At long last, a sparkling new video off the rusty Rock TV assembly line!
This marks the official end of a long hiatus for Rock. The break began when Oliver was born, then earlier this year we started up again haltingly with a video that didn’t really work out. We then took a detour and made a promo video for our church’s Unite Conference. All the while, we’ve been revamping some of our technical gear and getting our new leadership up to speed. Add it all up, and you have a 10 month gap between videos. Not optimal at all, but it’s fun to return with such a crazy project.
I confess that I don’t have a good track record of pitching videos. The concepts I think of have a bad habit of getting made and then underperforming (i.e. Texas Weightloss Massacre, the ‘Perfect Boyfriend’ videos, the Rock TV Christmas Special). This is a very old idea of mine that Todd Luker and I have been riffing on for 8 or 9 years, and I think it avoided the ignoble fate of some of those other projects.
Our new co-leader Will Hines has done animated projects in the past, and I mentioned to him offhandedly at one point that I’d long had an idea that involved characters from He-Man in a banal suburban setting. Bizarrely, had been mulling over some He-Man themed projects as well. We started working on a script together with the intention of producing it independantly (the thinking being that it was probably too strange for ministry use). We got enough positive feedback from other Rock TV members however, that the decision was eventually made for Rock TV to ‘adopt’ the project as one of its own. This was a huge bonus, because it allowed us to employ the voice talents of our actors.
In the end, though, Will should get most of the credit on this project. He was passionate about doing it, and he painstakingly did all the animation himself. Tremendous work, my friend.
Favorite bits:
-Todd delivery as Mer-Man: “But I can still taste the pickles!”
-The haughty grunts between Skeletor and Evil Lyn, which were ad libbed by Christine and I.
-The line “The world is moving too fast for me!” That basically sums up the entire concept.
Stay tuned. We’re shooting another new video very soon that should be completed by September. More craziness is on the way!