52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Atheist Missionary

Atheist Missionary (#24)

I really wrestled with this idea for a long time. Must've gone through about four different drafts before landing on this one. I knew that I thought the idea of a door to door atheist missionary was funny, but how to approach it without sounding like I'm trying to make some big smarmy statement (one way or the other). I always had trouble balancing it out. 

The answer kinda came to me in having both characters change their minds at the end: The redneck embraces atheism with intense zeal, which prompts the atheist to say a quick prayer as he walks away. It's a really subtle joke, which I guess is why I missed it for so long. 

Glad it came together though. I also really enjoyed going toe to toe with Matt, as we really don't get many scenes together. It's still a Herculean effort on my part to keep from laughing any time I try to act with that guy.

Anyway... really procrastinated on putting this post up here. The new episode will be up in just a few hours, for Pete's sake! (I've never known who Pete is...) Better late than never?

One thing that never has been, and never will be late, is our Supreme Saturday submissions on Youtube. Every Saturday. All year. BRING IT ON!

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Vegan Food

Vegan Food (#15)

You know that you probably have the wrong kind of friends when you send them a script involving them eating poop and they respond with "This is awesome! I can't wait to do this!"

But that's the kind of trooper our friend Evan Nischan is. Evan eagerly brought his Meisner mastery to our humble little script, not to mention his apartment as a location. He also gets the honor of being the first guest star to appear in two atx episodes. (His other appearance can be found here.) Congrats, Evan! You should feel... proud?

Special thanks to this kid for an easy fake urine recipe. (Yes, all the food was fake, sickos.) It was strangely difficult to find a feces recipe though. Seriously, never type "Edible Poop" into Google Search. Zach and I pretty much just kinda had to wing it. It took us a good couple of hours to get those two little turds figured out.

And no, I have no idea if the ingredients were vegan or not.

52 Sketches in 52 Days: Dick Jokes (Saddest wig in cinema history...)

Well, we've hit the one month mark and the project's still rolling! Here's week four:

Dick Jokes (#4)

Ah man, I love that long silence about midway through, haha. All credit goes to Matt for that ridiculous Easter egg at the end too. That sucker would make a pretty jacked up ringtone. I was also pretty pleased with how all the laughing and hooting sort of became the soundtrack for the piece.

Okay, okay, so we really did make an honest effort to do the cross-dressing thing right. Picture two straight guys standing hopelessly in some high class wig shop, walking around in circles. The internet told us there was some big sale, but the saleslady acted like she had no idea what we were talking about. Eventually we had to tuck our tail between our legs and just use the same ratty one we had from Dude Tips. We'll do better next time, I reckon.

I've started trying to recruit some other actors in the hopes of giving us some new talent to play with. Evan's a fine actor that we know from Kentucky. You can see him for a very hot second in this national Lexus commercial. Stay tuned for more awesome LA actors showing us up soon!

It was a pretty simple shoot, except for the fact that we had nobody behind the camera. We literally just ran back and forth to start and stop each take. It's still a pretty humble operation, but by Jove we're getting things done!

Whoa! Dude Tips made it to 160 views last week! Thanks for all the support and feedback so far. We are a contagious disease that has infected your brain. Now go to a public place a sneeze a bunch!

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Dude Tips (Pucker up, baby...)

We're on a roll! Here's this week's sketch, carried entirely by yours truly this time. We take a few pages out of MTV's playbook to give you a hot new segment called DUDE TIPS!

Dude Tips (#3)

Ahaha so much fun. And the suspenders from Melvin Becomes a Man made a triumphant reappearance. (I'm a sucker for little easter eggs like that.) The feedback so far has been very enthusiastic, which makes us all happy as schoolgirls on the first day of summer vacation. 

You know what wasn't so much fun? Drinking an entire blender's worth of protein shake. You know why that wasn't much fun? Because we don't own a blender. Therefore we wound up getting a chocolate shake from In-N-Out and watering it down until it was choco soup. Yeccchhh....

I managed to gag my way through an entire giant cup's worth, only to look up and see Zach blinking helplessly at the camera, whose battery had died halfway through the take. Time to do it again!

Also: What do you do when your actress bails on you at the last second? Why, slap a wig on a dude and tell him to pucker up! That's creative problem solving right there, folks.

More often than not, I find myself playing the "nice guy" characters. It's SUPER important to know your type in this town (something I plan to touch on more in a future post), but sometimes when you do something completely different than what people are expecting out of you, some really funny things can happen. The joys of writing for yourself is that you get to try out roles that most directors won't automatically picture you in. And so for my big ATX sketch debut I cried... BRING ON THE DOUCHEBAG.

It's been SUCH a crazy week, so expect a bunch of posts this next week as I discuss my commercial shoot and another gig that I booked for Monday. In the meantime, keep the views coming! Last week's "Serial Killer" clocked in at a solid 114 views and "Cat Bowties" continued to climb past the 200 mark! You guys are amazing!

What did YOU think about Dude Tips? Want another episode, with even dudelier tips than the first? Let us know! We are your obsessive loveslaves. We spy on you when you sleep and we read your private emails. So... uh, you know. We think your opinions are neato.

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!

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Cat Bowties (Wait, we started?!)

Whoo boy. Lots to discuss. But first... Here's a link to the first video:

Cat Bowties #1

Alright, so judging from early feedback (which ranges from "LMAO!!!!" to "I hated it") you either had a good time or were left scratching your head, wondering what the heck you just watched. Either reaction is okay. It's kinda how you're supposed to feel.

Tim and Eric (examples of which can be viewed here and here) are notorious for making supercharged pieces of comedy that basically crank up the intensity to the point where logic snaps and the viewer is bombarded with absurdity. The goal isn't so much to tell a story as to basically assault your senses as brutally as possible. (They're kind of a comedic version of Antonin Artaud's work with theater of cruelty.)

I set out to emulate that style with Cat Bowties, and then Matt took it to a whole other level in the editing chair. As far as I'm concerned, we were totally successful. 

That being said, this wasn't really supposed to be the first episode of our series. For every one person who thinks Tim and Eric is funny, there's another fifteen people who hate it. I know this kind of stuff is really polarizing, and I would've rather posted a more user-friendly introduction. Buuut some wires got crossed and it wound up getting posted first. Actually... we weren't supposed to launch at all for another week. Whoops! 

Anyway, we are officially moving, and I have no idea where we're headed. It's a totally terrifying feeling, to be honest. I can't help but envision the whole project crashing and burning, with everyone I know and respect just shrugging and saying "I don't get it." I woke up this morning and I felt like a giant anchor was wrapped around my barely-floating artistic career. Basically the same question hit me that, I suppose, hits everyone who tries something ambitious: "What if I suck?" 

But my philosophy has always been that if I'm scared of the project, that means that I took risks and tried some things that were outside of my comfort zone. That, in my humble opinion, is what an artist is supposed to be. It's certainly how one grows. Somewhat perversely, the only ones who get to decide if it's a success or a failure is you, my esteemed audience. All I can do is offer as many burnt offerings to you as possible in the hopes that one of them is pleasing to your mighty appetite for entertainment. 

So yeah, go me. Sound off in the comments section about what you thought about our crazy video, and if you've ever been scared of failing! Did you triumph or crumple? I starve for your stories!!!

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.