11 Points About Our Her Head On Her Body Video
Published Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 PM
Back on Friday, [my roommate/writing partner] Paul and I finally launched a new comedy video.
(Quick back story: Paul and I founded the website Panda Smash as a venue for our comedy videos and earlier this year we were hired by Break.com to work there making videos full time. But we've been doing a lot of stuff for advertisers for the past few months, not making the sketches that pop into our minds.)
The sketch we did was called Her Head On Her Body. It's 93 seconds of dark comedy, man.
Here are 11 pieces of behind-the-scenes info about the video. (It will make zero sense if you don't watch the video, so I've embedded it below as a frame o reference.)
This list was published on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 PM under the category Web & Tech.
It currently has View Comments.
Published Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 PM
Back on Friday, [my roommate/writing partner] Paul and I finally launched a new comedy video.
(Quick back story: Paul and I founded the website Panda Smash as a venue for our comedy videos and earlier this year we were hired by Break.com to work there making videos full time. But we've been doing a lot of stuff for advertisers for the past few months, not making the sketches that pop into our minds.)
The sketch we did was called Her Head On Her Body. It's 93 seconds of dark comedy, man.
Here are 11 pieces of behind-the-scenes info about the video. (It will make zero sense if you don't watch the video, so I've embedded it below as a frame o reference.)
We actually came up with this idea several months ago, accidentally. Paul and I were brainstorming ideas for an advertiser. (I don't want to say which, but I will say this: If you Google "the perfect combination tagline", you can probably figure out who they are.)
Well, as I just mentioned, we were supposed to make a video series around the idea of "the perfect combination." We got to talking about a series that would discuss combining different body parts to make the perfect woman.
And then, in a eureka moment, I just word-vomited out the entire story of Her Head On Her Body. Really. Without even pausing to think. The idea was just there all of a sudden.
We decided quickly (1) we couldn't pitch it to the client, because it was way, way, way too far over the line but (2) we HAD to make it.- Of course, then came the step of pitching it to our boss. Who is female. She is pretty good at thinking about stuff from the perspective of our site's users (young, male, kind of a dick)... but I think her womanly sensibilities kicked in on this one.
So it was indefinitely tabled.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. She was going out of town and, before she left, she told Paul and me, "If you guys finish everything, go ahead and do a one-off [sketch]." Both of us instantly knew which one-off we would be making in her absence. - As web video producers, we handle pretty much every aspect of the production... and that includes casting. And, for this project, I was in charge of casting.
Which meant: Calling two model/actresses and convincing them to participate in this sketch for not very much money.
We knew the girls we wanted to use -- they'd both auditioned for another project we were doing about a week earlier -- now it was just a matter of pitching it.
And I'd venture to say those were the two hardest casting calls I've had to make.
First I talked to Taylor, who we cast as the girl with the beautiful face but the so-so body. For the sketch to work, of course, she needed to have a great body that we'd hide under baggy clothes... so that, after the head switch happened, we could just put her in the dress and it would simulate her head being sewn onto the other girl's body.
That wasn't a hard sell, although there was a painfully drawn out, awkward silence after I described the sketch to her. Then, finally, she laughed and said it sounded like fun and she'd do it.
Talking to the other girl, Kristen, was more difficult. Kristen is actually stunningly beautiful, so we knew we'd have to ugly her up for the part.
So I called her and pitched it, rambling like this: "We have a part for you. It's actually terrible for you, because you're way, way too attractive for it, but we want to work with you and we think you have the right sense of humor and so we wanted to cast you."
Then I described the sketch and her response, naturally, was, "So I'm the butterface?!" And I started stammering at Olympic-caliber levels explaining that it would take the "superstar make-up artist we hired" to even have a shot at making her ugly enough.
Fortunately, our guess that she had the right sense of humor was right, and she was down to do the sketch. And I felt satisfied that, somehow, I'd pulled off that casting coup. - It took almost a day to buy all of the props necessary for this sketch. The hardest ones to find were easily the scalpel (seen at 1:07) and the forceps (1:00). I went to five different medical supply stores before I finally found one that carried those.
- The sketchy car we use here is actually our new co-worker Parker's sketchy car. He just bought it. The day he rolled up to the office in it, I said, "We are going to use that car in A LOT of sketches." This is the first.
- The body I carry out of the trunk (0:49-0:52) isn't one of the actresses. It's actually our co-worker Roslynne.
That was our last shot of the day, and we'd already sent the girls home. So we drove to a back alley, helped Roslynne into the garbage bags, then loaded her into the trunk.
We did three takes of me lifting her out and carrying her behind that wall. Fortunately, she's under 100 pounds. Double fortunately, I didn't ever come close to dropping her. - Kristen (the actress who plays bad face/good body) actually sustained a few minor scrapes during production. We did about eight takes of me chloroforming and tackling her (0:39-0:43). We were falling onto cushions but, on one take, her arm hit a board by the wall and cut her up.
Then, she also had to lay in the trunk (0:44-0:48) while we tried to stuff her in. (Yes, we did that in broad daylight and in public and, yes, passers-by had NO idea what the hell was happening.) In the process of kicking me, she scratched up her leg a little. (Amazingly, Blake, the actor, never accidentally kicked her.)
And finally, we had her wear the ridiculous Coke bottle glasses I bought at a thrift store, to help ugly her up. Well... those things were STRONG. We had her take them off between takes... but they still apparently screwed with her vision and head enough that she had to take a pretty solid breather after that scene was over.
Kristen, before and after.
The moral of the story: If I call you and ask you to play a sketchy role, I may be underselling just how screwed up things can get on our sets. - The "SYNERGY" poster (most visible at 0:34) is a running joke of ours. We put that in the background of every single one of our sketches that takes place in an office.
- There was much debate over the blackjack that would be used for the initial hit (0:38). First, I called a military surplus store. They didn't know what blackjacks were. So I called a gun store and asked if they carried blackjacks.
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" he responded, "Those are very illegal. We can't sell any hand-to-hand deadly weapon." I decided not to remind him he was working at a gun store... and moved on to Plan B.
That plan: Buying a shoehorn and covering it in black electrical tape. Which is what I did. Total cost of prop: Approximately $7. - The biggest piece of speculation online is how we did the special effect headless shot toward the end of the video (1:14-1:18). Some people speculated Photoshop, others believed it was a headless stump Halloween costume.
Neither is right. We actually did some fairly high-level video compositing. First, we filmed the actress lying there, perfectly still, in the baggy clothes (with makeup on her neck around where it would've been lopped off). Then we had her move, and filmed the bed, empty. And then we put down some hamburger meat and ketchup on the spot where she'd been laying, and filmed that.
Then our effects/graphics guy Adam cropped out her head, replaced it with the empty bed shot, and used the hamburger meat to visually construct a bloody neck stump.
I have no idea HOW he did that, necessarily... that's just what he told me he did. - We expected the video to be a huge hit with Break's demographic. And it was... although the comments wouldn't lead you to believe that. See, Break commenters are always looking to say something as negative as possible about ANYTHING. The video they're watching, each other, minority groups, whatever.
So the 120 or so comments after the video are primarily negative. Fortunately, in just a few days, the video got well over 600,000 views by people who DIDN'T leave negative comments. So we're assuming it was a big hit... just with the silent majority.
This list was published on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 PM under the category Web & Tech.
It currently has View Comments.
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It's all written by Sam Greenspan, a Midwest-born, classically-trained journalist who now tries to make a dollar out of 15 cents in Los Angeles. (It's hard to be legit and still pay the rent.)
Read more about 11 Points and Sam here.
For information about reprinting 11 Points content, or for quotes/interviews for your newspaper, magazine, website, TV program, or radio show, contact Sam via e-mail at