Smile
July 18th, 2011

Posted by Matt

This is a thing we recorded and put on the internet.

This week’s video was shot only days ago, up at the University of Victoria. Filming was a bit of an adventure, because the script only really came together in it’s finalized version earlier that morning. Graham had some thoughts to share on the writing process for this one, so I’ve posted them below:

A long while ago we thought it’d be cool to shoot a video entirely from the perspective of security cameras, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out what. It was a cool visual concept, but we never really had a script that made sense in that context.

Fast-forward many moons, probably more than a year: I was thinking again about that concept and realized that a video about video cameras made perfect sense!

I wrote the great bulk of the video, but I wasn’t happy with the ending, and there was a problem with thematic flow around the three-quarters mark. Paul, Kathleen, Jeremy, James, Matt and I sat down for about 20 minutes prior to shooting and hashed it out, everyone throwing in ideas. Not only did this make the video much better, but I love writing as a group, and I don’t think we do it often enough.

Actually shooting it was another crazy matter involving iPhone mics and tripods on desks, but we’ll get into all that in an upcoming LRRcast. Hope you enjoy the video!

Unskippable this week was Dark Void. You can find the episode here.

And the new Checkpoint, “Plants vs. EA” s viewable on PATV.

Finally, please remember that there are now two weeks left in our Lasers of Understanding tee-shirt pre-order period!

Cheers!

Job Security
July 11th, 2011

Posted by Matt

This week’s video is now live on The Escapist. You can watch it here.

This week’s video was inspired by a user suggestion, so Graham has provided a brief description of what was changed and what was used from the original submission:

Sometimes we do use ideas from the Video Suggestions forum, and this is one of those times. Forumgoer Motorwaffle (who goes by Mike in real life) submitted a brief conversation between a couple videogame ninjas, talking like day-in day-out coworkers would.

I really liked the idea, and brought it to the LRR meeting later that week. We retooled it into a full-length video, added more characters (including a callback to Bad News), and wrote another couple minutes of conversation, but kept most of Mike’s original dialogue intact. We liked it for a reason!

So, thanks to Mike, and we hope the rest of you enjoy it!

Unskippable this week is Crysis 2 Part 2. You can find that here.

Chekpoint Episode 10, “PS4Life” is alo now watchable over at PATV.

Cheers!

Canadian Girlfriend
July 4th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Happy Canada Day! (Or Independence Day, if that’s your preferred flavour of national observance) Here’s a video that has a much greater probability of actually existing than the significant other you assured your family you had over the long weekend.

This video was written by Graham and Kathleen, and Kathleen had some thoughts she wanted to share with regards to the process that led to this update. I’ve posted them below:

This video came about in a very organic, super last second kind of way. Graham and I realized that LRR hadn’t really written a Canada Day video. Various ideas were bandied about and cycled through:
Infomercial – how to get a Canadian Girlfriend
Educational filmstrip – How to pass the Canadian Citizenship test (patently false)
Some sort of idea involving bees or butts (apocryphal)

We kept coming back to the idea of “Canadian Girlfriend” though. At first I wanted to make the video about the concept (the infomercial frame was quickly scrapped, shifting to Educational Presentation, which was then scrapped as being too similar to the last Canada Day video Graham and I wrote…) We ended up riffing back and forth on why a person would conceivably need to come up with a Canadian Girlfriend, and before we knew it, we’d written a page and a half of a killer dialogue video that was very funny, but only tangentially about the original concept.
However, the jokes were fresh, the Laffs™ were good, and I liked being able to work the topical (topical humour in a LRR video?!) angle of Google+ into it, so we went with it. The end result is the (hopefully) delicious slice of dialogue sketch you see in front of you. In retrospect, I detect a strong odour of Mitchell and Webb about it, which is not the worst thing your video could smell like by all means.

Unskippable this week was Crysis 2: Part 1. You can find that here.

And this week’s Checkpoint Episode, ‘Supremely Legal’ can be found over at PATV.

Cheers!

Give In
June 27th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Do it! This week’s video deserves to be watched!

Given that this video was written by and predominantly stars Graham, I asked him to provide some background about this update:

This video sprung out of the moment near the beginning, where Gary just immediately accepts his “dark” half’s suggestion. I was watching a movie where someone was being tempted by their inner demons to accept the dark side and kill someone, and I thought to myself, “What if he just said yes? Just, right now, boom, yes to the darkness?”

And that was the jumping-off point. Then, of course, as sketch comedy law states, if there’s an evil “shoulder angel”, there’s a good one too. And he’s a little annoyed that you started without him.

The video turned out shorter than I’d originally realized, but I feel it’s another example of the joke not overstaying its welcome. Also, for trivia purposes, this video was edited entirely in the new Final Cut Pro X, which (I’ve discovered) has surprisingly good green screen filtering.

Hope you enjoy it!

Unskippable today was Homefront. You can watch that here.

Today’s episode of Checkpoint is also up. You’ll find that over at PATV.

Cheers!

Garagellenium
June 13th, 2011

Posted by Matt

This week’s video is up, so head on over to the Escapist and check it out.

The video was filmed this weekend in Oak Bay, during the annual Garagellenium event. Garagellenium is basically one big, co-ordinated garage sale day for Oak Baydians to put their old junk out for sale, and it’s netted us a few choice props in the past. (Also a copy of this record on vinyl). No great finds this year, sadly, but with the cooperation of a few kind sale-operators we got this episode shot with little difficulty.

Unskippable this week was Star Wars: The Old Republic. You can find that here.

Also, over at PATV, you’ll find the E3 Roundup episode of Checkpoint.

Cheers!