Two More Socks for Miller & Mullet

This past weekend, we completed two more appearances, our third and fourth, on Ed & Red’s Night Party. Back in December, I had written about our second appearance and our experience in a multi-camera situation.

Our third appearance is a cameo, at the end of an episode where Ed the Sock has decided to sell his studio and has allowed potential buyers to look at the place while they’re shooting. We cap this gag with our arrival with our bags packed at the end of the episode, and we may appear in the closing credits, fighting beside the desk. As in our earlier appearances, the producers gave us a very loose description of what we were to do (a cue line and the instructions to fight beside the desk), so we went out and did it. It was fun, but I don’t think it was as good as our earlier appearances. Maybe the editing will prove me wrong—I’m going on my gut response to what we did without having seen the raw or edited results. I think I wasn’t fully prepared for the cameo, and I think it will show. Mullet said he wasn’t comfortable with it, either. But it’s in the can, and the only thing to do is learn from the experience and move on.

Mullet has plenty of improv experience, so he’s more adept at winging it. But I’ve always worked better in situations where I plan things out in advance, like with a script. As a duo, we realized after the cameo that collectively we work better with a plan.

Our fourth appearance is our first appearance in a sketch rather than as part of the show itself, so the producers gave us more structure this time. Without giving too much away, we were part of a parody of high culture, ballet to be specific.

The producers shot it before the actual episode as an isolated segment. This meant we didn’t have to worry about any cues outside of the sketch itself. After the dinner break, we went into the studio to work it out and shoot it.

They’d told us the day before what we were to do in the sketch, so we’d had time to start thinking about what we were going to do. We talked over what I would do and what Mullet would do and what our motivations would be. We came up with a pretty good idea of the beats we’d follow, who would do what and when. If the sketch was to change, we’d have to rethink things, but we were prepared, at least, to adapt our plan or come up with something new, if needed.

We weren’t alone in the sketch—there were 6 others appearing on-camera (Liana K., 3 of the bikini girls, and 2 dancers)—so we had some logistics to work out on top of the beats of the sketch itself.

At first, we went with the two dancers to the studio floor with the director and the crew. The dancers worked out their moves with the music and then Mullet and I walked through what we had planned. Everyone laughed at the right times, so we knew we’d made the right plan.

We had to change one thing—I was facing away from the closeup camera, so I had to turn to my left instead of my right. Not a big deal—Mullet helped by approaching me on my left side. A few more walkthroughs and we were ready to go.

We got to use breakaway props for the first time. We had enough props to do one take, so we didn’t even rehearse with them. When the props were unpacked and placed on the set, the producer made sure cast and crew knew where they were and that they were fragile. Fortunately, the props broke in the sketch and not before.

I liked one of our final rehearsals—it got a laugh from the rest of the people on the floor, and it felt good. We did one more to make sure the cameras were in the right place, and then it was time to go to work.

Liana and one of the girls introduced the segment, the dancers danced, the other bikini girls heralded my entrance, I did my thing, Mullet came out and did his thing, we broke the props, and it was done. All in one take with all four cameras on our set. I ended the sketch on the floor, trying not to breath hard after a bit of a workout, until they’d made sure everything in the trailer was okay. Then we were done.

I liked that second-last rehearsal better than the actual take, but I was working to the audience of cast and crew in the rehearsal—that laughter wasn’t there during the take because they’re all doing their jobs when the tape is rolling. We did get applause backstage from the other people there, so it must have looked good on the monitor there.

I’m looking forward to seeing both performances. Watch our website www.millerandmullet.com or join our Facebook page for updates on airdates.

Upgrade Update and Why DVD Studio Pro is Teh Suck

First, an update on my upgrade plans. I’ve eliminated one option from my ongoing post-production software. Way, way back in an earlier entry, I wrote about upgrading from Final Cut Studio 1 on my G5. I played with Red Giant’s Magic Bullet suite and came away impressed. I also played with Adobe AfterEffect’s demo (which I haven’t blogged about yet). Last week, I started to research my third option, Final Cut Studio 2. That’s when I discovered a problem with FCS 2: my G5.

I have a 1.6 GHz G5, the low-end model of the first release, the slowest G5 ever made. I have a stock model, with an extra gigabyte of RAM. The original graphics card is the stock GeForce FX5200 Ultra, a card that isn’t certified to power Color or Motion 3. The card I would need is the Radeon X1900 G5 Mac Edition, which is no longer available new (Amazon and eBay prices range from $250 to $350 for used and "new" cards. Apple carries an X1900, but it's the version for the Mac Pros).

My G5 turns five in August, so I have to ask, “Is it worth spending $300 to upgrade an old computer so I can spend another $600 to get Color and Motion 3?

I’m not convinced my colour-correcting or motion-graphics skills are worth $1000. And there’s no guarantee my G5 will run the apps efficiently. Therefore, I’m taking Final Cut Studio 2 out of the equation. And then there were two….

And now our second topic. Last week, we got the Ed & Red appearances dubbed from VHS to mini-DV. I was able to capture the footage, edit everything in Final Cut, use Compressor to convert the footage for DVD, and then set up a project in DVD Studio Pro.

I’ve always found DVD Studio Pro to be the problem child of Final Cut Studio. It works great up until I start a build or format a DVD. I don’t recall any projects where I didn’t have to trash all the build files and start over. Sometimes, each disk I burned required me to trash and start over again. Clearly, Apple doesn’t care about the DVD—it’s the interwebs, stupid!

The Sock DVD is just for friends and family who missed our appearances, so I did a barebones project, with four options: both complete shows, the excerpts of us, a main menu, a menu for each show, and a disclaimer video to make sure nobody plays it around kids or at work. Nothing fancy, or so I thought.

So as I started to burn a test disk, the app crashed. One moment, it was on screen, the next, I was staring at the Finder. This happened every time. I trashed all the build files and folders, rechecked the project—everything I’d done in the past that had worked I did. But nothing worked, even after rebooting, checking Software Update for anything related to Final Cut Studio 1, sacrificing a goat to the gods, etc., etc.

So I trashed the video and audio files and re-rendered everything through Compressor again. I started from scratch and reprogrammed the DVD. But as I started to drop the video from one of the shows into its track, DVD Studio Pro again vanished. This happened each of the four times I tried it.

A third trip through Compressor seemed unavoidable, so I went back into Final Cut and removed the chapter markers from the troublesome track. Compressor churned out new files, and I went back into DVD Studio Pro muttering things about Steve Jobs. I put together the entire project from scratch, for the third frigging time. Then, sure I was ready to toss the G5 off the balcony, I clicked on Build/Format again, but opted to build a disk image instead of burning directly to disk. Then I went into the next room and watched TV to bring my blood pressure down.

To my shock and horror, DVD SP actually worked. I had a working disk image on my hard drive. Using OS X’s Disk Utility, I burned the image to a blank DVD and, lo and behold, I had a working DVD. So… hopefully… this is a workaround that continues to work going forward.

DVD SP allows you great control over every aspect of your DVD, so I am frustrated by Apple’s inability to prevent it from blowing up real good….

Influences, Part II: The Marx Brothers

I first saw the Marx Brothers courtesy of a Buffalo TV station—one of them used to broadcast old comedies on Sunday mornings. I think I saw their first swansong, The Big Store (1941), first, and despite it not being their finest work, I was hooked by Groucho, Harpo, and Chico.

If you’ve never seen the Marx Brothers before, I’d recommend watching their movies in chronological order (The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) are adaptations of their Broadway shows). If you want to jump in head first, start with the next 3 Paramount movies, Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933). The start of the downfall is their first MGM movie, A Night at the Opera (1935). With Zeppo in tow, the boys attacked high society with a zeal that must have been like what the Sex Pistols did to music in 1977.

I like the Four Marx Brothers a bit better than the trio—Zeppo adds something that is missed in their later movies. As a wooden parody of the male love interest, his scenes in Monkey Business are pretty good (“the trees are lovely” while escorting a lovely lady around the deck of an ocean liner is my favourite Zeppo line and scene). He doesn’t do much in the other movies other than help move the exposition along (one scene in The Cocoanuts features him doing nothing other than saying “yes” to Groucho).

I initially liked Harpo the most—he’s an amazing clown, and with his silent act he gets in some great physical business. Alone or with Chico or Groucho, he gets a lot done, with the most visibly anarchic attitude. Harpo was a force of nature.

I think Chico’s best scenes are those where he plays with Harpo as they try to pull some scam on someone, usually Margaret Dumont (they do some great physical comedy together, such as the effort to escape from the gamblers in Horse Feathers or stealing a painting in Cocoanuts). I also like Chico’s scenes with Groucho as they mangle the language and the logic of language. The Chico-Groucho scenes are the ones most remembered (the contract scene in Opera, the map scene in Monkey Business, and the Why a Duck scene in Cocoanuts). Chico is a great con artist, ignorant and sometimes stupid, but shrewd enough to fleece you without you knowing it.

Groucho is probably the best-known brother today, and his machine-gun delivery and non-sequiter style still influences comedy today. Groucho would have been a great standup comedian if he were born into this era.

The greatest Marxist scenes involve all four (or three) brothers: the stateroom scene in Opera, the passport scene in Monkey Business, the speakeasy sequence or the lecture in Horse Feathers, for instance.

At Paramount, the Brothers were the romantic male leads—the leading lady was either Margaret Dumont or Thelma Todd. Both of these actresses were great comediennes, and the Paramounts would not have been the same without them. Todd, a gifted physical and verbal comedian, holds her own against Groucho in two of the Paramounts, playing a sexy femme fatale. Dumont, matronly and stuffy, represents the upper class and spends her time (and in some of the MGM’s) as the target of Groucho’s half-hearted efforts to woo her money into marriage. In both cases, you don’t expect the romance to last long after the movie ends as the boys move onto their next scam.

At MGM, the Brothers became the helpers for the romantic leads, and the movies aren’t the same. Although they were never as sentimental as Chaplin was, the later movies don’t have the same bite to them as the early ones. By giving up the role of the male lead, the boys became secondary to the plot. MGM wanted to sell tickets to women by featuring more romance, so you can blame your great-grandmother for it all.

Still, a bad Marx Bros. movie is better than no Marx Bros. movie….

Earth Hour, YouTube, and Web 2.0

We had a big media blitz for Earth Hour here in Canada this year, and I decided to do my part and shut off all lights and appliances for an hour on March 29th. This I did.

But I did run one electrical device: my camcorder. I put my trusty ol’ Canon Ultura on my tripod and parked it in front of my balcony window to capture the beginning and end of Earth Hour. I used my Canon wide-angle adaptor (similar to this but not the same model) on the Ultura to make sure I got as much of the landscape as possible, so the balcony railing and the ceiling above it are both curved—but I caught a much wider angle than I would have otherwise.

I captured it the next morning to my hard drive, used Final Cut to edit it, and sent it through Compressor to prepare it for YouTube. I sped the footage up to 1000%, so each minute of video became 1.7982 seconds. I must admit I was impressed with Final Cut’s abilities to do so—with frame blending, it became seamless. Watching the headlights of cars showed how smooth Final Cut can be.

Here’s the video:



You’ll see someone slide the screen door open and then the balcony door several times—if I do this again, I’m putting a moratorium on going out on the balcony until after the camera’s shut off!

After I’d rendered and exported the video to QuickTime, I used a Compressor preset I’d obtained from Ken Stone’s website. The tutorial you’ll find there (by Brian Gary) is quite thorough, and I’ve been really impressed with the quality after YouTube finishes rendering. One thing to remember—you can ignore title-safe and action-safe as your entire video ends up on YouTube.

As I was waiting for Compressor to finish rendering, I wondered what the world in front of my balcony looked like on video on any other night—would it be a noticeable difference? So 24 hours after Earth Hour, I shot more video, with the camcorder in approximately the same spot.

I captured the subsequent night footage, sped it up and exported it to QuickTime as before. Then I brought both clips into Motion, where I planted them side-by-side with a background and text to try to make things clearer. I considered doing a wipe back and forth between the two clips, but side-by-side made the most sense for quick ‘n’ dirty video. I sent it through Compressor and then uploaded it.



As of tonight (April 1), the first video has 137 views and the second has 98. Some people have added comments, the “honors” link shows that the videos were in the top videos for their category, and I feel I’ve made a small contribution to the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Interestingly, the first video I put up, Hotdog, has gone from my 3 test viewings to 22 views since the other videos first appeared. I have no idea how anyone wathcing environmental videos would respond to Hotdog’s somewhat scatological bent….

I have had some time to think about the impact of these videos given the comments people have made—there was a 2-person mini-debate about global warming in the 2nd one—and I think I should have made clearer that I was shooting a great swath of residential space, where streetlights from a few major roads as well as row upon row of residential streets, dominate the landscape. The busiest stretch of highway in North American, the 401, crosses just below the horizon as well, so a lot of those lights were not part of Earth Hour. If I’d been able to shoot the skyline from my tiny bathroom window, I would have cpatured the CN Tower and the bank towers downtown going dark, as well as parts of Riverdale and the Beaches. So, in hindsight, I would have put in captions or title cards to put things in context—I didn’t intend the comparison video to present Earth Hour in a negative light (no pun intended).

If I’m still in this apartment a year from now, I’m definitely repeating the experiment and I’ll post all 4 videos for comparison.