THE DEFENDERS OF STAN-EPISODE 13: MINDGAME

look at me go...embedding video and shit.



this and all the other episodes of "The Defenders Of Stan" are available at THE BiG HONKIN' youtube.

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STAN 13 props

we've only really got a few things to post for props this month, because, besides the chess board, there wasn't really much we used.


after Captain Ultra lands in Stan's kitchen, he gets a brew out of the fridge, revealing a shopping list. "hey, what should we put on the fridge?" "oh, i got it." **grabs marker, comedy ensues**


i take absolutely no credit or blame for this. in interest of time and "that's not funny," we ended up cutting a bit where Stan is sitting at the chess board panicking because he's losing to Captain Ultra, while Ultra is making dirty rhymes on the fridge. lyrics to a new Captain Ultra single maybe?


as will hines pointed out at the last screening, we really made a few holiday cards based on the one that is seen in our Holiday Episode, The Gift Of The Magi(c Cards) in lieu of a comic book cover. this is was also on the fridge.


this could really be filed under "special effects" rather than props. but it's a 3d model of some jelly that i threw together for the bit where Captain Ultra is tossing things out of a cabinet toward Stan. if anyone cares about this kinda stuff, i'll explain. 1. We shot the scene with me pretending to toss the jelly, panning across the room, and ending at the wall. Then i motion tracked the camera movement, modeled the jelly, and composited in After Effects.

i WILL get some fun deleted scenes from episode 12, that i still have to compress, one of these days.

Stan 13 production stills...

we're a bit behind right now. we, at THE BiG HONKIN', are working on something like four projects right now. and we're exhausted.

here are some production stills from "THE DEFENDERS OF STAN-EP 13: Mind Game."

this episode deals a lot in the inner monologues of our two "heroes." to work this out, we ended up recording the voice over for these lines first, and then meredith would play them offscreen so that we could react to them onscreen, rather than the other way around.

i, personally, have such a hard time delivering lines or reacting if i dont have some sort of interaction or someone to talk to or something to make me react, so this method worked much better for me than shooting the scenes first and reading voiceover in post. it also allowed for some fun timing things that would have been much harder to sync up.



Austin looks thrilled to be delivering another take of voiceover.


i believe this is during the circus music/monkey noises bit.


with two or three other projects going on, we wrote this script intending for it to be a one day shoot. then reality kicks us in the pants that we spend forever lighting, mic-ing, and doind take after take to get the right feeling, look, emotion, or speed (a five-minute time limit has forced us to reshoot SOOOO many times). so this would be our second re-shoot (shoot day 3), and i'd given up putting the stupid uncomfortable spandex pants on.


Who made a pretty? WHO made a pretty? Austin made a pretty.


halfway through a battery life, and a new tape (TC: 0:00:00:00).


As i've mentioned before, we own two Shakespeare busts. One was purchased for "The Defenders Of Stan-Episode 8: Bat-Phoning It In," our 67 Batman homage, and one was given to us by our friend Wendy, because of said episode. Whenever we shoot Stan's living room, we try to make sure we get at least one of them in the shot somewhere.


Ok, i'm sure this comes as a big surprise to everyone, but i don't know how to play chess. So this episode was as much a learning experience for me as it was a shoot. So if anyone wants to play me, i'll take you on as long as you move your pieces in the exact same moves that Austin did. Also, if you look very closely, the baby we shook in "The Defenders Of Stan-Episode 12: United We Stan," is in the top right corner, laying face down under a greenscreen.


Sleepy Austin.

"farting contest!"

SO, "The Defenders of Stan" episode 13: "Mindgame" screened at channel101 last night and took 1st place!

*crowd cheers*

thank you, thank you!

anywhoot. here is the cover image, and we have uploaded the episode to our website: www.thedefendersofstan.com




and since internet video and even the above picture can't show the minute details of faking 3 color printing, here's a detail:


production stills, props, and a deleted scene from ep 12 coming soon!

STAN 12 props: part 3 of 3

so this is a little different.

this post deals with props that were digitally created. and since there are only really two i'm gonna discuss, this will be brief.

so this is our SCBS Evening News correspondent, Dan Raptor. And i know: Dan Rather quit. but we couldnt pass up using "raptor." anyway, we needed a background for our anchor, so i put together the "set" from above, loosely based on the picture below. (loosely=poorly)


why would someone take a picture of a tv?!


so as the episode goes on, Captain Ultra gets more and more "America"ed out. so we decided he'd have his own version of the flag. the above is the first 3d model i ever built from scratch. (impressive, i know) but i'm pretty happy with the way it came out.


here is a detail, since it gets lost in tiny internet video.




and here is the whole thing without the Ultra logo obscuring it.

STAN 12 props: part 2 of 3

hey everyone, we've been really busy working on a few new projects as well as getting Stan 13 done, and i'm a douche and am just now getting to all this stuff. so, besides the newspaper, this post deals with all of the props we built for this episode.




so, according to meredith who enjoys smart things (yeah...i know), in the documentary "the war room," which follows bill clinton campaigning, james carville wrote a bunch of stuff on a whiteboard, and in efforts to make Stan's living room look more "campaign headquarters"ey, we made our own version and then took a terrible photo of it. enjoy!


so early on, austin called dibs on putting this together: this is our balloon drop for the end of the episode. now, it's pretty technical, as i'm sure you can see, and i don't wanna give away all of our trade secrets, but here we have professor bragg at work, with his blue lab assistant, re-rigging his invention.


the printed materials for the campaigning were really fun to put together. i liked that we could be meta for a second and put the series web addy on the signs.


both Stan and Captain Ultra had campaign stickers for everyone. and if you look closely to see them you will strain your eyes and sue us because i'm not sure you can even tell.


i'm not sure if he called it or was short-strawed this, but meredith hand-painted these banners to put up in the campaign nerve center, and the paint was still wet as we hung them up. we're like that. we wait til the last possible second to do anything. because it's more fun if it's stressful. they now decorate mer's office.


okay. so obviously we didnt make this, but our friend dyna asked about it, so here's a close up. i spent DAYS trying to find something like this (honestly i wanted something that covered the whole head and the wearers face pops through the front, but i figured that i'd take what i could get). this was purchased from megachess.com and are apparently intended for some group of idiots with nothing better to do to set up a giant chess board and have kids strap these things on and act as the pieces while two other nimrods live out some weird 'gamemaster' fantasy. why, you ask? because chess simply isn't fucking big enough. and everyone knows that games aren't worth playing if they involve any less than 34 people.

yep.