The video is up! You can view it here.
I wasn’t actually present for this particular video shoot, so I asked Paul to provide some insight with regards to his inspiration and the video at large. His comments are posted below:
I had the idea of a video showing what happens when you don’t organize your military stereotypes properly percolating around in my brain for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without showing the various squads. With at least 3 people in each squad and 5 or 6 different stereotypes, actually demonstrating all the problems would require way too many actors to be practical. I have always been a big fan of the “explaining how this silly world works to the confused straight man” structure of sketch (see: Le Cafe, Paper Boy, Economic Stimulus, The LHC, etc), so I realized that the idea would work just as well in the format of a junior officer being reprimanded by his superiors. In some wys it actually works better as the characters can talk about stuff that would be very hard for us to show. I feel that the two officers in this video are somehow related to the two from Emergency Situation, obviously they are not the same guys, but I think they are probably in the same army.
I think it got the point across, but our costuming and set dressing for the captains and the office probably wasn’t entirely believable. I was a pretty big fan of the life perserver on the wall of the navy captain’s office, though. It showed that he deals with ocean stuff, see?
Something about this video just didn’t sit right with me, maybe I haven’t played enough army games or something…Although the squad with the 5 loose cannons made me think of 5 Rambo’s just charging in…
I dunno though, it seems you guys haven’t been doing quite as well as normal(the last 3 videos, including this one), hopefully things will improve though….
Comment by Richard Nixon — May 3, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
Silly LRR, 5 man squads? All every squad needs is a Medic, and Assault, a Recon (preferably with a shotgun, but you can’t have everything), and an Engineer to bring up the rear.
Comment by D_K_Head — May 3, 2010 @ 2:48 pm
What are those shirts? Sweaters with shoulder straps? I’ve never seen them anywhere.
Comment by Reid A — May 3, 2010 @ 3:21 pm
They’re military sweaters. Not uncommon in Canada or the UK, I believe.
Comment by Matt — May 3, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
I loved this video, great satire to any kind of military movie… or game 🙂
Comment by Birthe — May 3, 2010 @ 4:49 pm
So how did the preview picture have ANYTHING to do with this?
~Alja~
Comment by Alja-Markir — May 3, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
I feel ashamed to not realise what on earth you were making reference to until it was spelt out to Morgan, perhaps I should start a no-nonsense common-sense army with him?
Comment by Tramp — May 3, 2010 @ 5:26 pm
I love the videos that make fun of stereotypes. Very nice. I loved them arguing over who was the hard-ass captain who secretly cared about his men. Classic
Comment by PaulaG — May 3, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
@Alja: Ever heard of the “5 Man Band” trope? Fits a similar set of rules as the stereotypes mentioned, but not really. Except there wer only 4 guys…
Comment by Avi — May 3, 2010 @ 9:13 pm
@Alja
It’s making fun of the typical movie “squad” composition, more specically Band of Brothers. So Jer based the preview pict off the box art for Band of Brothers.No friggin idea why they have a guitar….
Comment by Dubious_wolf — May 4, 2010 @ 9:39 am
And besides….why can’t they have a squad of loose canons? It worked in Battlefield: Bad Company, right? :p
Comment by PaulaG — May 4, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
I especially liked the latter half of this one. Best parts were the confusion over what day it was and who’s turn to be the guy that secretly cares and Morgan deciding to transfer to the Navy.
I sorta had the same feeling as Richard as this video began though…It felt sorta rushed or overdone or something…like when Tim paused before saying delicate it just didn’t feel right either in the timing or dialog maybe being too predictable I’m not sure which…but I did like most of it and the other recent videos even though it’s harder to work with rap or graphs…or rap about graphs…or graphs illustrating rap stats. 😛
Comment by Danielle Pepin — May 4, 2010 @ 8:48 pm
My first thought, given the title of the video, was that the lieutenant was assigning people to squads so that their codenames spelt out things…
Comment by phobiandarkmoon — May 5, 2010 @ 4:03 am
“Four white mages? That’ll never work.”
Comment by King Rocky IV — May 5, 2010 @ 10:03 pm
I loved this 😀 My dad has always been into army movies, especially the old ones. I hate them because he watched so many. I typically steer clear but I was present for enough of the ones he watched that this video really made me chuckle. I think I’ll send it to him and see if he likes it.
Comment by Vohn Exel — May 6, 2010 @ 3:27 am