If somebody’s questioning a riff, I’d say it’s only fair.
Especially if it’s something like the Jacques Lecoutier one that doesn’t even come up in a google search, or some sort of portmanteau joke (Ex: Bernardo Bertoloser) that you can’t search for by the actual written spelling.
By the way, I love whoever made the Eno commercial reference. That is just Chef’s kiss.
Thank you a bunch for fixing the formatting. I noticed a lot of my jokes got cut off partway through because I’m used to using the Alt+Enter to force a linebreak in Excel.
I struggled with this. My first stop was to learn about the film, its history, its people. I ended up with a lot of comments, like how Warren got Coates to play the role of Dale. Mildly interesting, but it’s just not very funny.
DeepHurting wrote a good one (in my opinion) with, “never should have left the Daily Planet”, but just observing that the actress portrayed Lois Lane is just a fact. Honestly, I have a bunch of observational humour that I think are all bronze at best - they need more.
This is where the collaborative effort can shine - we’ve got suggestions on a lot of these riffs on how to make them funnier. This isn’t just “voting”, and I’m happy to see how it’s going.
Done! My voting is complete, as is my wife’s (the “bubbly Eno” contributor). I’ll hang back until voting ends (around Sept. 6, right?), then lock the Google sheet and maybe layout the options for the co-directors to consider.
Yeah, sometimes just tweaking a single word can make a joke way funnier.
I personally think the “calamari party” joke is okay, but if you have one of them House Party it up a bit as “Calamari Par-TAY!!!” with a bit of a whooo at the end, it becomes immediately funnier. (At least in my head.)
If we’re looking to fine tune our jokes, here are three important protips I picked up from the ACEG and a few other places where the crew have talked about writing riffs for the show and it’s various spin-off projects:
1) Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience or focus too much on making sure that you only tell jokes that everyone will get. This was one of their big frustrations with the movie where the studio kept wanting to focus group their riffs into the ground and cut or dumb down any references that only part of the test audience understood. They had to keep explaining that it was one joke among hundreds, and you need the occasional obscure high brow stuff to make the upcoming fart joke even funnier.
2) Avoid ‘State Park’ jokes, AKA, always go one level deeper in your reference, and let the audience bridge the gap. ‘State Park Joke’ is a term Mary Jo coined in the ACEG to refer to simply making an observational reference and trying to pass it off as a joke. (Ex: “he’s going bald,” “she was only hired for her looks,” or “this scene looks like it was filmed in a State Park.”) To turn a plain observation into a joke, think of something that someone would do/say/use in the context of that observation, and make a joke about that instead. (Ex: “Dear hair club for men…”, “she enters a room before she does” or “why don’t they just stop off at the ranger’s station and ask for directions?”)
As a side note, that little disparity where the human mind has to make a sudden abrupt course correction to place a seemingly out of context statement into context, is more or less how humor works on a biological level. (Or so says the thesis paper I wrote on the subject 20+ years ago )
3) Don’t get too caught up watching the movie itself. Pretend every character has an unseen life that exists only in the context of the line that was just spoken, and just run with it. I’m paraphrasing (probably badly) something Kevin or Bill said in a Q&A, where they were explaining how to get through a really tough movie, and also slightly razzing Mike for how most of his jokes are written. When in doubt, if you can’t think of anything else funny to say, just pretend the character is an unhappy Minnesotan suburbanite griping about some minor annoyance in their daily routine.
Sadly, it’s a possibility. I’ve caught myself almost deleting riffs by pasting a multi-cell section over top. If I did, I apologize. Better than that, I’ve got a copy of the riffs before I compressed the columns. Let me see if anything is missing.
I’ve checked your riffs, EBK, and I believe they are all in the voting Google sheet. Was there one in particular you remember? Could the riffs have just changed column? That’s happened a lot. I did also merge “My head! My arm!” into a single cell, so they can be voted on at one time.
I’m watching Blood Waters of Dr. Z, and I swear I recognize some of this music from TIPW… Is this my imagination? I did just watch this a few months ago.
I’m sure of it, it’s the music from TIPW’s credits.
Were you watching the mindless summer stream too? I noted that some of the music does sound similar but I don’t think its the same. Do you have a timestamp or scene in mind because I’d like to compare.
IMDB says no, but it’s hard to tell with stock music cues:
Incredible Petrified World:
ZaaT AKA Blood Waters of Dr. Z:
Interestingly, Trevor Duncan, who provided the non “beep-boop” music for Blood Waters of Dr. Z, provided music cues for a lot of cartoons including Ren & Stimpy, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, as well as Quatermass, Monty Python, and Kentucky Fried Movie.
Oh yes. I didn’t participate in the chat room, though.
Challenge accepted.
Livestream III: BLOOD WATERS of DR. Z at 38:27
Our working copy of TPIM at 28:07
That’s just one example; I heard at least three identical pieces.
Apparently TPIM music is taken from the same pool of stock music used by Night of the Living Dead, but I couldn’t find any exact matches. @DeepHurting , I think Zaat’s credits (even IMDB’s uncredited credits) might be missing some people.
Bumping the thread because we’ve only got a couple of days of riff voting left.
If anybody wants to get in on that action… well, now’s your last chance.
We might as well ask this now: Who do we see as the host for the first fanficisode? We’ve already got votes from @MyWy (Joel), @deanadolphin (Joel), @blybttnfzz (Jonah), @euphoriafish (Jonah), @DeepHurting (Jonah), and @Egg (Joel), so it’s 3 to 3, with Mike yet to get out of the gate…
Anybody else who didn’t already choose a host, please vote here:
In fact, if I’d thought about it before voting, we probably should have replaced every instance of Joel/Jonah/Mike in the script with just “host” because I think having names there may have skewed the voting somewhat, where some people favor one particular host or era of the show over another, leading them to vote based on the delivery rather than how well the joke stands up as a generic joke coming out of someone else’s mouth.
Over in the production discussion thread, we’ve got at least three different options for turning our script into a real thing… but none of them including getting any of the existing cast onboard. So my suggestion (and if everybody else feels strongly that we should go a different direction here, that’s fine, we’ll do whatever the group wants. This is a Fanficisode, so we don’t have to tie ourselves down to reality if we don’t want to) is that we don’t focus too heavily on making our script fit any one particular host, if it means we have to do more work to make it function with someone else in the jumpsuit down the road.
A lot of the Crow/Tom jokes in the script are pretty interchangeable and would be easier to transfer over to entirely new characters. The host jokes however, and I’m especially going to pick on the Joel ones here, tend to be a bit more personality driven, and there are quite a few of them that I see as being problematic if delivered by someone (or something) that isn’t Joel.
Currently, the three production options we appear to have on the table are:
@Ansible’s uRiff application, which I think will end up being our first step for creating a subtitle-only version of the script, regardless of what we do with it after that. If we want to label one of the speakers “Joel” or “Jonah” at this point, I’m okay with it, but I think “Host” may be more diplomatic, especially if we want to try using the same script for later versions of the production.
@danj, has come up with a way to potentially computer animate the theater segment using rigged CGI models consisting of three brand new robot hosts. This will of course, necessitate some pretty drastic changes if we intend to do any sort of host segment.
And finally, we’ve got @abskani, who owns a green screen studio space, fabrication tools, and knows puppeteer creator/performers, who might actually be able to physically produce a live action version of the script for us. Exactly what that would look like would largely depend on what the production team are capable (and comfortable) delivering, especially considering nobody’s being paid for this and our budget is zero. One way or another, we’d still be looking at entirely new robot hosts and (possibly) an entirely new human host and/or Mads.
My response to this is the same as my response to this other thread:
Now that being said, I DO like where your headspace is at with making sure that the riffs written for the host are written “generically” so that they can be slotted into ANY host. Each host brings something different to the show, though they all have that same “everyman” quality (or in the case of Emily, “everywoman” quality).
So I think that’s a great idea, to try to make things as generic as possible for the hosts, until it’s decided on who WILL be the host, then the “flavor” riffs can come into play, such as Joel “settling down” the bots as a fatherly figure, or the bots ribbing Mike off, because he’s more like a “little brother” figure to them. Those special unique takes can be slotted in any time.
We need to acknowledge that our contributions are going to be massaged into the final product, and will likely change to some degree. I may have suggested [Joel] for my host riffs, but, like [Crow] and [Tom], it’s only a suggestion. At the same time, if my contribution includes “I think this is best coming from Joel”, I appreciate the ability to state that in my contribution.
In the next stages, when we start producing a video product with a visible host, we’re going to have to retool the script, no matter what host we select at this point.
Does anyone have any issues closing the voting after today? I haven’t seen any additions in about a week, so I think everyone who is going to contribute is done.
As it stands, generic “host” will be pencilled in as the host for this stage of the project (riffs displayed via subtitles only): “Host”: 4; Joel: 3; Jonah: 2, Mike: 2; Emily: 2 (updated Sept. 6 @ 7 PM PT)
Finally, I’ve got a couple of days off work, so I’d like to present the co-directors (looking to be @DeepHurting , @EBK and @griff17matt currently) with a final spreadsheet that suggests the finalists for their consideration. Sometimes there is a clear winner; other times, I’ll list the top options in columns C, D and E. For the purpose of sorting, I’ll give each riff a simple score based on medals awarded (gold = 3, silver = 2, bronze = 1), so a riff with a single gold medal and a riff with 3 bronze medals will need to be decided on.
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