Without a doubt, one of my ABSOLUTE favorite things to do as a kid was make home videos. And by home videos I mean movies that were created with some sort of premise where characters and acting were involved. But there was no writing of scripts. No major planning. No rehearsals. It was as simple as getting an idea, grabbing the camera and going for it. And I gotta say, my friends and I came up with some freaking awesome stuff.
Please allow me to run down some of the highlight videos that come to mind.
60/60 News - This was a spoof on 20/20 where I sat behind a piano bench with a blanket draped over it to deliver news stories. Of course the news stories were terrible. They ranged from anything like kids who got injured jumping on a trampoline to rabid dogs on the loose. We even interviewed "Richard Simmons" once, which led to a flashback of me as an obese newscaster eating mayonnaise straight out of the jar. That days topic: food. Needless to say, Mr. Simmons encouraged me to turn my life around and lose the weight. The support cast of my two best friends Danny and Greg, along with my brother Robert and sister Erica allowed for multiple characters and newscasters. We did several of these productions over the span of a few years, the earliest of which I found from 1996. My God, they were so good.
The Cardboard Monster - In 1998 we created one of our more epic productions featuring a murderous monster made of cardboard, appropriately titled The Cardboard Monster. The engineering team of Robert, Greg and his twin brother Brian created the monster using several cardboard boxes, paper cups, pipe cleaners and dryer vent tube thingies. Notice I didn't include myself as part of the engineering team. I was too dumb for that. I stayed solely on the creative side of this project. This was one of the first times we experimented with different camera angles, including a view from the monsters perspective as he strangled Robert's characters to death several times. Robert played five different characters in the film, all of whom met their demise at the hand (or teeth) of the monster. All, except of course, his last character who (SPOILER ALERT) finally decapitated the monster, ending his reign of terror. Three years later, my cousin Tony assisted Robert, Erica and myself in creating The Revenge of the Cardboard Monster in which the headless monster (played by Robert) hunts down Tony and I after we find his head in a trash can. We did a decent job, though my brother and I fought mid-shoot causing him to leave the production. We, in turn, had Erica step into the role of the monster. It was weird when the monster suddenly had girl legs but eh, we rolled with it.
The Blair Witch Parody- The Blair Witch Project was pretty huge in 1999. So what better way to capitalize on that then by creating a parody of the movie? Shooting was relatively easy since the actual movie was shot on shaky handheld cameras. We didn't even have to try to replicate that since that was already our style. I thought we did a pretty good job w/ this project, though we kind of lost steam at the end. Instead of finding the Blair Witch, we find Danny on the toilet suffering from constipation. Robert then reminds us that, "Constipation is no joke. Use Pedialite." I don't know how we did it.
I just LOVE the fact that this is what I spent my days of childhood doing. I didn't realize how important the creative process was to me. That THAT was my gift and my way of sharing joy with others. And that the process and passion behind creating these videos was something I'd carry with me into adulthood. If you know me even a little, you know that I still love creating anything. Songs, t-shirt designs, greeting cards. And of course, videos. And I still do it with the same giddiness and enthusiasm as when I was a kid.
I recently had many of these tapes ripped to DVD and burned onto my computer, and I've spent a little time working with the footage. I may get around to posting finished movies someday. I kind of like leaving them as is though... they're more symbolic as memories. But that said, I did just put together a montage of all the death scenes I had from these videos. Which makes us sound kind of morbid. But bear in mind, we created these deaths to be absurd, not grotesque, as you'll see in this video. Look out for clips from the above mentioned projects. Enjoy the best of our murder scenes in this brief glimpse into my childhood mind:
Please allow me to run down some of the highlight videos that come to mind.
The Blair Witch Parody- The Blair Witch Project was pretty huge in 1999. So what better way to capitalize on that then by creating a parody of the movie? Shooting was relatively easy since the actual movie was shot on shaky handheld cameras. We didn't even have to try to replicate that since that was already our style. I thought we did a pretty good job w/ this project, though we kind of lost steam at the end. Instead of finding the Blair Witch, we find Danny on the toilet suffering from constipation. Robert then reminds us that, "Constipation is no joke. Use Pedialite." I don't know how we did it.I just LOVE the fact that this is what I spent my days of childhood doing. I didn't realize how important the creative process was to me. That THAT was my gift and my way of sharing joy with others. And that the process and passion behind creating these videos was something I'd carry with me into adulthood. If you know me even a little, you know that I still love creating anything. Songs, t-shirt designs, greeting cards. And of course, videos. And I still do it with the same giddiness and enthusiasm as when I was a kid.
I recently had many of these tapes ripped to DVD and burned onto my computer, and I've spent a little time working with the footage. I may get around to posting finished movies someday. I kind of like leaving them as is though... they're more symbolic as memories. But that said, I did just put together a montage of all the death scenes I had from these videos. Which makes us sound kind of morbid. But bear in mind, we created these deaths to be absurd, not grotesque, as you'll see in this video. Look out for clips from the above mentioned projects. Enjoy the best of our murder scenes in this brief glimpse into my childhood mind:
