52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Scary Guy

Scary Guy (#41)

I was kind of inspired by all those Slender videos on Youtube that are big with all the horror kids. Here's the progression of events for this sketch.

SATURDAY EVENING
5:30pm  - Write sketch and print it out.
6pm - Pick up my brother from LAX. I throw a script at him as soon as he gets in the car. He's not an actor.
7pm - Arrive at Sacred Fools. We have one hour before our three hour show starts. There will be no time to shoot anything afterwards.
7:10pm - Grab Erik Engman from a nearby bar. Promise him riches and fame we don't have access to.
7:20pm - Shoot a few takes. This is only the sixth or seventh time I've looked at the script.
7:40pm - "Edit" it. Compress it.
7:50pm - Upload to Youtube.
8pm - Enjoy our show. (Neverwhere! Amazing!)

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: YouTube's Not Funny

YouTube's Not Funny (#33)

There's something about hearing "This is hilarious" that instantly makes you not want to laugh. I guess so much about humor involves the element of surprise that the joke loses power if you know to expect it. When you have somebody waiting for you to laugh at something, "that's a lot of pressure." 

Tried to disguise the ambient noise with "YouTube noises" that are supposedly coming from the computer, but I don't know how successful I was. I just moved into this apartment, so we didn't really realize how noisy things would be. Ah well. My new roommate Nate totally stepped up to the plate in the 11th hour though and went toe to toe with Zach for us!

And speaking of Zach, YES. Zach is back. Woooooot!

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Serial Killer (Dang, it was hot out there.)

What, you didn't think I'd forget about ATX in all the commercial excitement, did you? Here's the second week!

Serial Killer (#2)

Haha, that stupid run he does at the end really cracks me up. And seriously, what kind of serial killer wears a bright neon yellow jacket when he's stalking his prey?

This shoot wound up being a lot easier than I was expecting. We had a pretty awful experience the last time we tried to shoot outside. Lots of ambient sound, other people walking into the shot, ever-changing lighting... there are so many factors that the ultra-low budget guerrilla filmmaker has little control over. Not to mention all of the potential problems of trying to shoot into a car. So I was bracing myself for all kinds of problems.

We zoomed into a sleepy-looking residential neighborhood in North Hollywood and shot everything we needed in less than an hour. Every once in awhile we'd have to stop for a passing car (kinda felt like we were neighborhood kids suspending our street hockey game: "CAR!!!") but besides that, the elements were pretty kind to us. Unless you count the 98 degree California heat burning our eyeballs out of our skulls.

So Week 2 is in the books. Cat Bowties, our first video, made it to 164 views in one week! Let's keep that momentum going for Serial Killer and see if we can make SK reach 200! Watch it, share it, and subscribe to our channel. Every time you share our videos on your Facebook, you're exposing them to hundreds of people that we don't have access to and, therefore, helping our fledgling project to thrive a little more.

What did you think of Serial Killer? Comment either here or on Youtube. We love feedback!

Project ATX: 52 Sketches in 52 Weeks

A little less than a year ago, I moved out here with two of my best friends from college. We split a crappy one bedroom apartment in North Hollywood that has since acquired a permanent aroma that can only be described as "dude stink." We're awesome actors, we're gonna be famous one day, blah blah blah, you get it. Anyway, we quickly got the idea to film some of our own stuff in the name of wowing the world with our jaw-dropping talent. So we bought a Canon Vixia and started calling ourselves filmmakers.

And Adventure Team Extreme was born. 

Me in Melvin Becomes a Man, an ATX short film.

We shot a couple of shorts that Matt directed and wrote, and I directed my first short film with ATX as well (pictured above), but I've always felt like the process was a little slow. In one year we've made four Youtube videos, averaging between 200-300 views for each. This totally makes sense for the first year, as we've all still been getting over the whole "Holy cow! This place is big and scary!" phase. But now it's time to kick it into overdrive, baby.

The harsh fact is that in LA, nobody cares about your short film. Short films multiply out here faster than rabbits, so it's tough to convince somebody to sit down and watch your 15 minute masterpiece.*  That's a lot of time in internet years! Think about the Youtube videos that you click on. Unless it's from a source you're already familiar with, I'll bet that they usually aren't much longer than two or three minutes. 

So I've started writing some micro shorts. Two minutes tops each. When we launch in the next few weeks, we're gonna release a new short every week. My goal is to have 5,000 views for the final episode. Not sure what we're gonna call this yet... Turbo Tuesdays, maybe?

We can't wait to tickle your eyeballs.

Anyway, my hope is that, as we start to gather a following, we become more valuable to potential agents, casting directors, etc. It'll also be a good way to show off my writing chops, and therefore any screenplays I send to big shots would have a better chance of being taken seriously. So if you enjoy them, share them! Uh, you know. Please?

The material that we've got so far has turned out pretty great, so I'm excited for everybody to see it. And of course I'll keep you guys posted on everything ATX on this blog as we go.

Nathan

*There are, of course, merits to doing short films, but I'll discuss that later.