Echo
June 7th, 2010

Posted by Graham

This week’s video, featuring twice as much dialogue as a regular video*, is online for your viewing pleasure!

*That’s not actually accurate of course, but you get the idea.

This is a video Andy wrote a while back, and when Andy comes up with a video it’s usually a winner, so we had to shoot it. Also, he was only in town for a couple months, and it gave us a chance to have him in a video—something everyone likes to see.

Shooting was quick, if a little tricky. The hill we shot this on is very near my house, but it was still about 10-15 minutes to get up it, with camera and microphone. Once we got up there and figured out the location though, it went really fast. For most shots, we would deliver our line as normal, and then Matt (while running boom) would mouth the echo line silently so we knew how long to pause before continuing with our next line.

We originally recorded the whole video’s dialogue again as audio only, so I could make the echos from it. But it turns out that for instances where a line didn’t change, it sounded wrong to use a different clip, so I only used different audio when the line was specifically different.

The funniest part for us was recording those lines. Since I wanted to make sure they sounded the same as the regular audio, we recorded them at the location right after we had finished shooting. So, imagine if you will, Andy and I standing on a hill in a public park yelling the echo lines back and forth. I yell “Your wife’s a bitch” four times and Andy replies with “I am a homosexual” before going off about his Austrian stable-boy fantasy… it was an odd moment. I think we confused some joggers.

Here’s some pictures from the shoot:

Additionally, this week’s Unskippable riffs on a game that is Legendary in name only.

And of course, there are some new Crap Shots you should see. Check out The Drainage for some fancy effects, The Accusation for a real WTF moment, and The Measurement for even-more-WTF-than-the-other-one.

A Stitch in Time
May 31st, 2010

Posted by Matt

The new video is up. Head on over and check it out!

Paul provided me his thoughts on the writing and production of this video. I’ve quoted him below:

“A number of years ago we made a video called One Minute Shorts that was a collection of vignettes, each exactly one minute in length. My favorite of these was one that dealt with someone time traveling one minute into the past, and ever since doing that short I have had the idea in the back of my mind to take that concept and expand it into a full video. The actual shoot went surprisingly quickly, considering all the split-screening involved, and I am very happy with the final product. I think the workshop really shows off the new camera well (especially considering that the lighting in the basement where we shot was not that good).”

Pictured below is the timeline for the video that Paul used to keep his writing on track, to keep the characters straight, and so that all the entrances and exits happened when they were supposed to. He also tried to use it to explain the video to the rest of us, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help.

If you think this video was confusing to watch, try writing it! (Click to embiggen.)

Preview Pic for May 31 2010
May 30th, 2010

Posted by Matt

Hmm…

Installation Anxiety 2010
May 24th, 2010

Posted by Matt

This week’s video is here! Go check it out!

Naturally, this is a remake of this video. (which you may, or may not, have seen before).

In the forum thread on this video, James has answered some questions you may have about this video, which I have re-posted below:

Why did we remake this?
As most of you know, we were invited to w00tstock this year to showcase some of our videos. We decided that Installation Anxiety was a great video and could play really well with that type of audience (It totally did by the way). But we quickly realized that while it was a solid video, its production values no longer reflect what we are capable of making. So we decided to re-shoot it. Once w00tstock was over, we discussed using it as one of our regular weekly updates. After several talks we decided to go for it for it. We know there will be a couple people that won’t agree, but we are proud of the remake and wanted to showcase it.

Are you going to remake more?
Who knows. It won’t become a regular thing, so for those who think we copped out this week, don’t worry. It won’t happen again anytime soon. Brand new, totally original content returns next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that. After that I can’t make any promises as we haven’t planned that far ahead.

I’d like to amend to that that there are a few videos in our back catalog that we have definitely considered remaking in the past, and we may still do so in the future. But this is certainly not going to become a regular thing, with this video we simply wanted to give it a try and see how it worked.

The Gay Chicken
May 17th, 2010

Posted by Matt

You’ve asked for them. You’ve pleaded for them. You’ve practically begged for them. So here they are: Bill and Morgan, starring in a new episode of commodoreHUSTLE.

The Gay Chicken

As is usually the case with commodoreHUSTLE, this episode is based largely on real events. Morgan is truly the king of ‘flapping’, and Bill is, without question, the king of remaining unflapped. Even the tactic used to obtain ultimate victory in this video was word-for-word taken from the events as they actually unfolded.

You’ve likely noticed by now that Bill and Morgan have scaled back their involvement in videos somewhat, but Hustle just wouldn’t be Hustle without them – so fear not, though they may not show up as often as they once did, they’re not going away forever.

Finally, since Graham apparently doesn’t respect his work as an actor sufficiently to grant him a place among the credits, I’ll be the bigger man and give credit where it is due. The cat in this video is named Khavren, and he belongs to Kathleen. He is one of the precious few cats on this earth that I don’t dislike, so let’s all congratulate him on his stellar performance, and his being generally tolerable.

Rock on kitty.

(Oh, it occurs to me that Kathleen’s other cat, Annika, made his debut on tehz intarwebs today, too. He’s on this website, being extrememly bewildered.)