Buddha's Apartment

Buddha gets enlightened (2:49)

Deathbed Confession

Time for Laura and James to come clean. (1:38)

JP's Corner #9

2010-01-28

Once again, I learn the lesson that I really need to try and coordinate my blogs with the Bosses. I discovered after sending out my last entry that ROBIN VS. THE BOMB wasn’t supposed to post this week. They had scheduled a skit called BOTH SIDES that we shot a while back. But Zach and James weren’t happy with some of the green screen effects and decided to bump it to next week.

This also answers the question of Deano Supremeo from my fan letter of the week: Why haven’t I been in any sketches lately?

Answer: A great deal of special effects work goes into making my ugly face look presentable for the interwebs.

[Yes, I choose one of the e-mails I receive every week to be the Fan Letter of the week. On the weeks that we actually get fan mail, of course. There’s no prize. There’s no rhyme or reason to why I choose it other than my mood. This week I was feeling my trademark low self-esteem and appreciated Deano’s suggestion of more JP Nickel in the skits. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.]

Following up from last week with some behind the scenes factiods, I’d like to talk about the strange alchemy that occurs in the birthing process of the skits.

Most of the general ideas for skits come from Zach’s warped brain. He’ll share a vague notion of something he finds funny with James and they’ll hammer out a rough structure for the skit. Then they’ll go back and forth with re-writes until they don’t have the energy to fight with each other about it any more.

I’m told the biggest sticking point is usually the last line. It can take them days to settle on the right joke to end the skit with. All the writers out there are probably smirking at the thought of agonizing a mere few days over a last line. But you’ve got to remember that they’re writing a few skits a week while preparing other skits to shoot and even more skits to post.


Then the script will get sent out to the Brain Trust for constructive criticism. The members of the Brain Trust are so top secret that even I don’t know who they are. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that Kelly secretly controls everything. (Just remember Kelly, I’ve always been on your side!)

Cue more writing with Zach and James. (Yes, that includes fighting.)

We shoot every other weekend. Zach and James have some sort of arcane points system to determine how many skits need to be shot in order to keep the SMBC-Theater ship afloat as well as create a back log of completed skits for times when JP’s face is just too ugly to post online without more VFX work.

As the shoot draws near, Angel, our Super Producer, will start to hound James and Zach for scripts so she can start looking for props and figure out what needs to be built. Podiums don’t grow on trees, y’know.

Anywhere from 3 to 7 days before we shoot the actors will be sent scripts. I’m not going to go too much into shoots right now because, y’know, it would be silly for me to talk about the one part of the process that I’m actually there for. But I think the shoot is a whole blog post in and of itself.

Once a skit has been shot, the first step is editing. And that’s all James’ department. He’ll put together a rough cut and, once again, he Zach will go back and forth with ‘heated debate’ (that’s code for punching) over the cut. True story, I’ve seen them go rounds on whether or not to trim a few frames from a shot.

Next in the pipeline is Chason who, as you faithful readers know, is chained to his computer color correcting. He is not allowed to see daylight of or eat without James’ say so. Complaints are met James’ swift fist and emotional torture. All sharp object and noose-like objects have been removed from Chason’s room (cell) after what we’ve dubbed the Escape Attempt Into Oblivion Incident.

(Zach on the other hand, plays good cop. “Just color correct one more sketch for us, then we’ll let you go buddy. Promises.” The joke, of course, is always on Chason. Whenever he’s “set free” it’s only so he can act in or direct a sketch. You’d think he’d have wised up after six months, but I guess everyone needs something to live for.)

This already lengthy process of editing and color correction can become even more complicated when special effects are involved. Marty the Wizard of the North will handle everything from our green screen work (see next week’s BOTH SIDES) to our character animation (THE BLUE FAIRY) to all the little tweaks like light from Heaven (HEAVEN). Something like DATE WARS will take months to complete. (And I’m sure you’ll agree that it was well worth every second!) While with BLUE FAIRY, Marty had been working on that animated doll well before the skit was shot to cut down the turnaround time.

Life becomes a little easier for all involved when we get our super guest star director Jason Axinn on board to do a skit (SUPERMAN VS. ALIENS, ALT F-4 and GANG INITIATION among others). Jason is a triple threat who can direct, edit and do effects work.

Wanna see how awesome Mr. Axinn is? Go look at SUPERMAN again:

http://www.smbc-theater.com/?id=171

It’s great, right? When we shot, there were no camera pans. There was no presidential seal on the podium. And there was no flag. Yeah, the guy is good.

But even Jason is subjected to the same scrutiny as the rest of the full time team and gets copious rounds of notes on the edit and effects work. Sadly, he’s never able to answer Zach and James’ most frequent note of “Make Nickel a better actor.”

Once everything is locked and Zach and James decide what’s being posted, it’s uploaded to Youtube where their crazy programming invariably leaks the skit to subscribers for a few hours (subscribe, subscribe, subscribe!) until it’s caught and re-programmed to post on Sunday night for your enjoyment.

You’re welcome, Internet.

This whole process can take months (DATE WARS). But I think our quickest turn around was WHO’S ON FIRST. (Because it was just one take, it was a matter of the Bosses picking their favorite and dropping a filter on it.) But the average falls somewhere in between, with a turnaround of a month or two.

And there you have it: Months of hard work condensed and oversimplified into a few pages by a man who has very little to do with it.

I love this gig!

Best,
JP
jpnickel [at] gmail dot com
Twitter: @JP_Nickel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jpnickel

www.FiveCentProductions.com

JP's Corner #8

2010-01-24

Sorry I’ve been gone for a while. But I’ve honestly had no idea what to write about that would be of interest to you, our Super Fans.

But I wanted to get something up because as soon as I wrote a blog about how we don’t want to be dated, I got a script called “Time Traveling Geek.” It just proves what you all should know about your Uncle JP: he’s full of shit.

Obviously, I can’t go into details about the skit. But from the title I’m sure you can guess that there’s a good chance that it might be a little dated in 20 years time. Hell, I’ll probably get a crack of the whip just for telling you the title. My hope is that you’ll forget about it by the time the skit comes out.

And I have no idea when that will be.

Rather than stick to a strict schedule of what skit airs when, Team SMBC-Theater will labor over a skit until they feel it’s ready for posting. Zach & James will flip the airing order of sketches if they feel what they’ve planned to post isn’t ready and something else is good to go.

(The only exception, of course, are our Holiday Specials. Those keep the team up for many nights in order to hit the deadline. Chason always emerges from those weeks with extra bruises, punishment from James for having the nerve to ask for bathroom breaks. It’s come to the point that whenever a holiday skit is announced, Chason cries on reflex. And it’s never good when Chason cries; James does not suffer weakness from those in his presence. It’s a terrible cycle of violence.)

“Date Wars”, “Heaven” and “Grilled Cheese” were shot in June or July of last year. But because of all the green screen and special effects work, you’re only seeing them just now. A big part of that is because Marty the Wizard has to do all the SFX (including designing the backgrounds) by himself and he has a family (sucker). But some of it’s also the back and for that Daddy Zach and Daddy James do with notes as they tweak skits to get them just right.

I know “Date Wars” was the most time consuming of those three skits. Now that that’s done, you’ll be seeing more of the green screen skits I’ve been tweeting set pics of over the last few months. (Stay tuned for the return of News Reporter JP!)

So far there’s only been one sketch that’s been trashed: the infamous (among us) sketch “Frat Boys” with Zach and Chason and I. We shot it back in July or August and it’s still not done. It’s not special effects heavy; Zach and James simply hate it. Their claim is that the problem was with the script and no matter how they edit it together, it’s just not going to be funny. And if it ain’t funny, it ain’t getting posted.

There’s been talk of saving “Frat Boys” for an eventual DVD as a special feature. “Buy the DVD and see the lost sketch!” But that idea was quickly shot down when they realized that hyping something that wasn’t good enough to post for free on the internet will only lead to consumer disappointment when you use it as a selling point.

I’m sure you’ll see it at some point in some form or another. Maybe as an EPK. But I don’t think it’ll ever make the main posting. More than anything, I want them to show it just so I can see some of the outtakes. I remember someone making the mistake of letting me improv, and let’s just say my frat boy had a foul mind.

For now, Zach & James are just calling “Frat Boys” a “lesson learned in how not to build a joke.”

I’m quick to point out that it was a lesson learned at the expensive of my valuable time. Then they remind me that I’m an easily replaceable line monkey and to shut up lest I receive the “Chason Treatment.”

It’s bizarre to think that our little operation with its drug, sex and masturbation jokes has a quality control. But there you have it.

Is there anything else that goes on behind the scenes at SMBC-Theater that you’re interested in knowing more about? If so, drop me a line and maybe I’ll do another Q & A blog at some point.

Until then, have a great week.

Best,
JP

jpnickel [at] gmail dot com
Twitter: @JP_Nickel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jpnickel

www.FiveCentProductions.com

Zach's Plea

2010-01-16