and decided I’d be the guy to do the video. Obviously, someone had to.
I was up till three in the morning singing it over and over again trying not to slip up on the words. I ended up with a video that advanced from frame to frame of the comic with me singing not over an audio-only version, but over a full version of the song. I sang over this:
It was fun, but because it was 3am, there was a good chance it might was awful. I decided to rewatch it in the morning, and post it then if I still liked it.
When I woke up, I rewatched it and decided it was terrible. I started to write an email to a friend who’s recorded music for me in the past, asking if he could record a version of Modern Major General for me. To help him out, I chased down some sheet music on 8notes, and saw they had a ‘play’ option. I’d spent over half an hour the night before trying to chase down an audio only / karaoke version with no success. But here it was. Found accidentally. I scrapped the email, sped the music up by about 20% because I’m an idiot, spliced it so it allowed for another verse as the comic required, and sang over it over and over again until I made few enough mistakes to be proud of it:
Even then, I was hesitant to post as someone had done a fantastic job beating me to the punch. I figured mine was about 40% faster and way more fun, even if it came 11 hours later. After I posted mine a bunch of great other videos of this came out.
As of now, it’s my biggest one day hit of a youtube video, and the first acting/singing related video I’ve ever had any success with. It’s inspired me to start creating more videos just for the fun of it. I was thrilled to see it get 5,000 views the first couple days, over a 150 likes, and not a single dislike. It really gets me excited for whatever the next project will be.
And a big thanks to Randall Munroe. All hail Randall, king of the internet.
2,000 people a day go to my site, watch my videos, and a couple of them even pay me for it. I get questions, compliments, and comments on a daily basis. It’s a great feeling, but there’s a disconnect.
I forget that I’m helping others, and it gets hard to keep creating. Something’s needed from time to time to spark inspiration.
My regular outings to a room full of business types wanting to learn about marketing or comedy types watching their 3rd show that week has become a routine. I love doing both of those things, but they’re not special. One’s my job and the other my hobby.
That’s why it was such an amazing feeling to head over to a good friend, Meg’s, 3rd grade classroom a couple weeks ago with Andrew, her fiancee, and read to her class.
It was National Reading Day, and Meg was under some misconception that we were doing her the favor and not the other way around.
I left the room inspired and amazed that Meg was with these kids on a daily basis, putting together a new lesson plan every day.
They hung on her every word and were fascinated by everything she threw at them. It was a great experience.
A big thanks to Meg. But also to Vanessa, Isaiah, Lindsay, Alondra, Antonio, Jade, Aiden, Jesse, Emmanuel, and everyone else in the classroom for the cards and the love.
Let’s do this again soon, Meg. Art project next time?
(Images are from the cards her kids sent me, in case that wasn’t clear.)
There’s one concept my improv coach, Brad, has tried beating over our heads for nearly a year. It wasn’t until last week that it finally made sense to me. To paraphrase:
“Every scene,” he said, “is based on a platform, tilt and then a resolution. In other words someone sets something up, something is done to make things weird, and then something resolves the problem.”
An example could be:
A man goes to the grocery store for milk (platform)
The clerk insists drinking eggs are just as good and that’s what the man should do (tilt)
The man decides this clerk is right (resolution)
Another example:
A wife is upset at her husband for being late to come home (platform)
The husband says he was late because he needed to save orphans from a fire (tilt)
The wife accepts that excuse (resolution)
All good scenes consist of a series of platforms, tilts, and resolutions.
In a ‘crazy man/straight man’ scene the straight man will give the platform, the crazy man the tilt, and generally it’s up to the straight man to resolve it.
In ‘peas in a pod,’ the two people find it in a single voice.
When I first heard this idea, I thought it was exactly the same as other improv framings. I thought of the tilt as finding the first crazy thing and the resolution as the end of the scene. I saw how each resolution was the grounds for the next platform and how each move was a shift in status.
It didn’t hit as a new concept until last week when we ran two exercises.
In the first exercise, two players started a scene and the coach stopped it after fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, forty five seconds, a minute, or two minutes. Because none of us knew how long the scenes would last, we started with huge ideas, but not ideas so ridiculous that we couldn’t play them for two minutes if needed. It was far more fun than our normal scene work, and it set the stage for the next exercise.
In the next exercise we were asked to edit the scene whenever there was a resolution. In other words, a scene could be as short as a guy picks up a pen (platform), the pen is encoded with a secret treasure map (tilt…way too plotty, but let’s roll with it), and the two go off to find treasure (resolution and hence the edit).
Most were simpler than that. A cleaning lady confronts a housewife (platform) about her laziness (tilt), and the housewife explains how rich people are inherently better (resolution and edit).
This exercise showed me I’m strong at beating the hell out of an established game and can lay the groundwork for a solid tag run, but I need major work on this fundamental part of improv.
Specifically, understanding my initial surroundings (the platform), and instead of just playing on that, saying something enough out of left field to create a tilt.
Resolutions are great, but tilts are where the fun is.
An obese man in his mid 30’s came through the doors of Starbucks and walked straight towards me as I went to sit down.
“Do you know anything about computers?” he asked.
‘Uh oh,’ I thought.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. To note, the correct answer to this question is always No.
“I can’t get rid of the subtitles when I play a video,” he said.
“I can probably help with that,” I said, “It should just be a drop down menu option. Cue it up.”
He sat down at the table next to me and loaded up his computer. It was one of the swivel touch screen laptops that use a pen as the interface because we live in the future.
“I’m Jeremy,” I said.
“Alan,” he said as I shook his limp wristed outstretched hand.
He started up a movie in full screen, and I looked it over. There was no menu. When I minimized the movie, his Windows bar was set on the top of the screen blocking the movie’s controls. I unlocked the Windows bar and moved it to the side. I got the impression this was the point where he’d normally restart his machine.
I maximized the movie again and found a gear icon. The very first option was a drop down for Subtitles: ‘English’ or ‘None’?
“Here it is,” I said, “All you need to do is hit this gear down here, and then select from English to None like this.” I showed him.
“What do you mean by select?” he asked.
“Just click it,” I said.
“You mean press it?” he asked.
“That should work,” I said. “Give it a try.”
“Where’s do I press?”
I pointed to the gear icon. He pressed it. The same menu came up.
“And now what?”
“You go to the drop down and press ‘None’”
“Can you do it?”
“Well you need to do some of it, or how will you learn anything?”
“Haha. I see. Okay. I’ll try.”
It took three tries, but he figured it out.
“You do have headphones, yes?” I asked.
“I have it all the way down.” He pointed, showing me his plan was to watch the video on pictures only without the subtitles.
“Great. I’m going to get to work now. Glad I was able to help.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
I put my headphones in. For about 40 seconds he sat there staring at the moving pictures on his screen with his laptop still pointed towards me.
“Excuse me?” I heard over the sound of Brian Jonestown Massacre.
“Yes?” I said.
“It’s still there.”
I went back to the menu and clicked it again and said, “There you go.”
“Perfect,” he said.
He watched the video for another minute, and then packed up his laptop and walked out the door, never ordering a coffee. For me Starbucks is a place to get some writing done. For him, apparently, it’s his own personal Geek Squad.
I had some fun talking about what’s new in Photoshop CS6. The Beta came out 3 days ago, so I’m feeling about 3 days behind. This covers the overall improvements and shows how to use them.
It’s a brief run down of whether or not it’s worth buying Photoshop CS6. Major changes include new video editing, 3d capabilities, and a far more robust layer pallet. Also, a run down on how to use the Content Aware Move tool and actually get results that work.
After recording it, I poked around to see if there were any good videos out there. The plan was to list a few that were decent but not nearly up to par. Instead, I came across this from Ice Flow:
Their fantastic post on the new features of Photoshop CS6 saved me the effort of doing it myself. There’s no point in releasing a lesson if someone already has a better version of the same thing out there.
There are a few others with run downs that are almost as good. Adobe’s sneak peak videos, The Verge, and plenty of other similar ones, but Ice Flow did it best. Upbeat. Well paced. Informative. I could not ask for more. You’d think I’d be upset someone beat me to the punch, but I’m more relieved that it saves me the time of having to do it myself.
