…and the pain of making them.
Yes I’ve been making a movie on behalf of the Dead Robot Society. I call it a movie but I suppose it’s really more like a music video of sorts. Basically what I’m doing is recording my teammates dancing, singing, and being generally entertaining to the song “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. It’s quite an experience. Let me just tell you a little bit about what making the movie entails.
The first thing I wanted to see in the video was my teammates mouthing a couple of the lyrics in the song. Apparently it was harder than it looked because it took on average about four tries for anyone on the team, mentors included, to get the timing right. The outtakes are for more amusing than the actual clips I used for the video, which are pretty amusing. A lot of the video is us saying the words to the song. I’m sure my companions got sick of me sticking a camera in their face, but Mr. Gras insisted so there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Another thing we did was act out the words of the song. When I say we acted out the words, what I actually mean is we made Kelly act out some of the words. Her parts were my favorite parts of the movie. Pay close attention to the girl with the curly brown hair in the school uniform when you watch the video. Sometimes the acting we did wasn’t limited to the words of the song though. Like Miss Allison for example, merely acted bored for many chunks of the video. (We’ve yet to determine if she was actually acting.) There were some other parts we acted as well, but I can’t give everything away now can I?
Besides acting things out, there was also quite a bit of random dancing. A lot of that was again provided by Allison, although she had help from Mary and some of the other team members. Random dancing was a crucial part of our video. Without it, I might not have been able to have enough footage to complete the movie.
In addition to our own personal embarrasing moments, there are many failures from our robots incorperated into the film. Most of them are duck grabbing fails, but if memory serves I believe there are a few other fails as well. There are alos juggling fails, but that wasn’t a robot, that was Steven.
The movie was really fun and really challenging to make. Watching the clips of everyone regardless of whether they failed or succeeded was highly enjoyable. Making the movie was also a lot of work. First of all, I had a deadline for the first time. I was used to watching my teammates race against the clock, but I was always able to do my job at a leisurely pace. In contrast, with regards to the movie, Mr. Gras wanted it finished by regionals so I had to work quickly. Secondly, and more importantly, I had to listen to that song. I didn’t even like the song in the first place. Plus it’s not like I got to just listen to it on repeat. I had to keep rewinding and listening to three second clips over and over again. It was terrible. However, whenever I watch the finished product, someone thanks me for doing it, or someone comments on how much they enjoyed it, I realize it was all worth it.
(Pssst, here’s the link:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3CpFJ0unw