#i also have the full audio commentary which is basically the two of them talking shit for 90 minutes and making up songs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astrologista · 4 years

Text

jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!!

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands.

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up.

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth.

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally?#for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

23 notes · View notes

adultswim2021 · 3 years

Text

The Brak Show #1: “Leave It To Brak” (AKA “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”) December 21, 2000 - 5:15AM | S01E01 regular series version aired October 7, 2001 @ 11:00PM

I’m trying to break the habit of assuming only my friends are reading my various blogs, but I failed in one fundamental way: I didn’t really describe the premise of Sealab 2021, like, at all. Despite digging into it’s roots somewhat by watching it’s various pilots, I failed to include even a paragraph with the basic premise of the show. I’ll try not to make the same mistake with Brak. Instead I'll make a DIFFERENT mistake by writing way too long of a blog entry.

On December 21, 2000, after Sealab 2021, The Brak Show, then titled “Leave It To Brak” debuted. Who the fuck is Brak? Brak began life as a villain on the 1960s iteration of Space Ghost, a fairly garden-variety Saturday morning action kid’s show. He appeared in, I wanna say, a very small handful of episodes. I’ve seen the whole series, and I don’t think he was like, a regular or anything. Without looking it up I'll say he was on it twice. In the show he was a space pirate and had whiskers. He has a very memorable design. I’ve never been sure if we’re actually looking at Brak’s face or if he’s wearing a helmet. His fangs imply that we’re looking at his actual face (or at least his actual jaw), but that little curtain thing that hangs down from his, uh, ears? Is that a naturally occurring part of his head? It suggests that his wardrobe is actually his body, and vice-versa. He just looks absurd, making him perfect fodder for an absurdist revision.

Brak as we know him today was first used (barring some kind of Cartoon Network commercial that I’m unaware of) in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, appearing with Sisto. Sisto is his twin brother who appeared in the 60s show. Why Brak was targeted for comedic revision and not Sisto eludes me. I’m guessing “HI MY NAME IS BRAK” just sounds funnier than “HI MY NAME IS SISTO”. Anyway, in the first Coast to Coast episode they are voiced by C. Martin Croker (RIP) doing a Beavis and Butt-head parody. Eventually Andy Merrill took over the role, basically turning Brak into a, uh, childish adult. Okay, he’s basically doing a retarded guy voice. Sorry, but it’s time to grow up.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast debuted in 1994 and remained a cult hit on the network until it was moved to Adult Swim and eventually canceled in 2004. The concept of Space Ghost Coast to Coast was Space Ghost, a super hero from the 60s, now hosts a modern 90s late night talk show, interviewing live-action celebrities on a monitor that hangs over the set. Random obscure Space Ghost villains would show up with skewed personalities from their original 60s counterpart. Brak was easily the runaway star of the touted rogues gallery. He would come in and cheerfully sing a song about beans or something else equally wacky. He rarely had a definable role on the show, he was just a figure that was around and would wander into the set.

A second 90s Space Ghost spin-off was commissioned called Cartoon Planet. This was an actual kiddy show that aired during the day as opposed to Space Ghost Coast to Coast which was kid-friendly but meant for adults. This time Space Ghost, Zorak (Space Ghost’s bandleader on Coast to Coast), and Brak would host an hour of classic cartoons, with little absurd skits between segments set in a studio SORTA like the Space Ghost Coast to Coast set but different. LOTS of Brak’s fandom is based on these skits, which were a little more silly and lighthearted than the material on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The skits were popular enough that they repackaged them into their own half-hour show, sans classic cartoons. This was an early point of confusion for me. Beloved Brak songs turned out to be from Cartoon Planet and NOT Space Ghost Coast to Coast, so I'd tune into Space Ghost wondering if they cut out all the Brak segments or what?

Cartoon Planet would answer viewer letters (conceivably real ones; they DID include various ways to contact “Ghost Planet” at the end of both Space Ghost Coast to Coast and, I’m guessing, Cartoon Planet, which I never did see in it’s original form). They actually answered the reason for Brak’s lack of intelligence (brain-damage caused by Space Ghost, using an actual clip from the 60s show). I bring this up not out of genuine concern for continuity or canon; these aren’t huge concerns for the writers of these shows. The real reason Brak is dumb is because Andy Merrill thought the voice was funny, probably. I bring it up because generally the premise of Space Ghost in the 90s is that even though he IS a super hero with super hero abilities, he’s also an actor who makes cartoons about being a super hero. So, it can be concluded Brak’s brain damage is from a stunt gone wrong and not carried over from the fiction of the show.

The premise of Space Ghost Coast to Coast is that Space Ghost has captured evil villains Zorak and Moltar and is forcing them to work on the show. But they also freely reference their personal lives outside of the show, breaking character. They are actors who are sticking to a premise only when it’s convenient. Yes, it’s fun for the kids to pretend that Space Ghost has enslaved his enemies to work on his talk show, but the reality is that when the camera turns off they all go home to their apartments or wives or whatever. This concept feeds directly into The Brak Show: we aren’t watching Brak’s real home life; Brak, cartoon character and actor, is playing himself in a sitcom. His mom isn’t his real mom. His Dad isn’t his real dad. Zorak isn’t his real best-friend. They are all actors. This isn’t played up in any significant way on the show itself except for a few moments and certain episodes, but THAT IS WHAT’S HAPPENING and you wouldn’t really understand that just by watching this episode and nothing else. You would have to have been paying attention all this time to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Planet, and also, yes, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak.

Okay, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak isn't REALLY required viewing for this series. But guess what? I watched it for the first time ever in preparation for this and now we all have to deal with Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak (sorry I keep repeating the full title which is Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak) was a two-episode special presentation that aired on Cartoon Network while Space Ghost was on hiatus and before The Brak Show's stealth premiere. It (Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak, that is) was a Sonny and Cher style variety show, featuring Brak and Zorak on stage together performing songs, intentionally corny sketches, and a LITTLE BIT, but NOT A LOT of backstage drama; which could be argued to have been part of the show itself. Variety shows doing sketches fictionalizing the backstage antics of the production is nothing new. There are also live-action integrated celebrities, and the show comes to a screeching halt whenever they show up. Maybe their performances are hampered by having to perform on a green screen, but these segments come off lame and pandering. Space Ghost Coast to Coast would make it's name featuring washed-up, kitschy, or counter-culture celebrities. Here we are treated to Monica, Freddie Prinze Jr. (whose segment in particular really drives me up a wall), some wrestler guy, and a lady who's name I don't remember. Okay, I admit I fast forwarded through the second of the two episodes a LOT. Sitting through one episode in real time was just too much to bear.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak is written off by a lot of Brak fans as a substandard product, and they're not wrong. I myself never sought out the whole special until I started writing this blog. But there's one thing I'll give it, the visuals (minus the live-action celebrity parts) are actually pretty fun. There's a lot of weird character designs, and the same playful use of stock footage and kinetic editing from Cartoon Planet carries over into this. Skipping past the celebrity guests and watching the special on mute would be the preferred viewing method here. Honestly, I've never been that charmed by Brak's songs. I never cared much for Cartoon Planet.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak eventually became The Brak Show, but with one more step: a scrapped audio-only pilot. This pilot appears as an audio commentary track on The Brak Show Volume 1 DVD set. I discovered it by accident. In preparation for this blog I popped the DVD in, saw there was commentary for Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk, and pressed play. Instead of Andy Merrill and Pete Smith dryly talking about their creative process, I was treated to what would have been the audio for a Brak Show pilot (there are stage directions being read in lieu of visuals), roughly the length of an 11 minute episode. This version plays up the backstage antics of Brak's variety show much more, kinda like Larry Sanders meets Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Returning from the show is Brak and Zorak, along with Allen Wrench, a talking Allen wrench that appeared in Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. On Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, Allen had a crazy high-pitched voice. In this audio pilot he sounds closer to Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Also present in the audio pilot is Thundercleese, who curiously sounds like the regular series version of Thundercleese. In “Leave it to Brak”, Thundercleese sounds slightly different. Maybe they went back and rerecorded Thundercleese for the DVD?

That FINALY brings us to the actual episode. “Leave it to Brak” was the first episode of “The Brak Show” proper to air (though if I remember correctly from what was reported way back when, they wanted to call the actual show “Leave It To Brak” but couldn't for legal reasons). It feels more like a first episode than Goldfish does, which was the first episode I saw when Adult Swim officially began in 2001. “Leave it to Brak” introduces each character with fake studio audience applause. They even introduce Sisto, who simply walks in front of the camera, farts, and is not seen again. The premise of the show is this: Brak stars in a family sitcom. His mom belongs to the same species as Brak, but his dad is a tiny human voiced by George Lowe doing a Ricky Ricardo voice. According to this episode; Brak is roughly high-school aged, but it's all a pretense to get this cast of weirdos together under one roof. Again, Brak is a cartoon character playing himself here, so we're not meant to actually think these are his real parents; Brak is not half-human, necessarily. It's all just for the sake of this dumb show.

The plot of the episode is this: Zorak, Brak's best friend and worst influence, convinces Brak to help him kidnap the mascot of their rival high school, a chicken named Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk. Having done this, Brak grapples with the morality of his actions, tries to deceive his parents by dressing the chicken up like a little man, is caught, and is taught a lesson. There's a comedic final scene that reverses the lesson Brak supposedly learned, and then it ends. Somewhere in there we are introduced to Brak's giant robot neighbor who blows up Zorak for ripping up his lawn.

The Brak Show was possibly the most anticipated show when Adult Swim was announced. We all quietly ignored how much Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak sucked; mostly because this was touted to be a show for adults. Afterall, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak's biggest shortcoming was the fact that it was the first Brak-centric product to pander directly to children. Brak was always seen as a uniquely weird creation that just so happened to appeal to kids, kinda like Pee Wee Herman or Joe Camel. Also the idea of parodying the sitcom genre seemed novel, despite the fact that it wasn't really a new idea. Now it just comes off like a shallow observation: boy, old sitcoms sure were corny, right?

I don't know exactly how to pinpoint what was so disappointing about this show. I can see there was a genuine effort to make it funny. Dad was a decently funny character. They weren't just trying to mock sitcoms, they were trying to build a genuinely strange world that resembled our own. Brak lived in the suburbs but there were aliens and robots everywhere. Sci-fi situations casually reared their ugly heads into the lives of these characters. I mean, look at the plot description of Brak stealing a high school mascot; it's an ACTUAL SITCOM PLOT. There's no real subversion to it other than the fact that Brak and Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast are doing it. This could have been decent as a one-off special like Tim & Eric's Bag Boy staring Steve Brule. But they made more.

Oh wait, I figured out why The Brak Show sorta sucked. It's the fact that the show was a musical. Fuck, I hated that so much that I blocked it out of my head until this moment. Every episode had musical numbers in it sung by Brak and the family. Ugh. They were supposed to be funny nonsense but I never liked it. In fact if there were ever an edit of the show without the songs I would probably remember it much more fondly.

This version of the pilot had very simplistically drawn backgrounds. When the show went to series they redid the backgrounds with photo-realistic settings and props. It's a much more appealing look. This version of the pilot was briefly featured in an episode of Sealab, where Murphy was flipping through the channels on his monitor. He flips past this and Aqua Teen Hunger Force and maybe Space Ghost? This was back in the early days when every show seemed like it was connected to each other. I miss that. The “regular series” of The Brak Show used to give the show a different parodic on-screen title; “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”, which aired fifth on Adult Swim, had the opening title “B.J. And the Brak”. “Goldfish” used “Leave It To Brak”, which causes some episode guides to get confused over which episode is which. In fact, Adult Swim's website features the pilot version of this show and incorrectly uses the plot summary for “Goldfish”. I'm not linking to it because the listing says it expires today. But go look for it if you want.

The other big difference between this version and the “regular series” version is there are a few missing bits here and there. For example, the pilot version starts with Dad asking Mom for another biscuit. She sighs and says “maybe later”, to which dad just shrugs off. There's also a cut song I call “Kiss you hot” that dad sings to mom. There's probably other differences here and there. Oh, Brak's clock is the beeflog illustration from Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Isn't my life fuller for being able to make that connection? God, I'm so glad I watched Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak last night instead of getting an extra hour of sleep.

So what's good in this? I REALLY like the scene where Bawk Ba Gawk is at the dinner table and everyone keeps stealing his little hat to wear. Mom scolds Dad for wearing the hat, to which he mutters “I'll do what I damn well please”. Mom then plucks the hat from his head. When we cut to the wide shot, she's wearing it. Funny! SOLIDLY VERY FUNNY. But the series generally suffers from them trying to cram in weird pointless bits of absurd comedy. Only sometimes does it work. Not sure why. But that's how it goes, I guess.

#the brak show #brak #space ghost coast to coast #space ghost #brak presents the brak show starring brak #adult swim #adultswim2021

11 notes · View notes

dailyaudiobible · 3 years

Text

03/18/2021 DAB Transcript

Numbers 26:52-28:15, Luke 3:1-22, Psalms 61:1-8, Proverbs 11:16-17

Today is the 18th day of March welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it's wonderful to be here with you today as we do what we do, which is take steps forward. Kind of hard…I don’t even know how we would take a step backward and read the Bible in reverse or something but we’re here to take steps forward. The only way is forward. So, let's dive in. We’re reading from the God's Word translation this week and we’re in the book of Numbers chapter 26 verse 52 through 28 verse 15 today.

Commentary:

Okay. In the book of Numbers today we have begun a transition and it’s gonna take us a while to get through this transition. But it's a major major transition, a transition of leadership, a passing of the torch as it were from Moses, who we've been traveling with so long…like a long time now - many many miles together with Moses, many trials and many of…of God's miraculous deeds and provision for His people. So, that transition is…is beginning. It will take us a minute to get there because we’ll conclude the book of Numbers less than a week from now but then we will enter the final book of the Torah, the book of Deuteronomy. And, so, we won't be leaving Moses. Deuteronomy really is the last speeches or discourses of Moses to the people, to the people that he's been leading before he dies. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll talk about that when we get there. But there is a transition beginning here now, where God is instructing Moses that he will leave…leave the scene basically, leave the stage, die, join his ancestors and then we will continue to move on without Moses. Joshua is being commissioned to take the place of Moses in the future when Moses is gone. Ironically, Joshua or Yehoshua, or Yeshua in Hebrew might sound familiar because it's the same name as Jesus and this name means God's salvation. And, so, we see connecting threads and ironically they’re very…they're very connected in our reading today because when we turn to the book of Luke we are at the very inauguration or consecration of…of Jesus who is at the Jordan River being baptized by John and he comes up out of the water and the Spirit comes down on him and says, “you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” The irony is that Joshua is being commissioned to lead the people forward. Jesus is God's son, leading the people forward and we have shared names with shared meanings with redemptive threads with stories of redemption kind of tying a thread between the two today. And we’ll be able to watch both of those stories unfold before us in great detail as we continue our journey forward.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for all these connecting points that connect over centuries in the Scriptures of an ongoing redemptive thread that winds its way into our lives as well as we carry the story forward. And, so, come Holy Spirit into all that we've read today. Plant it into the soil of our lives. We continue to open ourselves to You fully inviting You to rearrange our lives, shape us, conform us to Your image we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that's home base, it’s where the Global Campfire is burning, it’s where we all come together in this virtual community. And, so, be familiar with that.

Check out the…the Community section. Of course, on the web or in the app you can do these things. So, on the web there's like, you know, a navigation up at the top and you’d be looking for the Community section. If you’re in the app you would just push the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and look for the Community section. But this is where the different links to get connected on social media are. This is also where the Prayer Wall lives. And, so, we are a community of prayer and we have done a really, really beautiful job of praying for each other over these years through…I mean…we have brought each other through some really, really difficult things over these years. And God has honored that and been in it with us. And, so, Prayer Wall is always on. You never have to be without. You got stuff going on, you can poste it on the Prayer Wall and brothers and sisters will pray.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. If you are using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart or the top of my heart, from a full heart, from a heart that’s in awe that this is even happening. I’m grateful that we’re in this together. Thank you for your partnership.

And, as always, if you have prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

DAB family Kathleen Mount Zion IL I am calling today…I tried calling earlier on my way to work and for some reason I just kept redoing and redoing these recordings. So, I finally just stopped and said I will just wait till after work. But I just wanted to pray. I…I read something about Nigeria again and Nigeria’s always been dear to my heart. I have called in the past. It's been a couple of years at least calling for Nigeria and every once in a while, I call in about that. But I'm just asking you to pray with me right now because there was another recent kidnapping of Christian children right out of their school. They've done this before. The last time the girls came back many of them had children they had been forced into marriage with Islamic extremists. And, you know, I just…it's just awful. Anyway, just pray with me. Lord Jesus I pray for Nigeria. I pray for this country Lord. There are many many Christians in Nigeria. Lord you are the King of all, you are the one’s…with you we can walk on water we can move mountains and I pray that the people of Nigeria the Christians of Nigeria will bind together, they were bind together and they will force Boca Ram out of their country and they will first however retrieve what has been lost, their lost children, lost young Christians. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

Hi this is Gloria calling from Florida. This call is for Tammy from the Adirondacks. She is in remission from ovarian cancer. I don't know what you're going through, but I want you to take comfort in a God who loves you. He has healed your cancer and He can also heal your heart and your mind in what you're going through right now. Jesus came to bind the broken hearted. Take heart that He has overcome. I pray that you would wear the full armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith and yield the sword of the Spirit of the word and pray. I pray that you reach out to those that are close with you, that you share your burdens with them so they can help you carry this burden. I’m so glad that you called so that we could pray for you. In Jesus’ name. Amen. We love you.

Hey DABbers, this is Keira from Denver I am so grateful to God for everything He’s done for me. And y’all I would like continued prayer for my son, Nish. Tonight…today was the second day this week that I had to call the police because…because I had concern for my own safety in regards to my son. The earlier one last Tuesday they took him to the hospital and they…he went to the psych unit but then he got released the next day. Tonight, they took him to the hospital again and this time they took him to this city detox place. And I know this place is not that great. It’s not a rehab and it’s not a lockup. He can leave anytime. But I pray that he stays till…until tomorrow and I pray…I pray and I would like for you…you guys to stand in prayer with me that he…everyone he comes in contact with…with is Spirit filled and Christ filled and can give him guidance. And I pray that maybe this is…this is the moment, this is the moment that Nish makes a decision to change and that he can actually go into a rehab and get the help he needs. And he’s had these issues of psychosis ever since 2012 but he’s continued using drugs this whole time. So, it’s just a compounding of problems. And please pray, please pray everybody with me. Thank you. I love you DAB…

Good morning friends and family this is Justified Smile I am a new listener from late last year and this is my first time calling. It is the morning of March 16th and I just heard C’s prayer request about her postpartum depression and her feelings of worthlessness. And also, just last night dear friend and sister of mine that I’ll call M texted me last night about suicidal thoughts asking for prayer. I’ve seen in the past year that a spirit of death haunts this world. So, I ask you all to join me in prayer. Jesus, teach us to pray. Lord You are King, comforter and shepherd. You are goodness and life. And in Your name, we repel death from the hearts and mind of C and M and all Your children who it attacks along with its every backup replacement and contingency. Let Your life and joy rule in the lives of Your children. Protect those who pray for retaliation and comfort, those who have been hounded and antagonized. Keep us good Shepherd. All this for Your glory oh God my sovereign King.

Hello everyone, I wanted to ask for some prayer today. Been listening for a while and this is…Daily Audio Bible’s really been an encouragement to me. Last year I had a…a pulmonary embolism and it’s kind of been…otherwise been really healthy but it’s kind of since last year seem to have gone downhill. So, I had this embolism and then about…about a month ago I started getting these really bad migraines and…and some double vision. Went to the doctor and he told me to get an MRI. It came back with a…a…a…s brain tumor that’s 3.4 cm. It’s called an acoustic neuroma that kind of grows in my ear next to my brain but it’s pushing against my brainstem. And, you know it…it…it…it…it would be pretty dangerous. They’re gonna have to take it out in the next couple weeks. So, I am praying for obviously as a successful surgery but I’m also praying…there’s…there’s two risks. They…they have already told me I’ll probably lose my hearing in my right ear but also the…the risk that…that…that is possible is kind of almost permanent, is Bell’s palsy because it’s right there on the facial nerve as well. So, just praying for that, praying for my family. I can’t drive right now because…because my double vision and so my wife’s having to take me around everywhere and we have three small boys. So, I really…I pray…I pray for the prayers. I have lot’s of people praying for me but if, you know, more…more people going to the Lord on my behalf would be amazing. The only last thing I pray well…

2 notes · View notes

bellatrixobsessed1 · 4 years

Text

A Flame For A Cabbage (Part 4)

Azula squints, her body aches from head to toe and she still hasn’t had her fill of pan-fried noodles. She had already paid for the meal too. She forces herself upright with a pained huff. It is dark, the only light she sees comes from the slant of a window on the door.

She realizes that she is alone.

Alone and in a place that has nothing but a cot, a toilet, and a copy of Fifty Shades Of Grey--she isn’t sure if this is for leisure or for toilet paper.

It takes her a moment to realize where she is. A cell. A dreary and dank, musky smelling Earth Kingdom cell.

There comes a screech of metal as the slant on her door slides open. A small shaft of light pours in.

A gruff voice greets her, “good evening, princess.”

“She’s a cabbage merchant.” Corrects a distant, feminine voice.

“Oh right!” The man calls back. “We haven’t caught the princess yet, thanks for reminding me Long Feng.”

“You’re welcome!” Long Feng answers in that same high-pitched tone. Azula can’t even begin to fathom why the man is talking like that.

“You’re probably wondering why you are here.” The man says.

She wishes that he wouldn’t make assumptions. The things she actually wonders about are if she will ever get her pan-fried noodles (or, at least, her money back) and how good the stock market is as far as cabbages are concerned.

“You probably have a lot of questions, don’t you?” He continues. “ So I will allow you to ask one question and I will answer honestly. You can ask more than one but I might lie about those.”

Now he sounds like her old history teacher; she still isn’t sure if the first avatar actually was a 400 foot tall platypus bear with purple horns and silver wings. Azula perks up, she has found the perfect mascot for her cabbage company!

The Dai Li agent coughs, bringing her back to attention. “Can I ask two?” She asks. A nervous sweat breaks on her forehead and she abruptly adds, “no wait! That’s not my question!”

“You have one more question left out of two.”

Azula folds her arms over her chest and gives an indignant sniff. There are a great many things she could ask; she could inquire about why she is here, about where here is, about whether the book is for reading or for ass wiping. She could ask if they would be willing to bargain with her for her freedom, could ask who is in charge.

She could ask if he wants to buy a cabbage…

The possibilities are endless. Endless and full of opportunity. But there is an itch that she needs to scratch, one that is irresistible thanks to her inclination for logic and perfection. She knows that it is hardly important in comparison to her other questions, the ones that can actually move the plot forward. But the one she actually asks is already out of her mouth, “why did you open another slant to talk to me if one was already open?”

.oOo.

“My, my, you're easy to find. It's really astounding my brother hasn't captured you yet.” Sie greets.

The bison growls at him, or maybe that was a sneeze, he can’t be sure.What he is certian of is that the Kyoshi warriors have all drawn their fans and shields.

“What do you want with us?” Suki asks.

He very well could answer her question, let her know that he needs a disguise. But he can also make a pun. Yes a pun. Puns are good. “Who are you?” He asks, already wriggling his eyes in anticipation for the punchline. “The Avatar's fan girls?”

“Wo-ow.” Mai grumbles. “Goo-od one.” And more to herself she adds, “I bet that the cabbage merchant wouldn’t have made such a stupid joke.”

Sie frowns, “says you.” Great, now he is acting like the teens that he is surrounded by.

“If you're looking for the Avatar, you're out of luck.” Suki says.

“What if we’re looking for Waldo?” TyLee taps her finger on her chin. “Or Carmen SanDieago? Where in the world, is she?”

“Then you’re still out of luck, I’ve been looking for ages!” Exclaims one of the other kyoshi warriors.

“I knew this was a waste of time.” Mai says with a dramatic sigh.

“No Avatar, huh?” Sie asks. “Well, that's okay…” he trails off as he slides off of his mongoose-lizard. He never had figured out how to unmount these things. He stumbles gracelessly to the floor. “That’s a really cute dress and I’d love to borrow it!” He finally finishes.

Suki’s eyes go wide, “no way, this dress is Kyoshi!” She declares. “The Autumn, 100 AG line.”

Sie sends a blast of fire at the girl. He needs that dress!

It goes so well with his eyes!

And it makes a great disguise.

Miles away Iroh eats some fries.

Mai takes this as her cue to toss a few shurikens. She doesn’t particularly pay attention to where she throws them, which is probably why they all hit a tree instead of any of the warriors. “You're so colorful, it's making me nauseous.” She remarks before actually putting some real effort into her attack.

“You're not prettier than we are.” TyLee says as the author squints at the episode’s transcript and decides ultimately that this is random enough on its own to be left as is. She quickly chi blocks her more unsightly combatant.

Sie shakes his head a coaxes a green flame into his palm he tosses it at Suki and Appa. The bison lets out a terrified groan. “Afraid of fire, I see. That's good. You should be.” He too is afraid of fire and yet here he is, a firebender. He is, in fact, afraid of most things.

The air around Suki seems to glitch, a staticy haze silhouettes her. Through the static it is hard to make out her voice, “go, Appa! Fly away from here!” There is something else layered on top of it...a yellow sponge wearing pants of the square variety shouting, “just get out of here you stupid dumb animal.” The image and audio overlaps Suki in such a way that they both occupy the same exact spot in space and time at the same time. Sie covers his ears and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again the world is as it should be. He is growing tired of these nightmarish glitches.

Appa is still not gone though, he squeezes his eyes shut again. And when he opens them, there is no more Appa. Sie’s stomach lurches, spirits, what kind of power has he acquired.? And why has the author chosen to leave that period in there instead of just deleting it!?

Suki opens her fan once more.

“Don't you know fans just make flames stronger?” Sie asks. Agni, some people lack basic common sense. He runs into a jump and brings a halo of green fire to his feet. Suki’s eyes widen...

*Insert really bitchin’ scene break here*

Azula sighs, maybe if authors actually knew how to write, she wouldn’t be in this situation right now. As it were she is forced to listen to the fussy, extremely sexy, but really loud and obnoxious man she had been dragged here with.

“You have to believe me, they're firebenders! They won't stop until they win the War!” He declares.

She cannot see what is happening but she can hear it.

“Calm down, you're safe now.”

Maybe she should open her eyes.

But it is so late at night, she needs her rest if she is going to have the wit to sell cabbages to shady organizations. Curiosity gets the better of her. She peers into Jet’s cell. The boy is surrounded by a metal track. There is a lantern rotating around the track.

“Our economy would be ruined, our peaceful way of life – our traditions – would disappear. There's no war in Ba Sing Se.”

Azula chuckles to herself, but otherwise remains quiet. She doesn’t want to give them a reason to strap her to that chair.

“You might as well say what you wish, cabbage merchant.” The man frowns, “you’ll be in this chair soon enough.”

Well in that case… “There is clearly a war and you know it. In fact, I sold many cabbages to many soldiers who were trying to stop the walls from being breached. I’ve been all over the world trying to sell these cabbages, I’ve witnessed the fall of Omashu; sales were dreadfully down during that. Have you ever tired to sell a cabbage to people who are pretending to have pentapox? By all means, I think that I have heard of that, but they clearly weren’t sick.” She takes a breath. “I’ve seen decrepit cities, crumbling because a dreadful wartime economy and I’ve seen Fire Nation banners arise all over the Earth Kingdoms. There was also this particularly dull-headed man who decided to destroy the moon. One minute I was writing a letter to my father, the next I am in the dark, unable to see my letter, and wondering where the moon went.” She takes another breath. “Only a fool would destroy the moon.Do you know what other nation needs the moon?” She doesn’t let him answer. “The Fire Nation. They need the moon too but someone decided that the moon is not important. How did you hide that from your citizens?” This time she leaves room for an answer. One that does not come (because logically, such a tremendous feat cannot be covered up). “Both water tribes have fallen, and your hat is on crooked and makes your forehead look comically large.”

“Yeah, you over-grown butt hair!” Jet adds.

Azula frowns, he has just made a mess of her insult. “Please shut up, you beautiful man.”

“Sorry.” He mutters.

The agent blinks. “Long Feng, we’re going to need a more powerful lantern!” But Long Feng is not there. His presence is required in another scene; “Ba Sing Se remains a peaceful, orderly utopia, the last one on Earth.” He says to the Avatar. The arrowed boy and his friends look at him with horror, at the implication of just how in the dark the people of Ba Sing Se are. “Myself and the rest of the Dailluminati are making sure that everyone knows that.”

But Azula has no knowledge of this, she only sees the lantern continuing its rotation around Jet’s head. “Spirits, that must be annoying.” She mutters to herself.

The Dailluminati agent pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do you know how hard it is to hypnotize someone with all of this side commentary?”

“About as hard as it is to sell a cabbage to rouge bison-stealing sandbenders who claim that are trying to flee the scene of the crime?”

The Dailluminati agent blinks again. “Yeeeeah...sure.” He turns to his companion. “Hey, Kiko, can you put this one back in her cell?”

“I’ll put myself back in the cell if you buy a cabbage.”

He tosses a handful of coins at her. She doesn’t have her cabbage stall, but a true cabbage merchant can create a cabbage from nothing. She closes her eyes,takes a deep breath, and wills a cabbage into her hand. She hands it to the Dailluminati agent and makes her way back into her cell before the cabbage can disappear and he can demand his money back. One day, she will be a true cabbagebender.

She lays upon her bed and listens to the ambiance of Lake Laogai.

“There is no war within the walls. Here we are safe. Here, we are free.”

#Avatar #Azula #Cabbage Man #Jet #Mai #TyLee #Suki #Fanfiction

2 notes · View notes

therealkn · 5 years

Text

David’s Resolution - Day 8

Day 8 (January 8, 2019)

Seven (1995)

“If we catch John Doe and he turns out to be the devil, I mean if he’s Satan himself, that might live up to our expectations, but he’s not the devil. He’s just a man.”

[Yeah, I know, I could have watched this on Day 7. Didn’t realize it until it was too late. Whatever, not really that big a deal.]

David Fincher did not have the most auspicious start to his career as a filmmaker. His feature debut was 1992��s Alien 3, a movie that 20th Century Fox meddled in everywhere they could and as much as he could, and he ultimately disowned the film after they locked him out of the editing room. Alien 3 was like someone deliberately breaking a vase and then asking you to try and piece it all together, but then decide to do it themselves just because they can. The whole ordeal with the film made Fincher feel like he may not want to do another movie. But, thankfully, he was given a really good script, and he made this movie. And then he made The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and so on.

Seven (or Se7en if you want to be cool, but I am not cool) was the movie that showed people just what David Fincher could do if you let him do a movie without the studio fucking you over however they can. What you get is a taut police procedural that, no matter how many times you see it, even if you watch this movie for the first time knowing what happens, it still remains as suspenseful as if you were watching this movie blind.

The movie follows two detectives: the older, about-to-retire veteran William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and the younger, hot-tempered and emotional David Mills (Brad Pitt). Mills has just been assigned to Somerset on what is to be the older detective’s last case, which is investigating the death of an extremely obese man who was apparently force-fed until his stomach burst. Then there’s another murder that first seems unrelated: a lawyer whose office has “GREED” written in blood on the wall. After Somerset does a bit more investigating in the obese man’s death, he finds the word “GLUTTONY” written behind a refrigerator, and he realizes that they’re dealing with a serial killer who’s basing his M.O. on the seven deadly sins. And there’s five more to go.

In previous reviews, like the Death Walks films, I said that it would be hard to talk about the story because I didn’t want to spoil it. Well, fuck that. By now, Seven has fallen into the “it was his sled” category of twists that aren’t twists anymore because of how well-known the twist is. Basically everyone knows that Kevin Spacey’s the killer, and it’s Brad Pitt’s wife’s head in the box, and if you didn’t know it by now, then you would’ve likely found out soon anyway. If you don’t believe me that it’s not a twist anymore, consider this: what’s the most famous scene in the movie? The one thing everyone remembers? It’s Brad Pitt going, “Ohh, what’s in the booox?”

This film is dark. From beginning to end, you know it’s going to be dark and brutal and will not end well. Somerset even lampshades this by saying, “This isn’t going to have a happy ending.” Some people might be turned off from the film because of its darkness, and I can understand that. The film has a bleak, brutal, somewhat depressing tone to it, and ultimately the protagonists are unable to stop the killer’s murders, which can make people wonder what the fucking point of the movie is. If you don’t like this movie because you feel it’s too dark, that’s perfectly fine.

But beyond that, what we have is a well-made thriller. The pacing of the film’s really fucking good, stringing us along at just the right speed so that things don’t feel like they’re being rushed or that the film is dragging its feet. The tone of the movie, while dark and brutal, is not excessively so, and even the more gruesome murders like Greed or Lust are ones we don’t really see much detail of. If this movie had been made a decade later, you can be damn sure we’d had long, detailed shots that don’t spare any of the gruesome details of the death. We’d have seen the mutilated body of the Lust victim, we’d have seen the killer mutilate the Pride victim, we’d definitely have seen the head of Mills’ wife. But by sparing us that, it leaves us to imagine the details in our mind, where they’re sure to be more fucked-up than what they actually would be on-screen. The film has a very disturbing atmosphere, but it doesn’t need to be gory or blood-soaked to be disturbing. It does so with the nature of the murders, the dreary environment, and the sense of discomfort as you enter the scenes of the crimes.

Adding to the atmosphere is the amazing score by Howard Shore, which is tense and nerve-racking and adds perfectly to the sense of unease that you feel watching this movie. Seriously, I’m on my fourth viewing (fun fact: David loves his audio commentary tracks and will listen to every one of them for his movies - in fact, I’m actually listening to one of this movie’s commentaries now) and it’s amazing how Shore’s music meshes with the film. It doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering or beating you over the head with what it’s trying to do.

And then you have the actors. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt make for a great team, and at first it seems like your standard “older world-weary veteran teamed with young hot-tempered rookie” thing that we’ve seen countless times. Their professional and personal relationship, however, doesn’t get built over time as it’s forged through fire, but as they understand each other more and more with each new murder that comes up. Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Brad Pitt’s wife, doesn’t get that much to do but does a great job with what she has. R. Lee Ermey plays the police chief, who is surprisingly calm and restrained instead of being... well, R. Lee Ermey. You’re having the guy who is most famous as the drill instructor on Full Metal Jacket playing a character type who’s often yelling, and that doesn’t really happen. It’s weird, but well-written. Also, gotta give props to Leland Orser as the man who was forced to kill the Lust victim and who is believably shocked and freaked out of his mind. That’s because he actually was freaking out: in a bit of method acting that would make Robert de Niro or Christian Bale proud, he stayed up for two nights straight before shooting the scene and, between takes, he would sit in a corner and hyperventilate to make himself as believably scared out of his mind as possible. All that effort for a small but fairly important role. I applaud you, Mr. Orser. Is there another serial killer movie from the 1990s that he’s in? I’d like to know. (Yes, I already know that one, and trust me, I will watch it this year.)

And then we come to the killer, John Doe, played by Kevin Spacey. It’s difficult to talk about Spacey without bringing up the sexual assault scandal surrounding him, so all I will say is that he is very good in this movie, and I appreciate that the promotional material for the film did everything it could to make who the killer was a secret. That’s all I’m saying on the subject.

...Actually, now that I’ve said “serial killer movie”, you know what’s really interesting? This movie isn’t really about the serial killer. It’s basically a police procedural that just happens to have a serial killer with an M.O., and that’s nothing new. Of course, the idea of “serial killer whose M.O. is thematic punishment for their victims” would later form one of the core aspects of Saw, which can provoke the “Seinfeld is unfunny” effect on modern audiences watching this movie for the first time. But that’s not this movie. This isn’t about a psychopath who goes around murdering people as “punishment” for their sins. This is about two detectives who are trying to stop that serial killer. The movie doesn’t cut away to John Doe killing victims or preparing for their crimes or even show their personal life. It keeps its focus on the detectives and their efforts to solve the crime.

When you think about it, a major theme of the movie is apathy. It’s everywhere: in people who don’t care about what weird shit they have in their suitcase when they hire a prostitute, in a detective whose years of service have made him use apathy as a shield to live from day to day, even in the film’s muted and dreary color palette. The two characters who are most against apathy are Mills and John Doe; the former calls out Somerset for his apathy and saying that he doesn’t really believe what he says, while the latter is incapable of being apathetic to the world and that is a driving force behind his murders. Hell, the apathy is high when John Doe walks into the police station to surrender, covered in the blood of his victims, something that would be noticed the moment he walked in if this were real life. It really makes you wonder.

If you’re fine with films that go into darker territory, then yeah, I do recommend this. It’s a first-rate thriller and the true start of David Fincher’s career.

Next time: A mind screw of a movie that Roger Ebert would approve of.

#David's resolution #Seven #Se7en

2 notes · View notes

leverage-commentary · 7 years

Text

Leverage Season 1, Episode 6, The Miracle Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Arvin: Thank you. This was wonderful. It was really fun to do.

Chris: I’m Chris Downey, Executive Producer

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer

Christine: Christine Boylan, I wrote this episode

Arvin: And Arvin Brown, the Director

John: This is the Miracle Job! This is episode, I think episode four of the series and - Arvine, why don’t you tell us since it’s kind of unusual career path, why don’t you tell us how you sort of started directing and move into the television?

Arvin: Well, my career was the theatre for many many years. I ran a theatre on an east coast called Long Worth as the artistic director for roughly - exactly 30 years actually, but I always wanted to work more with a camera, and started making the transition a few years before. I gave theatre a year’s notice and discovered that it was exciting and wonderful to tackle a new medium at my stage of the game and eventually after I officially retired from Long Worth, I came out here and made this the- sort of my full career.

John: That’s cool. Now that was D. B. Sweeney our friend D. B. Sweeney as the priest.

Christine: D.B. Sweeny.

John: [laughs] Dreamy Sweeney as the

Christine: He is lovely! Dreamy Sweeney

John: A ridiculous number women on the set, muttering ‘toepick’ and wandering around, giggling in the corner.

Christine: There’s a ridiculous amount of good looking men in this episode.

John: [laughs] Yes, there is.

Christine: To balance out the already glorious female members of the casts.

John: Now, uh -

Arvin: [speaks over John] Yes, exactly! [Christine laughs]

John: - Miss Boyler, why don’t you tell us what the what the purpose of the scene is here? Because-

Christine: The purpose of this scene! Is to talk about Death of a Salesman! [laughs] Isn’t that the purpose of the scene? Um, what’s the purpose of the scene?

John: We’re really trying to establish the family, kind of

Christine: We kicked this around. Well can we…? Yeah we’re trying to establishing the family. The fact that they’ve all gone to Sophie’s play even though Parker’s making that face.

Arvin: I love that shot right there.

Chris: I love that shot!

Christine: Yup, Parker’s dramatic criticism in one shot.

John: Yeah.

Christine: That’s pretty great. They care about each other. They care about each other.

John: This is really the part where - this is, I mean we talk about the arc of the season. This is where we’re trying to establish that they are moving from bunch of people working in the same office, kinda know each other, to actually doing these little interpersonal things.

Chris: That’s one of our classic, kind of, cut away jokes.

John: Yup.

Chris: I mean, that’s really a perfect one right there.

John: Yeah.

Arvine: Although, one of the things I loved working on this - there’s always a slight edge left, you know, which is again, sort of family dynamics.

John & Chris: Yeah.

Arvin: It never gets sentimental in that sense.

John: No, no - they don’t necessarily like each other even though they like each other

All: Right. Exactly.

Arvin: Which I love.

Christine: It’s nice because you can do a workplace scenario and still have this sort of fun of an action show because they’re con men.

John: Now this is interesting. Arvin, you are one of the few directors who came in that was not involved in the development of the show. You know, Roskin had been here, Dean had been here-

Arvin: Uh-huh.

John: So, I mean, when you come into this sort of character dynamic, what do you look at when you look at the scripts? How do you work with the actors? ‘Cause I know you tend to really sit down with the actors to grind out the scripts even between the scenes.

Arvin: Well, one of the things I do in the course of the scene is substantial homework. I mean I read every script that has been written up to the one I’m about to tackle and if there is anything that's completed on... you know as far as I'm concerned I watch it all so I can then-. I really have a real belief that actors always have to feel some sort of continuity in their work and when shows get careless about that, I always think it’s a big mistake. So I wanna know everything that has already been stated about the history of every character before we start, and then I analyze the episode I’m about to do for where it’s going to fit into a sort of - overall journey. What’s happening, what’s changing, what the arcs are, you know, in that particular episode. A perfect example here, I think, is the relationship of Timothy’s character to D.B.’s character and what that said about his past, what that said about his capacity for friendship, a number of things that I think were wonderful character elements to be introducing into the series.

John: And, boy, that brings us to D.B.’s character - Catholicism and the Catholic church.

Christine: Ah, Catholicism...There were really only two people on the staff who could have written this episode.

[All Laugh]

Christine: One is me, and the other is you.

John: Yeah, pretty much. This actually started from us drinking Guinness - there’s a sponsor. Right after the show was picked up I wrote down a couple sheets of con ideas and one of them was ‘steal a miracle’ and it was always one we knew we were going to come in and do and you wound up taking it over as the only other Catholic on staff.

Chris: Well, hey!

John: Well you were busy writing [The] Wedding [Job].

Christine: That’s true.

John: You were the only other episode with somebody in a priest collar.

Chris: I was. The only other -

Christine: And you’re generally happy. We’re the sort of unhappy former Catholics.

John: And you’re generally happy. If you’re doing, like, tortured Catholic writing, that’s really more -

Chris: Tortured Catholic is really not my thing.

Christine: We handle the tortured area here.

John: Yeah, and that was the end here, was - if you’re going to have a group of thieves at some point you sort of have to address the morality. But now I want to talk about how you wound up structuring the mass and everything and all of the research you did on all of this.

Christine: Um, a good deal of research. It’s funny the stuff you remember when you go to mass. And I went to a couple masses around LA. I also - oddly enough there’s a lot of - if you need a particular part of a mass and you want to compare and contrast - you can find that stuff on YouTube.

John: Really?

Christine: Yes!

John: People videotape masses?

Christine: People videotape their masses. I mean, you can also find masses on television. I mean, you know, everybody’s grandma watches mass on TV sometimes. But you can find this stuff on YouTube. I went to a couple of churches in LA - location scouting just to get the feel of it back now. I really hadn’t been to church since I was in Europe a while ago. [chuckles]. Yeah, it was really interesting to go back in sort of a research capacity.

Arvin: And you know what was kind of fun was the resident priest of the church where we shot became a kind of defacto consultant almost in spite of himself. And as we went he was learning - and I love this - he was learning the dramatic requirements. So it wasn’t - he was understanding that every once in a while the ritual had to be bent a little bit to accomodate the story. And he was getting excited about it instead of challenged.

Christine: It was great. It was Father Luis, right?

Arvin: Yeah.

Chris: It was tricky to find the right church too. I mean that was -

Christine: Oh yeah, that was a big thing.

Chris: We wanted to find one that you could believe was about to be bulldozed and wouldn’t have people out chaining themselves to it and yet at the same time had to fulfill all of the story points.

John: Actually, I want to point out that that’s a green screen behind Eliot.

Christine: Yes it is.

John: We actually extended that tunnel going longer in that direction. That’s actually a very pleasant park on the other side.

Christine: The park has a beautiful pond with ducks and children feeding the ducks; it was gorgeous.

John: Which was not what we wanted. [mumbles] This was one of my favorite fight scenes on the show because it’s not a fight scene. It basically… And it’s one of the first times. Interestingly, you can track Eliot and Hardison’s scenes throughout the arc of the season and see how the relationship changes. And he very much, sort of, schools Hardison in violence.

Christine: Uh-huh. And the restraint of violence.

John: And the restraint of violence, that’s exactly right. The entire point - and that’s something that Chris came up with actually - is… It was in the pilot script that he popped the clip on every gun as he moved through the crowd. He made it into a character bit that he disarms the weapon at the end of every fight.

Christine: That’s great.

John: In order to take the weapon out of the equation. Because most people are dependent on the guns. You know, that’s one of the reasons he rejects them.

Chris: Now Arvin, your approach to this? I mean, I see a lot of hand-held, keeping everything close. Was that how you wanted to…?

Arvin: Yeah because I think the essence of this particular - you guys are already nailing it - this particular fight is what’s going on in kind of psychological terms, not about the physical actions here.

John: It’s more of a chess match.

Arvin: It’s a chess match. And there’s a very kind of - in one short scene - there’s a lot of, kind of, power issues going on. You know, transfer of power and the fact that when Chris and Aldis walk out of that scene, the power has shifted to them and away from the leader. There’s almost an Asian sense of saving face even though these are not Asian guys.

John: But gang culture and power culture is universal. It’s one of the reasons that the Hong Kong movies really popped in the ‘80s, because of the universality of the sort of crime mythos.

Arvin: Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Christine: The fight scene was a nice way to show in miniature, the idea of the shifting moralities too. This is a gang, they’re bad guys, but this one member beat up a priest, so the entire gang turns on him.

John: Now, actually, there’s a scene missing there, which I kinda regret we did.

Christine: [Sighs deeply.] Sad day.

John: Which was explaining why the church was going under. Because ordinarily you can’t just buy a church, but we had, actually, a scene where the bishop - we explained and went to the Bishop Rick and we talked to the bishop and said, you know. And we talked to the bishop and they had basically closed the church and were selling it. So there wasn’t really much that D.B. Sweeney’s character could do, but it just wound up going by the wayside, and only really a couple diehards-

Arvin: But this was before I read the script.

John: Yeah, this was before you read the script. It became a pagecount thing.

Christine: Yeah this was way back.

John: It was a pagecount issue. But it really was an interesting scene because it was that the church is in many ways a multi-billion dollar business and they own a lot of valuable property and they make a decision based on a mixture of the needs of the congregations and also where those resources are best allocated.

Arvin: You know, one of the things we should say at some point in here - and maybe this is as good a time as any - is that one of the things that really moved me about the whole experience of this episode was that the issues that the episode was about were really in the neighborhood where we shot. There was a reality to it, partly because of choice of location that I mean, the loyalty of the congregation of this particular church, and yet the financial struggle of that church. I remember on one location day we were trying to get there to scout the place - you guys may remember this - and there was a funeral going on and we watched that funeral and the dynamic of that community, with everybody walking to the funeral - I mean they weren’t driving - there was no parking.

John: No, it was the local church - it’s the church you walk to.

Christine: It was beautiful. It was really beautiful. [Pause] Oh, I’m so happy about that stunt. Can I just take a second and talk about Arvin’s choreography and how it’s brilliant? If anybody uses the space… I mean, really uses the space. It’s just, I mean, look at this location.

John: Well and it’s als the trick- Where is this location?

Christine: It’s an unfinished floor of a building downtown in the neighborhood of the church where we shot.

John: Now with the elevator gag.

Christine: That elevator’s very scary.

Chris: I love the elevator and that we got to use this.

Christine: Oh, these two. That late night. They were hilarious every take after take.

John: That’s Scott...uh…

Christine and Arvin: Scott Lowell.

Christine: He was from Queer as Folk; the American Queer as Folk. He also does A LOT theatre.

John: It was really interesting because we desperately needed a villain - and we use that word, not the other word - and we needed a villain who was almost likeable in this one. Like, almost - you spend a lot more time with the villain than you do in other episodes and you really need someone that you can kinda go ‘Wow! Good opponent. Good scrappy guy. Resourceful.’ You know?

Chris: Well he, you know, imbued it with a kind of showmanship that you needed this character to have.

Christine: Yeah. I really dig in on the villains, so I was happy to have an actor I admired come in and do this. He’s really great.

Alvin: But also one of the greatest advantages you can have if you’re playing villains is a sense of humor and this guy had a major sense of humor.

John: He was really the funniest version of this and that was crucial, particularly with the stuff he has to do later.

Christine: And it lightens it, sort of. Tim and D.B have so much drama to get through, it’s kind of nice to have this a bit lighter.

Chris: [Mumbles something in the background.]

John: And this is clearly His Girl Friday. Actually, this is not the elevator sequence. The elevator scene that we’re doing from the His Girl Friday ripoff that was Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner -

Chris: Wow, referencing the Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner’s Changing Channels. [Transcriber Note: it’s actually called Switching Channels.]

[Everyone talking at once]

Christine: Wow, that’s so many layers deep I don’t know where to go.

Chris: We might have to make a Flintstone's reference.

[All Laugh]

Chris: As you see from the man from Bedrock…

[Laughs and mumbles]

John: But no, that’s when you’re trying to- When you’re writing a show that blows through two or three cons or heists per episode and you’re doing 13 of them, you do start going through, ‘Alright, what contained space can we put them in? What flaw can he have? What paranoia can he have?’ We have a list of like, unreasonable fears that we can inflict on the bad guys. This is also the first time that we drug someone.

All: Yeah.

Arvin: You know, one point we should make also about Scott in this scene which fascinates me is that you have a terrific comic actor, but his physical work in that elevator is remarkable; his sensory work.

Christine: Yeah, absolutely.

John: He’s sweating! He’s really working himself into a frenzy here.

Christine: And then between takes, just strolled over, sipping a water. ‘How you doing?’ Funny. Flirty. You know. And then right back in and hysterical again. It was wonderful. So much fun to work with.

John: And this was also where we started. Was this before 5? Where we started to figure out how little you needed to do in an act. I mean if you found a sequence you really liked with a bad guy you really liked, you could kind of live with them a little longer. You didn’t have to quite hammer the audience.

Arvin: It’s a wonderful discovery to make.

John: Because the problem is - we’re all heist heads. We’re all con freaks. And so for the first couple of episodes definitely, it was a lot of: how much con can we cram into one episode to fool us. And then it became ‘No wait, actually, one well done long sequence.’ And then if you notice past this a lot of times, an entire act is one long sequence. Like Homecoming which was done right after this, is structured that way, because really the entire second act is one heist.

Christine: Oh yeah, it is.

John: And that came from figuring this out.

Arvin: And that’s an incredible discovery to make. I can’t tell you the number of shows I’ve done over these last years where the essential difficulty with the show is that it’s overplotted. Audiences, in my experience, turn off of that. They really are hooked on character for the most part.

John: Is this the first time we meet Tomas? This is the first time we meet Tomas.

Christine: No, second time. He was in the construction sequence. Parker knocked him over with a beam. Andres Hudson. Lovely, lovely man.

John: They did a great job. This is the hardest working office in show business again. This is our bad guy office. Every office.

Arvin: Oh, is that true? [Laughs]

John: Yeah. Seriously, this office is in every episode.

Christine: Every bad guy’s office.

John: We turn the desk around. We turn the windows around. Welcome to shooting on the only independent TV studio in the world. Yeah. You only get one office. But! Our production designer, Lauren Crasco, really made it work. Yeah. Architectural designs in the background. Tables out.

Christine: And the helmet hanging out back. The construction helmet

Arvin: She’s so gifted. Lauren is really gifted.

John: She did a great job.

Christine: So great.

John: Andi was great on set dec.

Christine: Unflappable, that woman.

John: And this was interesting.This was trying to figure out the hook for her. And this is, by the way - a lot of people don’t know this - Gina was born in New Zealand, so this is actually-

Chris: This is going home for her.

Christine: Her native accent.

John: This is her native accent that she’s doing here. This is a great hook, and really the challenge of the episode was trying to figure out how the hell to get him to-

Arvin: -to reveal.

John: To reveal what was going on. And what publicist-? We actually pulled this from someone who had gone through a bunch of publicists. And the publicist had just written a tell-all.

Arin: Oh really?

Christine: Yeah.

John: Because your publicist has to cover your sins. They’re like a priest. And the priest metaphor came in and it just kind of clicked.

Christine: It clicked everything together.

Chris: These scenes are challenging too because you have to have everyone in the conference room. Arvin, what was, kind of, your approach here? Did you look at how some of these were done before?

Arvin: Yeah, as a matter of fact Dean had said to me early on - and I loved the idea of this, so I was happy to try to find the places to do it. He had conceived a stylistic approach that talked about the fact that when the plannings were taking shape or the mission was being stated or whatever, that a circular camera move suggesting the world of change, in a sense, was something he really wanted to explore. And I found a couple of places in the episode - that being one of them that we just watched - where it leant itself perfectly to that kind of dynamic. And it adds excitement to what can often be very static scenes.

Chris: They’re brutal.

[All talk over each other]

Arvin: We all shoot conference room scenes to the point where we want to scream. And this is a whole way of doing it that I think makes absolute sense.

Christine: You did a good job of whipping everybody into a frenzy before what could be dry scenes.

Chris: And Arvin, people might be surprised that a lot of directors don’t do this, but before every scene, you would kind of makes ure that the cast knew where they were in the story and what had come before and what was coming after.

John: You read through the previous scene on this one right?

Arvin: Yep. And you know it’s interesting. It’s been my method since the beginning of working in television, coming out of my background in theatre, in that, far from being a time waster, if you take even just four minutes to outline where this fits in the story, what do we want to accomplish in this scene in terms of the overall arc of the episode. And the minute the actors hear that, it somehow - everybody’s on board then, and then all of the complicated issues you have to deal with in terms of staging, camera work, and everything else fall into place from that.

John: Well that’s interesting, because I just talked about features. I was doing some sort of seminar. I was talking about everybody making the same movie in their own head. And a lot of times even when we’re breaking these episodes, we suddenly run into a problem because we’re all breaking into a different room in our heads. We have to diagram the room, we have to diagram the con. And getting everybody on set - and that’s the most important thing when you’re shooting anything (television, but particularly collaborative mediums between the actors) is everybody’s got the same scene in their heads, everybody’s going to the same endpoint, everyone knows that we’re on the same track.

Arvin: And you know, another point to make about working with actors and in the rigors of working in episodic television. I was told in the beginning, ‘You know, you won’t get any rehearsal time. You won’t be able to rehearse.’ Well in comparison to theatre life, of course there isn’t rehearsal time. But I’ve discovered that if you really care about that, you choose your moments. I mean, I go to the makeup trailer, I go to the wardrobe room, I go wherever they are to go over any points that I think need to be discussed away from the work that’s actually going on on set. And it’s amazing if you know how to talk to actors, the amount of detail you can accomplish in doing it that way.

John: This is where we start to flip our Busey [something] on you.

Chris: Busey being our shorthand for the sidekick.

John: The sidekick. The henchman. Taken from Gary Busey playing the role in Lethal Weapon.

Arvin: Oh! Right!

John: Where you always have a main villain and you always have a Busey.

Chris and Christine: The Busey.

[All Laugh]

John: The Busey is in charge of killing or torturing or coverups and stuff. In our case, Tomas is more of a scheduling Busey.

Christine: We have an executive Busey every once in a while. A notary Busey.

[All talking at once]

Chris: We did. We talked about the Busey as a notary.

John: In this case, Tomas is - and this is - we end with the betraying Busey, which we don’t always use.

Christine: We flipped the Busey.

John: Yeah, we flipped the Busey.

Christine: Because right here he is an arch-villain in training.

John: Yes. Up until this point, hr will eventually be the same ruthless bastard that Scott is playing. And luckily a bunch of - my favorite bit of it - and the actual start of the episode. How the episode was born was: the line scrawled in the bottom of that Guinness-stained paper was five thieves helped me save my church.

Christine: Right.

John: That my miracle. And so working backwards you realize slowly that whether they want to or not, the Leverage team winds up redeeming a bunch of people along the way here. Often accidentally.

Christine: Oh yeah. It’s collateral redemption really.

All: Yeah.

Christine: Oh this was so much fun. I could have done this for weeks.

John: And big props to Eric Bates, by the way for creating -

Chris: Our prop guy.

Christine: Oh, fantastic.

John: Our prop master.

Arvin: This was probably the most challenging scene.

All: Yeah.

Christine: But it was fun!

Arvin: Technically challenging scene.

Chris: And there was. Can we shoot it in the conference room? There was a lot of back and forth about where we were going to set this.

John: And this is the great thing about television, too is - on a ridiculous 7-day budget you have to be able to go to someone and say ‘I need three full size statues of the saint.’ And they will then go make them for you. That was also -

Christine: And we need them to bleed, please.

John: Yeah, we need them to bleed. And we need some of them to explode or fizz.

Arvin: And of course there’s nothing wardrobe loves more than blood on set.

All: YES. Exactly. Yeah.

Chris: Come on, that’s great. That’s a great yellow hat.

John: The yellow duck coat.

Christine: I just love that outfit. It’s like he’s the Morton Salt girl.

John: I also love the little - see this is also where we started realizing if you just give Chris and Aldis a little room, they will make a scene for you.

[All talking at once]

John: It’s like, OK, what is this? They’re like 12 year olds now.

Christine: They would run back to video village and say, ‘We’re gonna do it again cuz we got some other stuff. Is is cool if we do that part again?’ And we’d just laugh. They were terrific.

Chris: I lover her just reading. ‘Oh there’s more blood in the conference room again.’

[All Laugh]

John: ‘This is the sort of thing that happens at Leverage.’

Christine: ‘What a wacky office. Don’t melt Santa.’

John: Now the conference room is a bitch to shoot because while you can open up three walls, you cannot open the wall behind them. It’s actually actually where the TVs are.

Arvin: It’s where the monitors are, yeah.

John: So when you shoot roundy-rounds you have to squeeze a camera in a tiny, tiny space there. But that’s the first time we really realized if we just open the conference room fully we have a continuous space all the way through.

Christine: Right.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: This was a late scene. This was a late edition.

Christine: This was the scene that made us all cry.

John: This was… Essentially we always felt we needed to, you know, we needed to address the fact that Nate had been married and had a son at the same time that these two had had a past. So exactly what were the boundaries of that past? And this was one of those nice moments where you have an Oscar winner and a classically-trained British actress that you can give them a scene and they go, ‘We wanna tweak it.’ And instead of you going, ‘ Oh sweet God, the actors are going to tweak it’, you go, ‘OK, let’s scee what you got!’ And it wound up being fairly close to the middle of what everyone was aiming for.

Arvin: And you know what I loved about-? This is something that should be said more often. Everyone assumes that actors are always angling for more lines and basically their contribution in this scene, if you remember, were trims.

John: Tim cut a bunch of the lines, yeah.

Arvin: And that fact that a good actor - and these people are wonderful actors - always knows what he or she can accomplish with a look and a smile.

John: Well a lot of times you overwrite because you need it to read on the page what the intention of the scene is.

Arvin: EXACTLY.

John: And then you have to trust the actors to say, ‘OK. If that’s your intent as the writer, I can get you there in fewer yards down.

Christine: And that has very much always been my process in the room - is overwriting and then cutting it down.

John: Oh really? Is that going to be your excuse for giving me big, bloated first drafts? OK. Sure.

Christine: Yeah, that’s my excuse for the monologues. You like that?

John: That’s very nice.

Arvin: But, you know, on balance it is a better way to go than the opposite - to underwrite.

John: You talked to him about this beforehand, didn’t you?

Arvin: [Laughs]

Christine: I adore Arvin. I adore him.

Chris: They’re on the same page.

John: They’re definitely on the same page. They’re making the same excuses.

Chris: He’s looking at index cards!

Christine: But Chris and I had a similar experience with D.B. about the sermon. We talked to him and basically all three of us together made cuts. And it was so good.

Chris: Yeah. And it really made it so much better.

Christine: Just everything worked. The more we cut the better it was. Because he was giving us what we needed.

John: This shot’s huge by the way.

Christine: Oh yeah.

John: That’s a big shot. How many…? You had one day to do this, right? With the people outside?

Christine: Oh yeah. Exterior church. First day? Second day?

Arvin: Yeah. Second day I think. That’s Lily. Her name is Lily. That’s Lily.

John: I love how the nuns just appeared.

[All Laugh]

John: They have nuns on call.

Arvin: That was almost my foresight moment.

[All Laugh]

John: ‘There’s a miracle! We need four nuns to get down here and pray.’ [Imitating sirens] Wee-oo-wee-oo.

Chris: That’s a great shot, the way it’s framed with the arms.

John: With the arms and the overhead, it’s a beautiful shot. And also this is one of the times where- Usually when we’re on locations we’re in offices, or we’re in… We’re moving through them as plot points. Very rarely is the location we’re in a plot point itself. It’s usually on the way to a con. And it was interesting to see how, you know, you’re a much more actor and sort of style oriented director. You really made the most of this church. There’s a lot of beautiful shots in here which really focus on the fact it’s a church. It has inherently beautiful architecture. It has beautiful angles. It has beautiful lighting.

Arvin: And for examples, the little area now that we’re looking at is an actual ritual area that’s there. The minute I saw it i thought, ‘We have to-. That has to be incorporated. It’s part of- It’s something so neighborhood and touchingly about faith in that little scenario.

Christine: Absolutely. We just had a different feeling even being in there or just right outside the church.

John: Yes. Yeah. It’s definitely an off-speed for the rest of the season. In a good way. But that’s, you know. We were talking about this in an interview yesterday, and we were talking about the fact that they shouldn’t feel like 13 of the same episode. The luxury of doing television as opposed to movies is that you can do one that feels a little different. You know, one that feels more like a baseball lineup than a...you know…

Arvin: Oh my god. That is so true.

John: And there’s D.B. very angry.

Christine: I love that. ‘What did you do?’ We laughed every time. He grabs him almost by the ear and pulls him into the church. These two were just magical together.

John: And they could really create-. It’s interesting - Tim’s originally from Jamaica Plain, South Boston, you know, he keyed in on this approach to the character that we did immediately. And you really get the sense that he and D.B. have been friends for -.

Chris: Oh, you really do. I mean, that’s for sure. In their scenes together, these guys are old friends.

Arvin: They really loved working together.

John: And it’s also Tim does something here that I think is subtle is that Nate uses a slightly different voice and attitude with D.B. than he does with everybody else.

Christine: Yes he does.

John: Because you change when you’re with your childhood friends. You recall that personality at that time.

Christine: Absolutely.

John: He’s nowhere near the same person he is with the team when he’s with D.B.

Chris: And D.B. was very excited to play a priest, right? It was one of the things-

Arvin: Yeah his whole career-.

John: Yeah. He was playing bad guys for a while.

Chris: -bad guys. I mean, Eight Men Out he was - was he Shoeless Joe Jackson?

John: Well on Jericho he just spent like two seasons as evil young deaf girl shooting Blackwater.

Christine: That’s right.

John: So, you know, it was basically like, ‘I get to be a priest? Yeah, I’m all over that.’

Arvin: You know, another thing those two guys created in their relationship in the show - which I thought was amazing - was D.B’s capacity to hurt Tim in really subtle ways in ways that we don’t ordinarily see with that character. So that his disappointment at the fake miracle and what that meant in terms of creating a lie for him with his congregation was painful to Tim.

Christine: I think it cues up the season finale as far as Nate and Sophie’s- the backstory, what’s gonna happen in their past and their future. Kind of just a little goosing here.

John: Well I mean, the fact that Nate is building an awful lot of his current life on his arrogance. His arrogance and his need for revenge. Really the line that we have later in the- [under his breath] ugh, Bibletopia. Um...

Chris: And look at the showmanship here - that’s what I love about it.

Christine: And this was the monologue for the audition. And uh, wow was that fun.

Chris: One of the interesting things about our bad guys is that the ones who really stand out is that they have one moment where they really give their philosophy, their point of view, and I thought this one was [mumbles].

John: And you realize it’s a valid one. Like, in his world view it is a valid point of view.

Christine: It is, but he doesn something - Scott does something so beautiful here in that sort of, just that switch, of when he just leans in and says, ‘Come on, Christy’ and he just kinda lays it in there. The ‘Are you kidding me’ moment, which I really like.

Chris: It’s very Glengarry Glen Ross.

Arvin: Yeah, that’s a perfect comparison.

Chris: You can totally see this actor doing Glengarry Glen Ross.

John: And the model was fantastic. And it was Dean who came up with Bibletopia because we were really struggling

Christine: He burst into the room and said -

Christine and John: ‘Bibletopia’!

Christine: Which was hilarious.

Arvin: That’s great.

John: Well we know we wanted to do the switch, but we didn’t have one way to say it.

Christine: Right.

John: And he came down with the word. I remember we were actually sitting upstairs and talking about it and then he burst into the room and wandered off again.

Chris: As he’s wont to do.

John: As he’s wont to do. He will like burst into the writers room, drop something, and then run out again.

Chris: He’s a hallucination!

Christine: Just something crazy.

John: But that’s part of the fun! [Clears throat] Pardon me. We have the writer’s room and the whole production facility in one building. And that’s part of the fun of it is we have a lot of cross-pollination between departments. You know, as long as you can keep enough control that everyone realizes that the writers are really in charge.

Christine: Yay TV.

Arvin: You know, a little issue here that emerges is that the miracle spins out of control - the fake miracle - is that the comment that’s also being made about our culture, that given what goes on with the media, that everything spins out of control.

John: Well that was actually a TNT note where they asked us, ‘Would it really spin out of control this fast?’ And I sent them the YouTube video where there were a thousand people looking at a stain of Christ on a wall.

Arvin: YES.

John: The water stain. It was plainly Kris Kristofferson, not Christ. It was plainly not even vaguely Christ-like. Which may imply things about the religious nature of Kris Kristofferson, I wanted to explore. The point is: that, yes-. Usually whenever we get a question, it’s like I can give you four things from popular culture which show it’s even far worse. And the apostolic visitation is great. The idea that it’s the Vatican CSI squad.

Chris: Vatican sold by suits. That’s really what you sell ‘em by. Guys in white hair and suits.

John: And the apostolic visitation team is real.

Christine: Yeah, apostolic visitations are real.

John: They send out a confirmation team and in most TV shows they’re portrayed as a hot young Italian woman and then a rugged anthropologist or psychologist who has doubts about his faith and then one older priest, but we went with three priests.

Christine: Don’t step on my feature. Why would you guys do that?

Arvin: This is one of my favorite beats in the whole thing because of course he goes in - Tim goes into the priest’s part of the confessional, forcing D.B. to be in the -

John: -other side. Which pays us off on the-. And this was, by the way, one of those writing moments where we really didn’t know how to flip the Busey. It it was just in the middle - I remember it was like a Thursday morning at like 10:30 in the morning and somebody went, ‘Wait. Tim’s in the confessional. Ah!’ And then we flipped it. The idea that he would have thought he was talking to the priest and he would have led them. And by the way, we have to note - Nate’s a horrible human being for doing that.

Christine: It’s not a, you know - how strong a foundation is one’s arrogance?

John: Well personally it’s my foundation.

Christine: Solid rock.

John: It’s the bedrock.

Arvin: This confessional booth incidentally, when we first saw it on set, was a little smaller than anyone had been banking on.

Christine: There are a bunch of iPhone pictures of me in the booth.

Chris: Did you look at any movies or anything set in church? I mean, were there any you looked at when doing this?

Arvin: Yeah. Uh-huh. There’s actually a Hitchcock film called I Confess.

John: Oh God, yeah.

Arvin: Which I looked at.

John: I forgot that. That’s really obscure.

Arvin: There’s some terrific confessional sequences in that. But I also had shot a major confessional sequence for a series called Ally McBeal which has become kind of like a cult moment in which the confessional has been bugged by a nun who wants to sell secrets to a reality TV show.

Everyone: [Awkward giggles] Wow.

Chris: That sounds like an Ally McBeal plot.

Arvin: Yeah. Totally Ally McBeal. So I used that for some of the imagery.

John: I also like the opposing colors on the backgrounds on either one. The high light to help point out which side you’re on. Yeah, this is really where D.B. Sweeney. - and the moment goes by so quickly, but it’s the foundation of the entire first season, which is - ‘You’re trying to kill yourself and take some guys with you. And it sort of blows by. But then if you look at the entire arc, that’s really one of the things we focus on. Nate’s not a good guy, you know, and he’s really building, he’s really redeeming this group of criminals by destroying himself.

Christine: And we’re talking about the team gelling and becoming closer. They are not close enough to call him on his problems.

John: Not until the end of the season. You can say bullshit by the way.

Christine: Can I? Can I say bullshit?

John: Sure. Yeah. I don’t care.

Chris: John does.

John: I do. I don’t think they’ve bleeped me yet.

Christine: I heard you were just going for it.

John: I am. It’s a non-stop torrent of filth on these commentaries.

Christine: Filth. Those ties. Wow. I love them. I love the way Scott’s dressed all the way through.

Arvine: Yeah, that was wonderful.

John: And co-opting the apostolic visitation for his own purposes.

Christine: Oh yeah. Terrific.

John: That’s it. That’s all I’ve got on this one.

Christine: That’s it? You’re done? That’s it?

John: Well I’m almost out of Guinness.

Christine: We didn’t even get to the [mumbles].

John: There’s a nice moment actually where we flip the Busey moment. And again, it was interesting - the ‘I’m going to confession.’ ‘So am I.’ was a joke take that led us to the plotline.

Chris: Well that’s how you wanna - when you wanna hide it, you wanna hide it in a joke. Not give it away.

Christine: Um-hum. For those of us who aren’t really good at plot, we just try to take the character stuff and make it into a plot.

Arvin: One of the things that you guys have cultivated that I love and I played on that here - is that sometimes these characters just appear. You don’t know where exactly they’ve come from or how they got there in any kind of logical terms.

John: I actually had a director say when I first started, ‘You know what? Unless they’re walking through the front door in a really interesting way, no one really wants to see them walk through the door.

Arvin: Yeah. And boy, this proves the point I think.

John: Yup: Also a lot of people missed - they’re actually hiding in the confessional in there. When she says ‘that closet’, a lot of people didn’t realize the geography. We’ve crammed them state-room like - A Night at the Opera like.

Arvin: Yeah. Which was with the image there for sure.

John: And this is also where Nate’s arrogance - and this is also really what the episode’s about - is Nate keeps trying to fix things by doing worse things.

Arvin: And this is another one of our circular shots.

Christine: Which is really kind of my favorite shot when it’s done well. And this is just beautiful.

John: Also the church helps. The fact that we’re in this beautiful church so we can get those stained glass windows in the 360. We’re shooting at night, so did we blow those out? We had lights behind those blowing in?

Christine: I believe, yeah. Or at least half of them.

Chris: And the use of candles and stuff? How did that play into, Arvin, in terms of the lighting of this? Did you use some of the natural candlelight when possible?

Arvin: We did. We did.

John: I mean, you can’t get a lot of film use out of it. They’re not good for practical, but they’re great for - look at how they pop out.

Chris: But they’re great atmosphere pieces.

Arvin: They’re just amazing. And they play again at the end.

John: And that’s a nice touch, by the way, is the very Catholic thing of knowing what the candles are for.

Arvin: Incidentally for this final mass, you know, this is one of the great uses of CGI in the episode.

John: This church is never more than half-full.

Christine: That’s right. We’re half empty depending.

John: Yeah. Depends on how you look at it. This is a doubled, CG crowd.

Arvin: That’s right.

John: Now how did you set that up? Did Mark Franco come down and help you set that up?

Arvin: Yes. Uh-huh.

Chris: Mark Franco’s our visual effects supervisor.

John: Uh-huh. Did you do all back to front or left to right? Left on one side and right on the other, right? Or did you just shoot them on one side and they just flipped it.

Arvin: It was all on the right.

Christine: And the the left a different order.

John: And then they just duped them. Yeah. And D.B. really digging in on a perfectly good sermon based on this parable, by the way.

Christine: Thank you very much.

John: You’re welcome.

Chris: You have a second career ahead of you.

Christine: Yeah.

John: When I got this script on my desk, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a perfectly good sermon on this parable. I’m actually fairly impressed.’ I feel somewhat redeemed.

Arvin: Now this is an example for me. This scene - this whole scene of how much can be accomplished on an episodic schedule. Which is just amazing. In a film, I mean, you have a complicated dialogue scene; you have the CGI of filling the church; and then the CGI of the miracle itself.

Christine: Plus picking everybody up.

John: Plus picking up coverage on all these actors.

Arvin: And this was a half - this was not our whole day.

[All Laugh]

Christine: Not it was not. There was not fat on Arvin.

John: There was no fat on Arvin’s shooting schedule at all.

Christine: No, not at all.

John: And how many times did D.B. have to do the sermon? How many? Did you run..?

Christine: I think he asked for an extra time.

Arvin: Yeah he was-

John: Uh! Look at that shot! Oh, that’s beautiful. You can’t build that on a set.

Arvin: Oh no. The ability to use this church was just extraordinary.

John: And he really-. And this is the trick to this - the entire thing is to basically indict each of the characters for the parable and also set up the heist. So D.B. is carrying - in a monologue - this entire show for about two and a half minutes. It’s really a great piece of acting. And he’s right by the way when he calls Nate on his bullshit.

Christine: At this point in the season, he’s the only one who can. Before we meet Maggie.

John: Exactly. And then the miracle itself. This was one of those ones where it really was still a miracle up until we were almost ready to shoot. ‘How do we steal the statue?’ ‘Working on it!’

Christine: We’ll figure it out.

John: Yep. And it was the fact that - uh, where did this come from? The fact that we had to make the lightweight versions of the statue anyway in order to do the miracles. That sort of backed us into, oh - you do the switch the night before.

Arvin: I live this way of showing them. Of the fact that we had created the lightweight this with the guys struggling.

John: With the lightweight thing by the way.

Arvin: Of course.

Chris: That’s acting folks.

John: That’s what the Oscar is for, is the heavyweight - is the fact he can act like things are heavy. A lot of people don’t know that.

Christine: This lovely young actress here.

John: Oh, she’s great in this.

Christine: She’s got more credits than a lot of us, let me tell you.

[All Laugh]

John: Yes, and the fact that they faked a miracle here is really reprehensible. I mean, we don’t often have the team do really horrible things, but speaking as a Catholic, this is a really terrible thing to do.

Christine: It’s pretty bad. Yeah. It’s pretty bad.

Chris: It’s pretty bad all around.

Christine: Although my grandma didn’t think it was so bad and I did give her the shoutout when Hardison talks about his Nana. She’s my Nana. She said, ‘It’s not so bad because it was for a good reason.’ And I said,’ Oh, the ends justify the means for you Nana. That’s fantastic. Thank you very much.’

[All Laugh]

Arvin: That’s interesting.

Christine: I felt great about it. Totally vindicated.

John: And I love how the team does not even try to hide itself as they try to frame the dude at this point.

Arvin: Right.

Christine: Chris Kane’s hilarious over there.

John: Yeah. Constant heckling. ‘You disgust me.’

Christine: Every take Aldis gave a different hilarious line. ‘You need Jesus’ was my favorite one. ‘You need Jesus.’ and walks off.

John: But this was interesting because again it’s one of the things when you write a con or a heist show, the geography of the heist and the sightlines which are usually very different, and so we had to rejigger how things were stolen, how he saw Parker, what the sightline was based on the location.

Chris: Look how many reactions shots have to be built in too here. It just literally one after the other.

Arvin: The story points of this whole sequence are just amazing, I mean, really. If you charted them out of every tiny bit that you have to tell.

John: Yeah, there’s an awful lot of - this scene in our show tends to make our break us, because it really is: how much of the show can you explain with flashbacks before you feel like you’re making shit up.

Christine: Right.

John: And this was a lovely reveal, by the way. I actually had no idea how the director was going to do this moment.

Christine: Oh I so happy about how this worked. This just…

John: [Quoting the script] ‘And then you reveal it’s Tim’. I don’t know! I don’t know how you do that! And you have him lean back and pull focus. It’s lovely.

Chris: It’s great.

John: I think we actually stole a police car for that.

[All Laugh]

John: We’d done that before in Chicago, but that’s another story for another commentary.

Chris: That should go on.

John: That’s a little harder. And I love the conspiratorial look there. It’s the only time Parker is ever in white. Her hair looks really 1940s there.

Arvin: It is, isn’t it?

Christine: Yeah, it’s really - she walked out to do that stunt shot and I couldn’t believe it. She came over to hug me, I said, ‘Don’t touch me, your hair is perfect. Don’t move. Don’t stand in front of a breeze. Just stay.’

John: And of course the bad guy’s bested by his own [something].

Chris: And the gloat!

John: And the gloat scene which we don’t do every episode. Kind of really satisfying.

Christine: And Scott adlibbing, ‘Are you even British?’ Which is just such a nice button.

[All Laugh]

Arvin: That was really great.

John: You know what’s weird? A lot of the time our buttons do come from our day players. In Homecoming it was the reporter saying, ‘We’re going with crap.’

Christine: Oh, that was hilarious.

John: And this is.

All [overlapping each other]: Oh, I love this.

Christine: Brotastic right here.

John: And I will say also from a strictly TV director standpoint, not to blow a little smoke up you, but this should be an incredibly boring moment - just visually. And that fact that you’re actually shooting from under them up is not a choice that a lot of people would make. The stained glass. It really opens it up; it’s a really nice choice.

Christine: Honestly, you know what they remind me of, just the way they’re lit? It’s just like two alter boys waiting, to me. And it’s gorgeous.

John: Yeah. Which is what they were.

Christine: Absolutely.

Arvin: And again, it’s - that sort of thing really does start with staging, because you have to realize. I mean we put them there very deliberately, you know.

Chris: And was this something that you had storyboarded or did you come into the day and thought, kind of - felt out?

Arvin: No, I mean, I always knew - I didn’t storyboard, because I don’t storyboard for most sequences, but I had in my head where it was going to take place from the beginning once we saw the location I knew how the last thing would work. And we placed the - when he moves to the In Memoriam area, all that was calculated far in advance as to what was in relation to what, you know.

Christine: Using the space again and just having him walk in like that.

John: And that’s also Gary Camp, our camera operator, who can shoot anything.

Christine: Oh, he’s fantastic. He can shoot anything!

Arvin: He’s amazing. He’s just amazing. And here again, is the candle imagery.

John: Which we don’t do a lot, actually, in the show. We don’t do extreme close-ups on the show. We do a lot of prop work, or foreground or background. It’s interesting - again, the great thing about TV is you get different directors every week and you get a stylistic mix and you get a show that sometimes looks a little different. And you realize, ‘Oh, we should do more of that.’

Arvin: But also this was in line with what you were talking about in the difference of this episode is that the psychological moment for him, for Timothy, at the end, is not a characteristic moment.

John: No.

Arvin: So I mean, to be that tight on him is almost- And then going with what you were saying about the team, what I love about the way this fell out was the privacy they gave him for that moment, you know.

Christine: Um-hm.

John: They’re respecting his pain.

Arvin & Christine: Yeah.

Christine: Because they’ve all got their own pain.

John: And this is the credit sequence where you get to say anything you want.

Chris: Anything you want. Any thing you left out?

Christine: Anything you want over the credit sequence? I don’t know.

John: Go ahead Boylan. Anything you left out. Any shoutouts.

Christine: I want Arvin to direct everything forever.

[All Laugh]

Christine: He makes me look good.

Arvin: [Laughs] It was wonderful working with Christine who’s sort of a first timer on this.

Christine: This is my first produced episode.

John: This is your first produced episode of television.

Chris: Two theatre veterans.

Arvin: The excitement that you brought to bear and the enthusiasm, I mean, I loved every moment.

Christine: It was like a directing class. I followed him around like a baby chick the entire time. I started getting earlier and earlier to set just to catch him during his walkthroughs. It was great.

John: And thank you very much Arvin and Christine for joining us.

Christine: Thank you. It was fantastic.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 1 #Episode 6 #Season 1 Episode 6 #The Miracle Job

62 notes · View notes

iexistband-blog · 4 years

Text

Spotify meets Augmented Reality - A Five Year Journey

The I-Exist app is available now on the App Store and Google Play!

Thinking about how music might evolve into the future has always been interesting to us, but really, this project started as two guys looking to the past - imagining their younger selves being obsessed with their favorite bands and listening to those albums on repeat. Back then, we would buy physical cds - with the plastic case and the album artwork and everything. Usually all of the lyrics would be in there too, and if you were really into the music, you could look through the pages and sort of get lost in the whole thing while the music played.

Flash forward to today, and here we are with our smartphones and these unlimited music streaming services. It’s a pretty amazing thing with all of it at our fingertips, but we felt like there was still something missing. With all of today’s crazy technology, we imagined what it might be like to take that old school album art of cd’s and vinyl, and somehow wrap it around a listener’s head to transport them into another world.

That was five years ago.

We are I-Exist, two life-long musicians who took the red pill and learned how to program and develop in order to bring this idea to life. Looking back on things, it was without a doubt the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, but we learned so much and are finally ready to share some of that perspective with you here.

ENTER THE ALBUM

So with our new album Consciousness, we thought of what it might be like to create a world for our songs to live in - and for people to come and experience them in different ways. We started developing in VR, even though we knew the world wasn’t ready. There is something so undeniable about its power in completely immersing the listener once they have the headset on, but we also kept mobile in mind, knowing that everyone has a powerful smartphone - and wondered if we could create some kind of window into that same world, so everyone could check it out.

As we built out smartphone functionality, we eventually landed on a camera system that reacts to the way you tilt and move your device, similar to how a lot of augmented reality apps work. We layered that with a traditional music player UI so that the user can enter and exit the space - and also have access to traditional app buttons and options.

We thought to ourselves, now that we have these new systems in place, what kind of content is really worth delivering?

IS THIS THE FUTURE?

It’s exciting to come up with something new, but is it what listeners really want? People already have an established routine for listening to music, whether it’s in the car, at the gym, or maybe multitasking with something else while they have their headphones on. How are we supposed to compete with that?

And the answer there is that we probably can’t. Spotify and Apple Music have pretty much perfected the modern listening experience, no matter how passive it might be. But right there is where the key is for us, it’s a PASSIVE experience. We wondered if we could add something more ACTIVE when you want to dig deeper - or for when you finally become a “super fan” of your new favorite artist.

As it turns out, musicians have been creating content like this for years, it’s just gotten lost a bit here in the streaming age. Do you remember deluxe cds? The ones that maybe had a few additional acoustic tracks thrown in at the end? Or maybe a collectors edition that had a full commentary section from the artist? We found that kind of content to be the most compelling and ended up mixing it into our interactive 3D scenes.

We were already familiar with the status quo, and wondered which new ideas are actually worth delivering. Over five years of testing and brainstorming, we landed on three concepts that ended up working best.

EVERY SONG IS A WORLD

We wanted to create an easy and relaxing way to take in the lyrics, so we ended up creating a basic 3D environment for each song - which gives the listener full freedom of movement to walk around in and explore. We imagined each section of the song being represented as a space on the map, and as they move deeper into that space, lines from the song rise up from the ground as text along with an ambient vocal sample playing in the background. They can take it as slow or as fast as they want, it’s all happening in real time..

While you could argue that reading lyrics from a random web search gets the job done, for us, that just isn’t very inspiring. Thankfully, bringing people into this surreal type of dimension turned out to be a pretty cool experience.. You could imagine more ways to give the listener freedom, whether that’s interacting with other sounds or manipulating physical objects, but we’re pretty happy with the basic movement and idea.

AMBISONIC CHAMBER

By the time you download the app, you might have already heard the studio recording of the song somewhere else, but what about the live performance? One thing that traditional music players are stuck with are their static left and right audio channels. What’s great about AR and VR though, is that you are essentially giving the listener control back of their head and ears, which means they can look around freely in the world. This opens up a lot of opportunities for a more immersive listening experience. Audiophiles out there are probably already aware of this stuff, but the way our head and ears move around in a physical space can give our brains cues that they're actually inside a certain type of room.

Anyway, we utilized real-time spatial audio and ambisonics, modeled the room for our private performance, and had a multitrack recording session with acoustic instruments. It ended up being a pretty cool way to give exclusive content to our fans, especially when you consider that we’ll probably never get to play in their living rooms… but now it kind of sounds like we are.

FIRESIDE CHAT

We thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could sit down at a fire with our fans and tell them some of the deeper stories of how the songs came to be. That would be a pretty intimate way to talk and connect. So that’s what we did. We created a sandy outdoor area with a fire, took the same spatial audio concept from the acoustic room, and just like that… we’re all sitting next to each other by the fire, talking about each song on our new album.

WHAT ABOUT VR?

So those are the ideas that worked out for both AR and VR, but like we said at the beginning, nothing really beats the immersion of a virtual reality headset. If you think about it, this is really the only time we’ll ever have someone’s full focus and attention, and that makes every part of the app more effective. We even made a VR exclusive mode that sort of acts like an interactive visualizer while the original track plays. When you combine that with something like the SubPac, which is a haptic, subwoofer backpack... now their whole body is moving and vibrating with the music. This is pretty much the holy grail, multi-sensory experience that we’d love to give all our listeners, but realize it’s not for most ;-)

WHERE WE ARE TODAY

So after all this time, here we are reporting back to the world with this thing we made. It’s definitely not perfect and we could write multiple other articles about what it’s missing and how it needs improvement - but we’re glad that we didn’t quit and are curious what people might think.

We’re releasing it today with the intro and first world, but in the coming days and weeks we’ll be unlocking portals inside the app that open up new areas and songs. With the whole COVID-19 thing, hopefully that can give something for people to look forward to as they’re locked inside.

Since everyone has a phone, we focused on the mobile build first, which is available now. We’re also releasing on SteamVR on May 12th for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index, and Windows Mixed Reality. PSVR and Oculus Quest versions are also planned for later in the year, but those are going to take a little more optimization.

So we’ve made it to the end and some things have become clear, but there are still a lot of unknowns. Like… is this something the world even wants? Should we open source the project? If we start getting feedback and decide to continue development, where else could we take it? Feel free to check out the app and let us know what you think! We’ll be waiting for you in a digital, alternate dimension.

Brian and Cameron

I-Exist

0 notes

art-in-the-fast-lane-blog · 5 years

Text

Poetry Inspiration

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Launch Audio in a New WindowBY

T. S. ELIOT

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Coming to Rome my mind has been racing with new ideas and feelings about the world and how I fit into it. My love of history both artistic and not has driven me to explore Rome wandering around and seeing all that I can see. While this has been amazing and has inspired me greatly I have had mini existential crises when gazing upon the vast history of Rome. I had never stood in the shadow of something so ancient and felt the gravity of the space in a way that I have here. Whether it is the ruins of the Roman Forum, the Arch of Constantine which symbolized the introduction of Christianity to the prior pagan civilization, a 5th century church with its original ceiling still in tact, or the renaissance palaces that unsuspectingly line the streets, the Baroque sculptures that inhabit the piazza’s, and even the remnants of the Fascist regime buildings and propaganda under Mussolini. The history here is staggering, not to mention all the incredible museums where art resides which is a whole other beast. The intense feelings and visceral reaction I have had when experiencing most of these spaces got me thinking about time and what it means. It baffles me that these places have been visited by so many people since their creation and are still standing. It might be that because we are in the history center of Rome, basically the major landmarks of ancient, medieval, renaissance, and baroque Rome are in one area, that I feel an overwhelming sense of time and space. I can’t seem to grasp how I feel because it is both positive and negative in the sense that I am completely in awe and interested in the history, but it makes me feel small. Both of these things are good because I find that it is so utterly important to know history and to understand that so much has happened and so much will happen, you are just a passerby.

Movement, time, and space are linked and have interested me in my artistic practice. After having my mini breakdowns contemplating time and what it means to move through time I decided to try and tackle this topic and my feelings through art. I have been interested in similar subjects for a while reading theory pieces by Guilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jean Louis Boissier and literature by T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, and so much more. I have also been looking at artists like Xu Bing, William Kentridge, Tony Oursler, Hito Steyerl, Ryoji Ikeda, Miao Xiaochun and also so many more. These artists, their ideas, and the literature that follows has consistently been in the back of my mind, but now that I am in Rome having these feelings and experiencing these moments I want to dive into everything regarding movement, time, and space. Animation is also a perfect medium because its basis is in movement and the illusion of it. Mixing that with video and maybe even an installation would create an interesting tension and commentary on the thoughts I am formulating.

Still working on a concrete concept I have been meditating on different literature and essays regarding time and its undefinable definition. This poem from my childhood came to mind (my mom is an english major and writer so would consistently make me read Eliot) and thought it is a good starting point to begin my project in Rome. The quote, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” specifically stands out and I have begun writing more and thinking about this concept. I will keep this blog updated on what I plan on doing and thinking :)

0 notes

sazandorable · 7 years

Text

continuing the BR (re)watch so have other Good parts of yoi:

amongst the things the HD versions corrected: Yurio’s hairdo in his flashbacks from his first GPF event. he now has a crown braid (with half-up ponytail?) the whole time, not just on the podium. important changes.

sara congratulating yuuri for his qualification THAT HE NABBED UNDER HER BROTHER’S NOSE RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER BROTHER

seung-gil’s sparkly gloves and necktie

michele’s scream noises (amazing)

emil recognizing michele’s screams

emil taking the hug happily

emil carrying michele

the audio commentary for episode 10 has chris’s seiyuu and miyano, and they begin the ep gushing over victor’s bod and talking about butts. (the pool scene) (he also later says Isabella’s name aloud!)

“this guy is Jean-Jacques leroy... i think”

yurio: *about to insult his fans* lilia: Yuri Plisetsky, Do Not Use Non-Beautiful Words yurio: *lets fans take selfies with him* JJ’s fiancée: *insults yuri angels* yurio: DON’T FUCKING INSULT MY FANS

btw isabella went from being his “koibito” to being his “fiancée” between eps 9-10, they literally just got engaged, he’s allowed to show off a tiny bit

phichit’s contact picture for yuuri is either Vicchan or Makkachin, Idk which is cuter

THEY ADDED SOMEONE TO PHICHIT’s SELFIE WITH GUAN G HONG I THINK IT’S LEO AND HE’S LIKE BASICALLY SNIFFING GUANG OHNG’S NECK WTF WHAT DECISION WAS THIs??? AND IT HAS “I HAD A RESTFUL VACATION” AS DESCRIPTION DID THEY ALL HAVE A SELIF E SLUMBER PARTY IN CHINA OR STH wHAT

JJ’S CAT EARS PIC IS 1) THEM SHOWING OFF THEIR ENGAGEMENT RINGS I NEVER REALLIZED WTF THAT’S ACTUALLY CUTE, 2) TAGGED “#foreverlove #lover #love #happy #fit #couple #hot #ring #lovestory #forever #cute” strike that someone stop JJ (THIS IS AMAZING, WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TWEETS DESERVES A RAISE)

MIYANO LOVES THAT PIC (they all do tbh, lots of laughing and clapping)

YUURI IS NO LONGER FOLLOWING THE YURI’S ANGELS, THAT TWEET IS FROM MILA MILA IS THE ONE RETWEETING THAT OMGGKLMFDKGLMFKG MILAAA (her account is milla-bavicheva, though it’s spelled “Milla Babicheva” in official artbooks, two l’s but two b’s) “Yurio & Yuri Angels! He’s loved by many.” cute.....

the necktie viktor wants to burn is now striped, btw, it’s more understandable that he has something against it than when it was just a totally normal plain tie

i think chris’ seiyuu is saying it’s not so bad

they all question where otabek’s bike came from. did he bring it from kazakhstan. (no answer given.)

the yuri angels are now screaming about otabek and yuuri on twitter with 1) actually different posts, 2) multilingually (jpn, and a russian and a probably-european-possibly-french girl tweeting in english)

“yurio had never been asked to be friends before!!!!!”

“now back to my and yuuri’s story :) :) :)”

yuuri’s incredible full blush as he spots the jewelry store

no audio commentary comments on the church scene because they’re all busy laughing too hard about some JJ tangent again. just telling the world that sound bites exist of Miyano yelling “INSTAGRAAAM!” and “VKUSNOOO!”

.... according to yamamoto, apparently chris is also popular with canadian ladies (in universe, i believe?), they love jj of course but. foreign chris is also v popular. (they other two are like “huuuuu, really? :O”)

phichit’s eye is slightly changed on that one shot but flawless eyeliner stayed

mari and minako’s faces are also redone but STILL SD and Judging

so. many. shots. where the rings are Better Done

... yamamoto calls the scene where phichit yells at the restaurant LEGENDARY, this is when they all start clapping too

... also clapping and laughing like sillies at JJ Interrupting

i’m so mad i can’t understand 99% of what they’re babbling about, it sounds hilarious

chris’s seiyuu finds yurio-san beautiful when he’s angrily telling viktor to die. (they did ease up on his facial expression but he’s still Furious)

gods, that seaside scene... TT__TT

guang hong’s room is so pink, his phone is phink, his tablet is pink, his laptop is pinkish, i love this boy

yamamoto is like “ep not over, let’s say for the Special Ending” —- wait i think she’s saying JJ&Isabella were also at that banquet :O oh, well, makes sense since JJ was amongst the GPF competitors, but. we now know that they both likely SAW THAT PARTICULAR BIT OF IT. And she confirms that Mila too, that is indeed probably her in the background! no word on Sara as far as I can hear though (but considering Michele was also at that GPF, she was likely around too no matter what)

miyano can’t get over the pole dance but admits it’s cool

... aND FINDS DRUNK YUURI CUTE

#yuri on ice #skating animu #yoi spoilers

4 notes · View notes

toraonice · 7 years

Text

Yuri on Ice BD audio commentary translation - Volume 3

Translation of the audio commentary of the BD/DVD vol.3, by Mitsurou Kubo and Junichi Suwabe, voice actor of Victor Nikiforov. I really wanted to post this before the weekend because I’m not going to be home a lot, so I decided “well, I might just not sleep tonight and translate this instead”… This time there are some parts that I translated almost integrally. They talk a lot about Victor, especially Suwabe’s struggle to get into the role. It provides insight while at the same time not providing… since apparently it’s very hard to guess what is “right” when talking about Victor. I’m sure you will get what I mean if you read what they say…

The commentary is only for episode 6. Episode 5 has no commentary. It’s not a full translation but I summarized most of what they said, and as I wrote above some parts are almost completely translated. As in the previous ones, the format is different from normal interview translations, and you can find my comments too (mostly in brackets).

Translation under the post because it’s long. Enjoy!

-In the beginning they introduce themselves and, talking about their age, Kubo says that it’s the first audio commentary where both are over 40 (Kubo is 41 and Suwabe is 44, while Toyonaga is 31 and Uchiyama is 26). Suwabe says that actually most of the voice actors playing the skaters in YOI are below 40, except “maybe Yasumoto”. (Though in fact Yasumoto is turning 40 in a few days, and he forgot Nojima, Seung-gil’s seiyuu, who is already 40 and turning 41 in a few days, coincidentally the same day as Yasumoto, lol).

-Suwabe hasn’t listened to the other audio commentaries and says that he’s worried whether he can do it properly, but Kubo tells him that they mostly talked about things unrelated to what was being shown in the anime and he’s like “oh, that’s something I’m good at!”. Kubo says that she has no idea how audio commentaries are usually done and Suwabe replies that it really depends on the series.

-During the scene where Yuuri and Victor are in the airplane flying to China, Kubo comments that the light brown shirt Victor is wearing looks like an “old lady shirt” and he looks cute with that on. (In Japan “old lady shirts” are long-sleeved inner shirts, usually in sober colors like gray or beige, often used by middle-aged or older women under other garments to keep warm) Suwabe asks her whether someone like Victor would usually fly business class or above, and she replies that normally athletes are paying for the trips, including their coach’s part, which means that they need to pay for two tickets and therefore in most cases they don’t get very nice seats (she is referring to Yuuri and Victor’s trip, therefore she actually doesn’t reply to the initial question regarding whether *Victor* would fly business class, but judging from his comment in the series I’d believe he does..). She says that after she went to see the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona she casually ended up on the same return flight as the Russian team and all skaters where sitting in economy class, including Evgenia Medvedeva who was in the last row of economy seats despite winning the gold medal. Suwabe comments that he rarely has a chance to travel abroad, so when he does he would consider spending more to get a good seat, and Kubo says that it’s important to have the right to buy comfort with money, especially for long flights.

-During the scene at the hot pot restaurant, Kubo explains that the restaurant shown in the anime actually exists, and it’s in Beijing close to the classy hotel skaters stay at. She says that she went there with director Yamamoto and the food was delicious. She also says that after YOI aired it got popular and they did some promotions like offering drinks (she doesn’t mention based on what). Beside the hot pot restaurant, the food stands on the streets where also really there. Suwabe comments that the topic of food comes up a lot in YOI, and since it also used to air very late at night it could be considered a “food terrorism” (in English you would more commonly say “food porn”) anime, because it made viewers hungry. Kubo says that the eyecatches were probably Yamamoto’s idea, but she did intend to add in the anime lots of elements that would cause people to physically do something the next day, which includes of course showing food that people would want to eat. She mentions that there was a temporary katsudon boom and that she even heard how katsudon would disappear from convenience stores in the middle of the night because people were going out to buy it. Suwabe says that he also felt like eating katsudon himself and actually did a few times. To explain why she decided to use katsudon, here she tells again the story of the French guy who loved katsudon. She remembers telling someone but I guess she forgot that she already talked about it in the audio commentary of episode 1… (I won’t write it in detail, if you forgot or haven’t read it please check out the audio commentary of vol.1 here) It’s funny how Suwabe is clearly puzzled when she tells him how the guy thought katsudon was “healthy” (Suwabe is like “uhm??”) and how he lost 5 kgs in one month eating katsudon on a daily basis (again Suwabe is like “eh…?”). However he says that he can see how foreigners would like katsudon, because it’s a little salty-sweet like teriyaki which is also popular in America, plus egg and cutlets are both commonly eaten in many places all over the world.

-Regarding “Ousama to Skater” (“The King and the Skater”, the fictional musical from which Phichit’s songs are taken). Kubo says that she saw the musical “The King and I” in New York City and she was moved by it. She really wanted a musical song to be used in one of the programs, so she created “Ousama to Skater” as a background setting, coming up with a very detailed story for it. Real life skaters often use music from movies too and some songs are considered classics. They mention Yuzuru Hanyu and Suwabe says that he likes Yagudin’s program “The Man in the Iron Mask”. Other skaters in YOI are also using music that is said to be from movies (fictitious movies of course, like the song of Guang-Hong’s FS), but Kubo says that she created the setting of “Ousama to Skater” with more details than the others, and that in the world of YOI the songs from this musical are considered figure skating classics. (By the way, they do mention that, due to its contents, “The King and I” is actually banned in Thailand) Suwabe says that his acquantainces who are into figure skating talk to him about YOI, and some commented that “the fact that there’s a skater from Southeast Asia is a nice fantasy”. He asks Kubo whether that was made on purpose, and she says that in YOI they tried to add many elements that might potentially become reality one day, and this is one of those. She says that Kenji Miyamoto is currently choreographing some programs in Thailand, and that a Japanese female coach, Satsuki Muramoto (she retired from competitive skating in 2013), is also teaching students there. According to them, local skaters are improving a lot and there is a high chance that they will be more visible in the international scene in the near future. Kubo also mentions the Filipino skater Michael Christian Martinez who participated in the Olympics in 2013-14. She says that she went to Thailand a few times so she was happy that she could add something from there to the story, and Suwabe comments that it’s nice to see many skaters from various parts of the world competing together.

-Continuing from the previous topic, Suwabe mentions Chris (as “the sexual one”), and they talk about him. Kubo says that she loves Chris, and that within the series he and Victor are both popular but they’re actually very good friends. She also says that it’s great how Hiroki Yasumoto’s voice was a perfect match for Chris. Suwabe jokes that there were too many sexual nuances in his voice, and Kubo says that she heard from Yamamoto that the recording of episode 6 was amazing, and that according to Yasumoto he had added more voice parts but they were cut. Suwabe confirms that Yasumoto did add a lot of “deep” ad-libs during Chris’ program, but that they were cut in the final version “maybe because they could have crossed the line of what can be broadcasted on TV”. According to Kubo, she was told that in the BD/DVDs they have more freedom than on TV, so maybe some parts will be different… (She doesn’t confirm whether they did actually change something about Chris though, but I guess I will try to compare the two versions, lol)

-Here she asks Suwabe how he felt at the time of episode 6, because she knows that he had a hard time grasping Victor’s character. From this point they discuss about Victor, and since I really didn’t know where to cut because it was all interesting I just wrote down basically everything they said, therefore I will report it as normal dialogue (I cut all the “uhm”, “I mean”, “yeah” etc to make the lines flow smoother). Suwabe: I have voiced a lot of characters so far, but Victor is quite unique even among them. The reason is that — even if saying it like this might sound worse than it is — as a character he couldn’t completely “fit” inside me. To be honest, I have the feeling that my mind couldn’t completely overlap with his until the end. It feels like a three-point shoot that you don’t think will be successful but it is, like you can’t picture it in your mind, your shooting form is not correct but it still works. I read the script, I read the storyboard by Kubo-sensei, I read the dialogues and stage directions, I watched the footage — even though it still wasn’t complete when we recorded the voices — and tried to create an image inside my mind, to shape the person called Victor Nikiforov. I would then go to recording, but it often happened that during the test run I was told “no, not that way”. It happened a lot that I was torn about how to portray him. For the whole time, until the last episode, I wasn’t sure about how I should express his feelings. After all the work was over, looking back on the anime there were scenes where I remembered what I was thinking when I voiced them, but honestly I don’t feel like Victor has stayed inside me. Of course it’s my voice, so I was definitely the one who played him, but somehow I can look at it from a completely neutral point of view. I always had this very curious feeling when I was watching the broadcast. I’ve said it in various interviews too, but during recording it was like a tug of war between the direction — the director and the sound director — and I, fighting over how to portray Victor. It was like my idea of Victor versus their idea of Victor, sometimes I’d win and sometimes I’d act like they said. We created Victor this way, and maybe this continuous wavering is what made him a person hard to understand. I must admit that I don’t think I have completely grasped Victor’s image. But at the same time, it’s not like I don’t understand him. What I feel about playing Victor is a very subtle sensation that I myself find difficult to express with words. Kubo: I think that’s a good thing. In YOI Victor is trying to be a coach for the first time. He’s a person with a long career behind him, that for the first time tries to teach his techniques to someone, not sure that he’s doing it right. It’s like there is an external pressure requesting him to be as good as he has been so far. I guess it’s also what people would seek from someone like you, Suwabe-san. It’s what happens when you have a long and successful career… But if you leave that career and try to do something else, you might feel anxious and not know what to do. You lose your balance, but at the same time you think about what you can do. It’s not like I purposely created the story to have you portray that, but I’m very happy that somehow, as a result, this wavering feeling was conveyed through the way you played Victor. Thank you very much. Suwabe: I felt that it was a real challenge each and every time. Every time I would think, “so, how will it go today? Will it be ok or will they tell me it’s wrong once again?”. It’s interesting because it was always like a match. Victor may be a top athlete but he’s still a human being, so I would try to decipher him like I would interpret the thoughts of a normal person, and I would think “ok, let’s do it this way”, but actually those where the times I would most often be told “no it’s wrong”. And when I had a chance to ask you about him, I remember you saying that, in a way, he’s like a sprite of skating. Kubo: Yeah, I said that maybe he’s an elf, an ice elf. We don’t see anything about his background or his family, and actually I didn’t really create him to behave like a typical Russian person. In my mind he might have been found in the crater left by a meteorite fallen somewhere in Russia. Suwabe: Sounds like someone with superpowers (LOL). Kubo: Like we can’t even tell whether he came from outer space or somewhere else (LOL). He might be the type who hasn’t been a human for a very long time, including his past existences. And while thinking things like that, creating the actual story I would be like, “Victor’s personality might be like this.. no, Victor would definitely say this..”. Even though I was the one drawing him, I myself was looking for his image the whole time, and rewrote the storyboard many times because I’d realize “Victor would not do this, let’s change it”. It’s like I was feeling my way. Suwabe: If we only simply talk about how I created Victor’s state of mind, one of the scenes I had a hard time with — even though it’s a bit weird to talk about it during episode 6 — is the one at the beginning of the last episode, when he’s crying after talking with Yuuri at the hotel. Normally when you cry your nose and your facial muscles are going to move to an extent, but during the test I was told “that’s not needed”. They told me to act the part completely ignoring any kind of physical change related to crying because he is just angry, he isn’t sad nor has any other complex feelings, he’s just mad at Yuuri. So basically what the directors told me is that it’s really what he says, “I’m mad!”, just that. And I was like, oh, I see. We got to this point, and still I come upon things like this. Kubo: I guess what I tried to write in the storyboard was conveyed properly. I’ve actually seen someone cry like that, a man, in front of me. And I was looking at him thinking, ah, this person cries like this, with just teardrops dripping from his eyelashes. He was speaking just the way he normally speaks, the only difference being the teardrops dripping from his lashes, and I made Victor cry that way. Suwabe: It’s like a newborn child, like someone who isn’t conscious of his feelings or his physical movements… that’s so scary. I was surprised to see that even in the last episode his feelings would still show new kinds of nuances. Normally when I play a human character, I mean, what you would consider a normal person, I guess what they are thinking based on their actions and what is happening in the story, but in Victor Nikiforov’s case I had the feeling, while playing him, that his feelings and any guesses would go in totally different ways. That’s why he was a very difficult character. There was a part where he had a monologue, you know, like in a certain TV series (I’m not sure which one he’s referring to), where it’s like the story progresses with his monologue. But even though it was his monologue, I’m not sure I would say that he was 100% baring his true feelings… I’m not sure how to interpret that. Kubo: I think maybe that’s why viewers tend to have very strong ideas about what is correct, about what is the truth. (She was getting to a topic that I personally feel very interesting, but she suddenly cut it to go back to Chris..)

-Here she suddenly says that she forgot to mention about Chris’ ass, and then comments that his line “I’m gonna come” was left. Then Suwabe jokes “the ice is all wet”, and she says that sometimes you get worried because, due to the strong lights and the heat of the hall, the ice really looks wet, but in Chris’ case.. (Suwabe finishes the line) he makes it wet with his aura. She also says that she likes how in this episode Chris and Yuuri are among the oldest, but not necessarily the older ones are getting the best positions in the ranking, and it’s nice how some of the younger ones are surpassing them. She also says she’s sorry that she completely ignored Georgi’s line “I am an evil witch”, and Suwabe says that the highlight of this episode is the absence of Makkachin. She says “maybe he will actually appear more in the BDs” an Suwabe is “I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go that far (lol). (I think she was joking too when she said it, so don’t expect more Makkachin..)

I translated the last part as dialogue too. Kubo: I’m really happy that you voiced Victor. Creating this work about figure skating we are trying to catch something invisible, but I feel that what we are trying to convey has reached people. What Suwabe-san paid attention to, what the director paid attention to, what I paid attention to.. I had many occasions to feel that they are actually coming across. It was worth putting so many details in the story. Suwabe: I said that Victor is not human, that he’s a sprite, but in a way we could say that, paradoxically, his complexity is what actually does make him human. It actually makes him real, non-stereotyped. I feel that I was able to walk close to a man called Victor Nikiforov, and I’m very happy to have been involved in this work. Now I can say that I’m glad I said all those “amazing!” at the audition (lol). Kubo: You did say that a lot. We had no doubts about choosing you, but it’s funny how actually, while we had no doubts, we made you have doubts, and made you so confused about the role. It’s a new development (lol). Creating stories is fun. Suwabe: Indeed, it really took a lot of efforts and pains to bring to life these characters, and I can’t thank you enough all of you for loving them. I will be really happy if you continue to support Yuri on Ice from now on, for a long time.

And then they say the final greetings.

Final note: Just to be safe because you never know, without hearing the voices it might sound more serious than it is… What they say about Victor being a sprite or an elf or “previous existences” of course is a joke, it’s not like he’s really an alien. Also, what we can gather from all this is that Victor is really a complex character and is hard to completely understand (not even the creators understand him). I personally have always found Yuuri much easier to understand than Victor. By the way, in the line that was cut off I think Kubo is referring to the fact that, since Victor is hard to understand, different people will have different ideas and strongly believe that their interpretation is the truth (this is based on what she said in many other interviews). I’d be really curious to know what scenes were done according to Suwabe’s interpretation and what according to the directors, but I’m pretty sure we will never know that…

P.S.: You don't notice as much reading the translation, but you can hear from the way he speaks that Suwabe really had a hard time explaining how he feels about Victor. He is very good with words usually, so this shows how he seriously means what he says.. (Though to be honest he still manages to speak more clearly than Kubo...) It was a pain to translate too of course, I'm pretty sure the other commentaries didn't take me as long..

#YOI #Yuri on ice #Audio Commentary #BD #kubo mitsurou #suwabe junichi #victor nikiforov #translation

1K notes · View notes

dailyaudiobible · 3 years

Text

01/01/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 1:1-2:25, Matthew 1:1-2:12, Psalms 1:1-6, Proverbs 1:1-6

Today is January 1st welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Happy New Year. Welcome…welcome aboard. We are about to set sail on a journey that we will be on together for the next 365 days, a full year to allow the earth to move its way all the way around the sun, a full year to live into and live life together and a full year to insert the Scriptures into an important part of our day, every day, informing what the year is going to look like. And believe me, well, if this is your first go around, if this is the first time you're like, “yup. This is going to be my year. I’m gonna read the whole Bible.” You’re gonna find that it…if you do that it's gonna touch everything about your life. Sticking to this every day for this next year will be probably the most enlightening thing you've ever done in terms of learning about God certainly but learning about yourself and your context, and who God is and who you are and where this is all going. These things come from daily interaction with the Scriptures. So, welcome aboard. And welcome back to those of you who have been taking this journey each year for years. Today is day one of the 16th trip, the 16th year, the 16th time through the Bible in a year here at the Daily Audio Bible. And if you’ve taken more than one journey, then you know that there are similarities and there are profound differences in every year because we are different. We are growing. We are changing. And the Bible seems to have this way of being immediate and relevant and present and even pressing into and challenging some of the things that we do and say and think. And that's a good thing because the Bible…the Bible’s a book, right? It’s this written book. It’s actually a book full of books, a collection of books that span thousands of years. And, so, we’re gonna meet a lot of people and we’re gonna watch their lives unfold, some in very short fashion, some in very long drawn out fashion. We’re gonna get to know a lot of people and we will watch the choices they make and where those roads lead only to find out how things changed. Those roads still go the same place. That gives us so much wisdom for the choices that we’re making because even the inconsequential choices go somewhere. And sometimes they go somewhere big that changes things altogether. We’ll see that in the Bible too. So, here we are…like opening the cover and getting to page 1. And all books have a beginning. And…and since the Bible is a book of books…well…there's lots of beginnings. And every time we come to the beginning of a new book we’ll try to talk about what we’re reading, where it sits in history, what's going on, why it's going on, give ourselves a little bit of context because one of the primary things we’ll find about the Bible is that understanding it, interpreting it, applying it to our lives, making it make sense or have any kind of effect on today you need context. Without context the Bible can get confusing. With context the Bible can blossom and bloom into the best friend we have ever had. So, as we open to page one basically we find the words, “in the beginning.” And is there a better way to start the story of this year, “in the beginning.”

Introduction to the book of Genesis:

That’s how the book of Genesis starts, the first book that we will encounter in the grouping of books known as the Old Testament. And by the way, we’ll read a little bit of the Old Testament, a little bit of the New Testament, a little bit of the Psalms, and a little bit of the Proverbs each day as we make our way through the journey. But Genesis is famous for being the first book, “in the beginning.” And normally what we think about when we think about Genesis is that it…it tells the story of creation. Ironically, that's like only a small part of the story of Genesis. The book of Genesis covers more time than any of the other books in the Bible. So, after we read the origin story, we’ll still have another 2500 years contained within the pages of Genesis, which is more time covered then the rest of the Old Testament combined. So, the first 11 chapters of Genesis will cover a couple thousand years and a couple thousand miles before slowing down and we’ll begin to focus on several specific generations of people that will…that we need to focus on because they shape the rest of the Bible and they influence our world until this very day. And I was just talking about groupings of books. Like the Old Testament is a grouping of books and the New Testament is a grouping of books, but there are subgroupings of these books within the larger…within the larger context. And, so, Genesis is a part of a group of books known as the Torah or the Pentateuch. And these books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And by the way, if you're using the Daily Audio Bible app…and if you’re not, try it out. The Daily Audio Bible app is the portal into community here. It's the…in the palm of your hand all things Daily Audio Bible. But within the Daily Audio Bible app you can check off the days that you've listened to. And as you stack those up each and every day as we move through these different groupings of books when we complete them, we will be awarded a badge that tells us you’ve completed this particular section of the Bible. So, this is where you are. This is what you completed. This is how many percent are completed of the New Testament and the Old Testament and the whole Bible. All that is right there to show us, to give us the sense that we’re progressing through because we are. So, make sure you have that as we begin this journey. And we will have plenty…we will have more than plenty to talk about as we make the journey, but I think I’ve given us enough of a flyover for right this minute. We've come here and we come here each day for the Scriptures, and we make a habit of making that the centerpiece because it is the centerpiece. It's the reason that were here. And, so, let's dive in on this January 1st on the first day of the year. We will read from the New Living Translation for the rest of this week and we will rotate, we change translations each week. And I can talk about that a little bit the end, but we’re at the beginning of today. Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today we read the story of creation, which is what Genesis is most famous for. But embedded in that narrative of the days of creation and what God was forming and fashioning we see over and over is that His intent was that it was good, that what He created was good. He looked at it and saw that it was good. And then when He created humanity in His own image. I mean that’s straight out of the book of Genesis, “let us create man in our own image.” So, when He creates mankind, He looks upon it and says this is very good. Like this exceptional, this is exceptionally good.” So, right from the beginning, right from the beginning of the story we are introduced to God and we are introduced to a God that creates good things and takes pleasure in good things. What we see is that this was the intent. This was the plan, that it is good, and that the creation was good even very good, exceptionally good. This is our starting point. But this needs to carry us forward, that God is good and what God does is good and just and right. And not only that, that God's intention was for us to be very good. We’ll have to wait a couple of days. It’s not gonna take that long for us to figure out what happened to that plan. So, we’ll stay tuned here in the book of Genesis for the next couple of days.

We also began the book of Matthew today. And I mentioned earlier that, you know, when we come to the beginning of a new book we’ll talk about each of these books. The fact of the matter is that this is January 1st and we’re starting four new books as well as a brand-new year so there’s a lot of ground to cover. So, we’ll talk about Matthew tomorrow and then we'll talk about the other two books, Psalms, the next day and Proverbs the day after that. Kind of getting ourselves moved in and just, yeah, unpacking our bags and getting settled in our quarters because this is gonna be a voyage that we’re on and we’re gonna sail out into the deep all the way across the year, but we’re just releasing the anchor, like we’re just getting out of harbor here. So, we are inside of land. We’re just getting settled in and we’ll do that over the next couple of days. But in the book of Matthew today we began reading the origin story of the birth of Jesus the Savior, the son of God, God made flesh. This God that we've read about in the book of Genesis, this good God with good intentions who had created an exceptional humanity in His own image…well…as the story goes, things get a little bit sideways and backwards and this God comes in person to make things right in the person of Jesus. And, so, that's the narrative we are beginning in the book of Matthew. And, so, today, you know we had this little section of genealogy. And what we were doing is reading really the names from the beginning all the way to the generations that that led up to Jesus. And we read a bunch of names and they maybe weird names, but we’re gonna to get to know all of those people. This won’t be the last time we read their names. Some of them we’ll get to know very well.

Then we turn the book of Psalms today and where just told “O the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners or join in with mockers.” Like right out of the gate we’re getting this profoundly simple but profoundly true advice. “Those who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate upon it, their lives are like trees planted along a riverbank.” Alright. So, that's a metaphor we can understand. A good source of water, a good source of nourishment and they bear fruit in each season and their leaves don’t wither. Like that’s a good metaphor. We’ve just gone through a year of withering challenges, right? If our lives are planted and rooted by a riverbank with life-giving water, then it’s sustained us through this. And, so, if that's not the case, then we've been withering, and we've stumbled and fell our way here to find some nourishment from the Bible to try to just keep going forward. And that's fine because this is day one of being planted by a riverbank giving life-giving water and our leaves will never wither if we will stay rooted in that place. And the Bible will continually challenge that and show us how to do it.

And then we turn to the final section of Scripture, the Proverbs, and we learned why we would want to read the book of Proverbs. And what we’ll find is that the Proverbs can speak volumes in one sentence. It can just cut to the chase, cut right through all the crap and get right to the heart of the matter immediately. And, so, we’re told today the purpose of the Proverbs to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just and fair, to give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young. I want that. My hands up. Like I'm on board with that. Are we not all on board with that? What would it look like to walk in wisdom this year, to be wise in the things that we say and think and do this year. That could be a profound game changer, to have wisdom at the ready instead of just reacting to everything that comes our way, to actually have foreknowledge and wisdom. And when things come flying at us we have the wherewithal to consult wisdom and understand we don’t have to get bowled away by this. We have choices and we’re going to make wise. And, so, this is day one and the Bible is already speaking about how to live this life as we go into the future. So, that's our day. That's our day one.

And I just want you to know I’m grateful. I'm grateful we have boarded this ship and we all are gonna…are gonna sail across the year together, and that over the next weeks, we will settle in and move into the year and settle into the rhythm of the Bible being a part of our lives every day and settle into the fact that this is not a solitary endeavor. We are not alone. There are tens and tens and tens of thousands of us who are taking this journey together and we’re gonna get to know each other. Surprising as that might be, we’re gonna get to know each other over the course of the year. So, many stories will unfold before us in each other's lives that it won't be too long before we realize we’re falling in love with each other because we’re a community centered around one goal and that goal is to go through the Bible together and allow it to shape our lives. So, we are a community that's moving in the same direction and on the same page, literally. We’re all going through this together. And the truth of the matter is we’re all facing challenges, all of us. All of us are facing challenges. We all got here and boarded on this voyage for this year for a reason. Some of us have been taking the voyage for years. And we know how profoundly the Bible can impact a year. Some of us are just here for the first time having maybe grown up in the faith of the having been believers for a long time but acknowledging the fact that like 98% of believers in the world have never read the Bible, not the whole thing, not even anywhere close. And, so, this is the year. This is the year to find out what it really says. This is the year to let it speak on its own behalf in its own context.

And then…then there are those of you brothers and sisters who don't even know why you're here. This isn't your thing. Religion is something that you’ve sworn off a long time ago. You don't really want any of this…you’re just super curious about what an ancient holy book like…like it's basically life’s not working out as it is, so there needs to be something else, and maybe that something else, who knows…who knows maybe that something else is in the Bible. Maybe there's something there. What does it really say? What does it really mean? Where does it really lead people? How does it shape people's convictions? Maybe that's you. Welcome aboard. We are gonna have so much fun exploring those questions and peeking into those motivations and understandings.

And then there are those of you who have crawled here…and…your fingernails are bloody from just dragging yourself across the new year just…just committed to trying to make it through 2020. And you’re just here on your hands and knees, you have no more energy. Welcome. You have come to the right place. You are no longer alone, and you will not be alone during this journey at all. We all had a rough time of it last year. And…and maybe it's not just last year maybe it's the last decade or maybe it's as long as you can remember, and this is that. Like, there’s…something's got to give, something's got to change. And, so, with all the hope that you had left your spending it here and saying, “I'm gonna give a shot to the Bible. I don't even know what’s's gonna happen or what's really going on but I’m gonna give a shot to it because everything else is hopeless and this is it.

I get it. So many of us get it. That's how so many of us got here just with nowhere else to turn. But that sort of sick feeling in our stomach that God is so angry at us. We’ve messed things up so bad that if He's even there He's mad. And how do you even find your way into some sort of relationship, some sort of understanding that He's there and that…that He is actually good in that He does actually care and that He might actually look upon us as very good creations. Just doesn't feel like that. Feels like He's angry and that He's mad and that we keep failing and we cannot get it together more than one day. Maybe we can hold it together for 24 hours but then we’re gonna fall down again in some sort of way, And, so, we live our lives believing there is a God and believing that He's mad because we are failures. That’s not who God is. That's not the God that the Bible will introduce and is introducing to us. That's not what's going on here. God, the Bible will tell us, is love. And love Jesus will tell us is how we are to be known, how the world will know that we are following Christ is by our love. And maybe you're here and you don't like even the name, the idea, the word Christian because that's the last thing you have ever witnessed out of Christian people. That’s not what you’re gonna find here and I’m sorry about that actually. I think we all are. I think we've all had those experiences at one point or another. And it's hard because it's a broken world full of broken people and broken people break things. And we’re all guilty, all of us. But the way of Jesus is the pathway of love, loving your enemies, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength.

And, so, I’m telling you, just hang out here for a while. Just hang out here. Just rest here. What you’ll find is that this becomes an oasis. The Daily Audio Bible every day becomes an oasis for us. We call it the Global Campfire. We all just come here to a safe place, a calm serene space in our lives that we can turn to each day knowing that the chaos may be happening all around the world, but we have a safe place to gather that’s virus free, pandemic free, but we’re all here together healing, mending, growing, becoming. And it is a joy, it is an honor, a true privilege to take this journey with you. And I’m telling you, no matter how you got here, this may be your 15th trip through. No matter how you got here. You may have crawled across the finish line of the year like I said. If we’ll let it love will find a way.

Song:

Find Our Way - Paul Alan

4 notes · View notes