, and have made my notes on tab 1A.
I think we should tackle production discussion one tab at a time. We can go back and do a final review check once it’s all over.
Why don’t all 4 of us post here when we’ve finished reviewing and leaving notes on 1A, then we can all go back in and look at everybody else’s notes and discuss any areas that seem to still be problematic or undecided in this thread or via message?
If the first tab is any indicator, I’d say about 80% of the material in the gold column is exactly fine as written, and most of the remaining 20% I’m in agreement with the comments that were left before me as to what to do with it. So I think the amount we’ll end up needing to discuss per tab will be pretty minimal and fairly easy to chunk-out if we do it this way.
I’m working my way through it now. This is an interesting task. One thing I am thinking about as I go is pacing. Some jokes are funnier with breathing room before or after. I’d consider sacrificing a good joke to make a great joke even greater.
There are also a few riffs that I think we can just about make work in caption form, but might have to be trimmed if we shift to voice work because they step on a line of dialogue that sets up the subsequent joke.
1A is really densely packed though, and the closest the movie comes to being “fast-paced” so the other tabs should hopefully be a little easier to manage. Still, I’d rather have too many jokes and have to cut some than not enough.
I am going to suggest getting the lines selected first, then select the speakers as a separate exercise, since ideally we would like to keep them distributed.
You should all be able to edit - is that right? Someone pointed out my grammatical error (“queue”), but you can go ahead and just change those things. My Canadian “accent”, too, I don’t mind
Selecting riffs is definitely our top priority, but if someone feels a line strongly belongs to one character over another, might be easier for a human to say, or the opposite, that it’s an anybody line, that’s still a worthwhile comment to leave, just to aid our though process when assigning lines.
I want to hold off a bit on my duties until after the next VIP set visit. Seems like they are going to discuss this phase of production then. I’m sure there will be some useful insights.
I’m quite impressed that our writing arrangement seems somewhat close to what happens with official MST3k. From what I heard today, they apparently do use a spreadsheet with timecodes and film transcription along with all the riffs.
Cool. I feel like our legal disclaimer should all be in song.
