Hello Interwebs! This February TPM launched a new podcast and put out a new sketch. Read on for behind-the-scenes details about those projects, plus other company updates…
Pre-Production Projects
I’ve had fun writing and shooting sketches again! And it seems a shame to only have one release per month. So I’m hoping to increase TPM’s sketch comedy output to 2 videos per month! Though I’m not making any promises. It’s just me working on these videos right now and I only have so much time to develop them. But expect to see at least a few more videos this year than expected!
As for February’s videos: I switched my original plan for the month. Last month I promised to make a sketch called “Group Therapy for Movie Quoters”. That one got away from me… I didn’t have enough time to plan it properly before the end of this month. So I quickly wrote and shot “Watch What You Say Around The Winter Soldier” instead.
This video’s script took me less than a day to write and plan. As for production details, I’ll discuss some of those in the next section:
Production Projects
My Winter Soldier sketch didn’t require a great deal of preparation. The most time-consuming aspect (practically speaking) was building Bucky’s metal arm. The basis of that design came from a YouTube tutorial by “The Woodland Elf”. I didn’t have all the required materials so I had to improvise a tad. Basically, I substituted duct tape scales for aluminum foil covered with marker drawings.
Is it crude? Yes. But it also worked– except for the area around my elbow. I just shoved some aluminum foil in that area and tried to tape it down. ‘Twas most uncomfortable. I feared the area around the joint would dislodge. So I refrained from excessive movements where possible.
Regarding the other costume pieces: I found those around my house– same as I’ve always done.
This sketch proved more challenging to shoot than expected. For one thing: that Winter Soldier costume was awkward to don. So I had to film the entire sketch as one character, then again as Bucky. This meant a lot more movement (between locations) and camera setups than was reasonably efficient. It took me four hours to film this way!
It’s also the middle of winter in Canada. And the cold played havoc with my batteries, giving them a false gauge of energy output. They conked out on me sooner than they ought to have… My Winter Soldier costume was also somewhat chilly. “Suffer for your art”, they say! I have before and will again.
From a technical standpoint, I like to learn something new each time I make a new film– even a short sketch. This time I paid closer attention to my camera’s light settings, and taught myself a few new audio-editing techniques. Did my audio/ visual turn out perfectly? No. But it’s passable and I earned some practice. So each new project will have a higher average bar for quality!
TPM’s second production of the month was EP 1 of our new podcast, “Close Up”! I first met Ryan Walker at York University in 2017. He and his roommate were my neighbours in dorm. And, since we were both film students with many overlapping classes, he and I formed a friendship. Though we slowly lost touch after he switched schools after second year… until recently, that is. He reached out to me the other month after reading one of my articles, suggesting I start a podcast. I was warm to the idea, though deterred from doing it on my own. So he volunteered to co-host, and here we are!
We’re not sure how often new episodes will release. I’m hoping we can maintain a bi-weekly schedule, but we’ll see.
I’ll admit that I’m making up the technical side of this podcast as I go along… Audio-editing is not my area of expertise, so I’m teaching myself how to do this as we go. That means our show will only improve with each episode (in terms of audio quality, at least)!
Post-Production Projects
I chipped away on a PoB 4 blooper reel exclusive for our Patreon page. TPM has many old videos in its backlogs which we never released bloopers for, so I’d like to get those to our patrons eventually. It’s just coming slowly because I choose to prioritize new content. But it’s not NOT getting done.
Other
This February I continued to close-caption TPM’s old YouTube videos. That first episode of Close Up is a hassle because the captions didn’t auto-generate and I didn’t have a script to plug in for the machine. So I’ve got to manually type in the whole video’s subtitles… It’s gonna take me a while. But I’ll make the time and get it done within the next few weeks (hopefully before episode 2 releases).
This has been TPM’s February news. If you have any questions about what I’ve written today, or have something you’d like to see addressed more in-depth in next month’s update, let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any ideas for future articles, or any general questions, let me know that as well. Be sure to like this article on Facebook and share if you enjoyed!
Till next time
Joe Morin
