Hooray for a new outtakes video! This video (like our outtakes projects in 2009, 2007, 2005, & 2003) features winning smiles, jocular belly-slaps, and giggles aplenty. It also features Todd Luker repeatedly demanding beans.

I don’t have a ton to say about this project, other than to note that it was a pleasure to assemble. I was happy that I was less promiment this time than I was in the 2007 & 2009 incarnations , though this was due more to the fact that I had fewer acting roles than any increase in my professionalism or ability to properly deliver a line. Fortunately for the ministry, Will Hines stepped in with a few well-delivered ad libs about kidnapping Al Gore’s children to save the video for us.

Enjoy the pleasure!

P.S. The song is “Skate With Me” by a Minneapolis band called Kubla Khan.

While I am happy with the consistency of the laughs here and the sweet sentiment, the back story of this project strongly flavors my feelings toward this video. As a church ministry, we exist to serve the needs of our congregation and our pastors, and after their experiences with recent videos like Christdome, Tax Refund Strangeness, and Small Group Fight!, their message to us was loud and clear: these things are getting weird.

Now, as you JLP readers are familiar with, I like weird. For years serving in the ministry, I restrained a lot of my weirdest impulses to try to keep the appeal as wide as possible. In the last few years, however, as our ministry has gone younger, I made an internal decision to let the younger writers run with things, acknowledging at the same time that the age of 90-second web clips has altered sensibilities for many people in that younger generation. Random gags and awkward riffs became the new normal (even, in the case of Christdome, set within a structured “message video”). Not everything worked, but a lot of it did. However, it definitely wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.

So this video is a (temporary?) return to restraint and structure. It is much less tangental, much more sentimental, and features some pretty broad gags. Also, while the message of the video is about contentment, it could be categorized as a “dating video”, and we’ve never gotten less than a great response with such projects. For whatever reason, romantic tension primes people’s laughing impulse at our church.

I also think it’s a well-done project with a snappy pace, a bunch of good line gags, and an ending I love. I honestly have no idea how this will be received at church, though. Part of me suspects that people will like it because it’s relatable and sweet, but I truly don’t know. I do know that if this one gets accused of being too weird, it’s time for me to hand over the reins.

Favorite bits:

-The grape-eating marriage fantasy is my favorite gag. I remember when I was typing up the first draft, including the bit about Luke looking into the camera and announcing “This is marriage”, and smiling happily to myself. Kudos to whoever thought of that during the meeting.

-I was afraid that the grapefruit explosion gag would be too problematic to shoot and too broad to end up being any good, but I was wrong. When I saw the footage set to that music (from the climax to Glory) I was happy.

-All the Welles make an appearance in the background (Alice in utero).

-Will Hines wasn’t supposed to be in this one at all (he’s had a ton to do with another video we’re currently working on) but we needed an extra for Matt to be talking to during the “anxiety with dating” sequence so we threw him in there. He made up all the business about eating Rolos with his older cousins, and I absolutely love it. (Okay, so maybe there’s some weirdness in this one.)

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The video was received enthusiastically at church, so there you go.

I’m pleased with how this one turned out. I think the gags are consistent, and the message works pretty effectively. Certainly, as a Christian and as a parent, I can relate to the impulse to create a “safe” cocoon inside our home or small community safe from the crappiness of our neighborhood or the attitudes of our society in general, yet that certainly is not how we are called to live as Christians. That’s the tension that supports what’s happening in this video and the concept of a Christdome. That, and the unhelpful phenomenon of creating “Christian” versions of secular products and establishments, generally to the benefit of nobody. In fact, for some Christians, these distractions can actually suck up all the oxygen in the room to the point where they don’t even exercise their own prayer life and relationship with God anymore because they’re so busy with these distracting peripheral issues.

Hopefully, we also made the video funny enough along the way, so those themes go down easy.

Stray thoughts:
-I don’t know if we maximized its potential, but the “Christian Muppet Babies” bit is a definite favorite of mine.

-The myriad fist bumps and soul patches comes out of a number of interactions I’ve had with various pastors (not my own) who, in an attempt to be “relevant”, utilize such measures. To me, fist bumps and soul patches signify “Christian hip” (not a compliment).

-I went way overboard during the shoot with extended fist bumps and overeager grabbing of my co-actors, and we had to carefully scale that stuff back in the editing stage. Unfortunately, that results in a few awkward edits, but whatever. I just need to work on being more under control when on camera, I guess.

-Here’s a still image from a deleted bit from the video that we eliminated because it was just too strange. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but a number of people have commented pointedly that Rock TVs are getting really weird lately, and we didn’t want to push things too much on this project. (That’s for NEXT video…)

Enjoy!

Over the past year, a number of Rock TV’s veteran writers have retired from the ministry after putting in many hours of volunteer work, and they’ve been replaced by a core group of younger writers and actors. Of course I’m sad to see some of my old friends move on, but I believe it’s been great for this ministry to get some new blood and fresh energy. The run of videos over the past year (Skeletor Goes to Burger King, Small Group Fight!, Buster Fonz Thanksgiving, and this one) has been great, in my opinion, and markedly different from what we’d been doing. They’re wierder, with more left turns and silly animated sequences. I don’t know if this means they’re better, but it’s been fun for me to go along for the ride.

The highlights of this video for me are, first and foremost, the future-cats sequence. The cat with Geordi LaForge eyewear announcing “the future is ours” just kills me. The rhythm of the dialogue is lively and I think there’s a number of nice line gags that work well, and I also love Jacob’s performance as Jeffrey the yoga instructor, who seems to be completely enamored with every moment he’s living. All in all, a solid 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Some explanation is required on this one.

This video was written and shot a year ago, and it became clear to us about midway through the production process that it wasn’t coming together very well. I remember feeling not especially enthusiastic about it during the shoots, and when the editors sat down and watched the footage, we made the call to shut it down and move on (to what became the Skeletor Goes to Burger King project). The video was banished to Rock TV purgatory.

In December, while the ministry was on hiatus, the leadership team decided to go back to the footage to see if anything could be salvaged. The answer, as you can see, is ‘barely’.

At that point, Kevin and I worked together to come up with the theme song, which is probably my favorite bit in the video now. Kevin did a great job of belting it out in cheesy fashion. (Incidentally, an alternate version of the theme song included the line “He’s a bundle of joy with a curious thrill / Reads The New Yorker and peruses George Will”).

In cutting the video in half, we sacrificed any sense of coherence or logic that the video once had, but I doubt that makes much difference in the end.

Enjoy (if possible). The ministry will be back with a new video by late February!

This video was truly a pleasure to write and produce. The Buster Fonz character is an old favorite of this ministry’s (and mine) having been featured previously three times. For those at home keeping score, he starred in 2002′s Santa Bellringer Training, 2004′s The Perfect 4th of July BBQ (a personal favorite) and he popped up in 2006′s ill-fated Rock TV Christmas Special (which I contend could have been a great video if we had more time to work on the script).

That Christmas Special video loomed heavy on my mind as we were working on this video – both were done on a time crunch, were holiday-themed, and relied fairly heavily on the humor of awkwardness and alienation. However, where the former video ends up chunky and dreary, I feel this one is crisp and lively. In my mind, a lot of the credit should go to Will, our (new-ish) ministry co-leader who has inserted a lot of his silly sensibilities into recent projects. He suggested the animated food sequence and the old man character, both of which provide some strangeness and levity which work well here.

It is troublingly easy for me to play the Buster Fonz character, and I find it very enjoyable. I feel imbued with the character’s confidence and end up having a lot of fun riffing and being silly. The only part of this video that was difficult for me to act in was during the musical performance at the end, where I had to show awkwardness non-verbally. I didn’t feel comfortable doing this, so I tried to envision what Todd Luker would do and mimicked that. Seemed to work okay.

Favorite bits:
-The toast. Kevin wrote this for the first draft, and very little of it was changed. To me, it’s the perfect mix of vivid and depressing. Still makes me laugh.

-The final line (“Remember, I’m a dragon and so are you! We’re all dragons!”) was suggested in desperation as we tried to figure out a way to end the video. It is ridiculous nonsense, and I love it. It took me about 4 takes to get through it without laughing (and if you look carefully, you can see me start to break up right before it cuts out).

Enjoy!

At some point in the writing process for this video, I decided to ignore that voice in the back of my head muttering, “This doesn’t make any logical sense. It’s just too silly.” As a result, this is the goofiest, most nonsensical Rock TV I can recall us doing, and I love it for that reason. Will and Jim were apt choice for the leads because they were the two writers most passionate and energized about the project. Certainly not every bit here works, but it’s snappy and screwy enough to stay interesting through the end.

Favorite elements of this video:

-Kevin wrote the theme song for this video, and performed the hell out of it. He and I recorded it at my place one afternoon, and I really enjoyed watching him use his Vince Neil voice to sing such epic lines as, “Regardless of race, expect pain in your face/Fighting lays waste to your brain.”

-We tried our hardest to adhere to an mid ’80s to early ’90s aesthetic for this video, and I’m mostly pleased with how that turned out. By far my favorite costume is Christine’s – she ended up looking like DJ Tanner from Full House.

-The final shot in the video is probably my favorite. The weirdness of those two guys sharing a Blizzard from the same spoon is understated but almost indescribably odd.

Enjoy!

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!

This isn’t technically a Rock TV – it’s a promotional video for our church put together by the Rock TV team. The project was a bit of a challenge for us, in no small part because the ministry just recently started up again with an expanded leadership team after a 6-month pause precipated by the birth of a local boy named Oliver Welle. In addition, this project was assembled hastily and with more creative input by our incredible pastors, so there were a number of factors that made this different from other videos we’ve done. In the end, I think the restrictions were good for us, and forced us to work in a streamlined, spartan fashion. It certainly isn’t the funniest thing we’ve done, but it sells the message in a memorable way.

As far as my thoughts on the video, I enjoyed reprising a few elements from our old Revelation 9:11 video (most notably, Kevin’s droning pastor character who we referred to as “Rev. Leatherbound”). Also, I have to confess that I love getting the chance to pull out my “1940s announcer voice”. It’s one of those things that I enjoy and find funny, but don’t expect anyone else to (like Rock TV in general).

Anyway, here’s the video. We’re working up something dramatically different for our next video, so stay tuned!

This was a fun little idea for a Hallween video that we wrote and produced alongside our If You’re Not Getting, Get Going! video. Unfortunately, a bit of bad administrative work by me (exacerbated by the fact that apparantly I’m busy now) meant that the video got bumped from the Rock’s service the night before Halloween to make time for some silly little thing where two new pastors were officially recognized by the church.

Regardless of the scheduling snafus, here are some of my thoughts on the newest Rock TV:

-While I find the finished video to be a bit choppy and unclear at points, there are certainly elements to it that I love. As usual, Todd’s trailer trash testimonial performance demonstrated his uniquely talented abilities to deliver a laugh. His “my cats just love my new leg nub” is by far my favorite line in the video.

-The dark tone in the second half of the video is something I liked. Some members of the ministry worried that it was getting too dark and grim for church-laughs, and so we leavened it a bit with some lighter music at points. That probably helped, but I wonder if it might have been more fun to go “all in” on the violence and death (not that it would have been any more popular).

-The production of this video was a personal challenge for me because I was making a very conscious effort to step back and allow others to take the lead in writing, production, and editing. I’m usually a notorious control freak in this ministry, but that doesn’t really bode well for the future of Rock TV as my free time gets more and more eaten up with family endeavors. This video represented a worthwhile opportunity for others to edit and make the sorts of decisions that I usually manage. It was hard, but very good for me. Kudos to everybody that put in work on this one.

-When we were in production with this one, I summarized it to my wife as “an infomercial for an excercise product that’s really just a psychopath with a chainsaw who chases you into shape”. After she watched it, her only comment was, “You never actually show him chasing anyone”. Leave it to her to point out the massive, gaping hole in the video that nobody in the ministry seemed to notice. Thanks, honey.

This is another of our ham-fisted “message videos”, similar in approach to the old “Jaded Dating Tips” video we did back in 2005. While perhaps a bit more hard-hitting than other message videos we’ve done, it is also admittedly a hodgepodge of ideas. Some of the gags reflect Adam O’s paradigm of the Bible Ass-Man who uses scripture to challenge people’s pain and politics without any sense of empathy. Other gags (not-so-subtlety) go after the “feel good all the time” school of Christianity that tends to breed rampant church-hopping and consumerist mentalities.

Also, it features jokes.

By far, my favorite part of this video is the dream sequence about 4 minutes into the video. It’s a wonderfully surreal aside that interrupts the established pacing of the video for no reason other than to be strange. Other favorite bits are Leroy’s obnoxious prayer ambiance and his sadness at erasing his sin-free record. Overall, while probably not one of our top 10 efforts, I feel like this video is solidly consistent, with enough good lines and tossed-off gags to keep a smile going throughout.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the next new Rock TV, coming this Halloween!

Roomies (1999):

Crow Motel (2002):

These two gems represent my final efforts of my summer archiving project to tweak old Rock TVs and make them available online. In my opinion, I was able to save the best for last. These two represent my favorite efforts by the Rock TV ministry from the years before I was involved, and they required minimal adjustments before making them available here (I removed one or two awkward camera shots).

The Roomies video is flat-out great, in my opinion. There’s literally no concept here, and that is absolutely a strength of the video. Just two dudes being goofy and dancing and then getting the crap kicked out of them. Rock TV actually attempted to do a sequel of sorts to this project a few years back, but wasn’t able to catch lightning in a bottle the way this one does. When we tried it again, it just seemed really, really flamboyantly gay.

As for Crow Motel, I just think it’s a great, really bizarre idea. Definitely a bit darker than the videos had been up to that point. It certainly isn’t without its flaws, but it’s got enough wonderfully strange stuff (“From the makers of the Crow Swatter…”) to make it all worthwhile.

Enjoy – we’ve got a brand new Rock TV coming very soon!

The Road Trip (1999):

The Road Trip 2 (2000)

Back in the early days of the Rock, these were perhaps the most beloved Rock TVs of them all. They were each played to kick off the big summer retreat (back when we had Rock retreats) and the audiences were rabidly enthusiastic at that moment, so they went over really well. When I reflect on these particular videos (I was merely a fan of Rock TV at that point, not a member) I remember the goofball energy of the retreats that these helped stoke. They aren’t necessarily the strongest videos in the world, but they were important for the ministry, and for our church.

The first Road Trip video is a pretty straightforward deal – “Hey Rock TV gang, let’s pile in the car and head on down to the Rock retreat!” For a number of technical reasons, this is the best-made of the early Rock TVs. The highlight for me is certainly the performance by Todd, who had just joined the ministry, particularly the shot of him in the darkened trunk – in fact, that’s one of my favorite shots in the history of the ministry.

The Road Trip 2 probably remains the most ambitious project Rock TV has ever attempted. Portions of the video were filmed in Arizona and Germany (Todd grabbed them on his world travels). More notably, prior to the retreat the video was only completed up to the 7:35 mark of what you see here. Everything after that was a closed-circut feed taped at the actual retreat itself as the video played. I was in the auditorium when Todd popped out of that box, and I can tell you that the reaction was epic.

However…

…I’m not convinced that Road Trip 2 is a particularly funny video. It’s a bit too self-congratulatory and reliant on callbacks to earlier videos (including the Road Trip, Mattress Police and Ninja Salesman) and there just aren’t many jokes. Still, the video was an impressive technical feat (and the fact that they beat the hell out of a car for a Rock TV is pretty cool).

NOTE: I’ve shortened Road Trip 2 by nearly two minutes from its original length, both to avoid some issues with copyrighted music (the sound is a bit peculiar on this version, unfortunately) and to remove stretches of the video where nothing happened.

Enjoy!

The Viewmaster (2005)

100 Years of the Rock (2003):

These two videos aren’t quite as old as some of the other videos from the archives that I’ve been dusting off, but they’re each worth revisiting.

The Viewmaster video left a bad taste in my mouth for a long time because we just didn’t execute it properly. I went ahead and removed a lengthy set of Leroy-as-dog gags that never really worked, and the video is MUCH better for it. It feels faster, sillier, and certainly closer to the original vision of the writing team. This shortened version of the video is quite strong, in my opinion.

The 100 Years video was flagged by YouTube last year for using copyrighted music, so I’ve removed the offending song, and removed about 30 seconds from the rest of the video. While this one is a bit plodding, it has its merits. Jeromy Darling’s performance as the old-timey preacher at the beginning is great, and this video features the first appearance of Pastortron 9000 and the Jesus Cops (characters we later expounded upon upon at length).

Back when the 100 Years video first aired (at the 2003 Rock retreat) we caught some flak for Todd’s performance as an increasingly-drunk host. Looking back, we might have been a bit insensitive, given the number of recovering addicts in the audience, but it’s still a damn funny job by Todd.

Enjoy!

You’ve Got Male (2000):

Band Auditions (2001):

Both of these videos pre-date my involvement in Rock TV, but I went ahead and shortened them up substantially, cutting out almost two minutes each. I always liked elements of these videos, but felt the final products were a bit bloated. Hopefully, the edits have salvaged the worthwhile material while keeping them understandable.

You’ve Got Male features yet another virtuoso performance by Leroy, and I think the second half of this video is really strong. The highlight for me is definitely the awkward, profound moment of silence near the end.

Band Auditions is a harmless, goofy video that works fairly well. Shelly’s performance is spectacularly weird – probably her funniest stuff from any of the old videos.

Neither of these comes close to a Rock TV top 10, but both merit being available online. I’ll have a couple more oldies for you guys next week.

Enjoy!

The Perfect Boyfriend (2002):

Return of the Perfect Boyfriend (2004):

The concept for these videos dated back to Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend, a cynical rumination on dating and women from my college days (in the vein of Ochuk’s wonderfully illuminating Christianized Ladder Theory). For that reason, these videos bring a smile to my face more for the memories tied to them than for the videos themselves.

While there’s some fun stuff here, I never really felt like these met their concept’s potential. They both start a bit slow, sag in the middle, saving their best gags for last. In my opinion, the second video is a bit stronger, though it is somewhat slight. It has a sharper, sarcastic edge to it that I like, particularly from about the 4:30 mark on.

I’m polishing off a number of other old Rock TVs, and I’ll keep them coming over the next week or two. This is great news for the 3 of you who care.

Enjoy!

These are probably my favorite Rock TVs to watch – yes they’re indulgent and incoherent, but dammit, they’re fun.

Leroy and Todd invariably are the stars of these videos because of their tremendous wit and gift for physical comedy. When I get off course, on the other hand, the humor tends to take a darker turn. This probably shocks regular readers of this blog.

My favorite bits here:

-The alternate zombie ending of “The Escape” is so bizarre, but I love it. Don’t ask me to explain it though, because I can’t. It’s just twisted, goofy fun.

-The improvised bits between me and Todd from “Viewmaster 2″ were some of the most fun I’ve had at a shoot.

-Watching Ted threaten Beaker never gets old to me.

Enjoy!

Buster Fonz: How to Host the Perfect 4th of July BBQ

Of all the Rock TVs our ministry ever put together, this one is probably our most requested. Whether it’s the silliness of the Buster Fonz character, the exuberant hyper-patriotism, or the glorification of meat, there’s just something about this video that works. One of my projects for the summer is to clean up copyright issues on some older videos to make them internet-friendly, and this was the first one I got to work on.

Like all our videos, this Rock TV has its weak points. I think that the Presidential Fitness Test requirement for a grillmaster is funny as a tossed-off line, but not necessarily as an extended gag. This also isn’t the most visually compelling thing we’ve ever done. Having said that, of the 70-something Rock TVs out there, this has got to be in my top five.

Enjoy!

From the moment the writing team solidified the concept, this video was a lot of fun to produce. We enjoyed getting to riff on stale sitcom conventions and pay homage to some of the shows we grew up with. We also enjoyed watching Todd in a mullet wig.

At this point, I’m very happy with where this video ended up. There was some discussion among the editors as to whether the ending works – it’s fairly dark and disconnected from the rest of the video. My feeling is that I like it when Rock TV goes weird, and there’s enough solid material in the video otherwise to excuse an indulgent, alienating conclusion where I yell at Jordan once again

Some of my favorite bits from the video:

-The writing team’s satisfaction with Christine’s suggestion to steal ideas.

-Leroy’s performances during the sitcom’s opening sequence when he drops the boxes – it’s pure Dick Van Dyke.

-The Luck Dragon reference slays me.

-The entire character of Smetka is the single greatest Rock TV development of the past several years, in my opinion. Stay tuned for more Smetka appearances to come.

Enjoy!

Fields of Rold Gold:

This video was from May of 2004, and it marked our first foray into the fertile field of dating and relationships. For whatever reason, this video never really came together to my liking. This is a shortened version, removing a particular sequence that never really worked to anybody’s satisfaction. It’s a stronger video without it.

Also, note that this video is a classic example of the writing team never actually coming up with an ending.

—

Mattress Police:

This is from 2000, well before my involvement in the ministry, back when my overbearing leadership was nothing more than a lifeless glint in Todd Luker’s eye.

I don’t have a lot to say about this one, other than it was originally almost three minutes longer than what you see here. I recently sat down and “revised” this version, George Lucas-style, removing a few minutes of unfunny banter and adding a wacky farting alien to provide a deus ex machina plot resolution.

Having said that, this video comes to life for me around the 4:15 mark, when Todd appears. Otherwise, in my estimation, it isn’t much more than collection of stale cop jokes. It never approaches the comedic zenith of Count Awkward.

Enjoy your weekend!

In the writing stage, we saw this as a chance to have some fun with stuff going on in the culture of the Rock, and riff on the horrible feeling you get when you realized that you’re stuck at a crappy party. I think the general idea is solid, and a lot of the bits make me laugh, but in all honestly, this will never be one of my favorite Rock TVs. Frankly, I’m happy to already be on to our next video.

Why isn’t this one of my favorites? This was a long and troubled shoot. That manifests itself in the general aesthetic ugliness of the video and the fact that this party appears to be attended by 6 people during the daytime hours. I’m in this video a fair amount, and I feel like I was boisterously overacting to compensate for the other issues we were having – at some points it works, but at other points my character seems disconnected from reality. For technical and writing reasons, this one seems to confuse people – it’s sometimes difficult to follow (this wasn’t helped when it played at the Rock and the sound was atrocious). The editors went to great lengths to tighten up the video to the brisk (too brisk?) pace it ended up at.

Having said all that, there is stuff in here that I like a lot. When Christine opens the door on Jim nursing the cat, the look on his face is priceless. It’s like he’s assessing his life at that moment and doesn’t like what he sees.

I always enjoy watching Jordan cruelly disregard Kia’s heartfelt prayer request and then shove Kevin out of the way. The dark, sordid moment midway through the video between two characters from Rock TVs past was a goofy one, and I’m glad it ended up in the video. We also had a lot of fun shooting the ending by the back gate, we did an alternate version where the party-goers became zombies, which was both funnier and even more confusing than it sounds.

Anyway, enough post mortem. Enjoy the video, or don’t. Either way, it’s done, and the ministry is on to the next one, coming your way in late May/early June.

I was going over a few stills we pulled off some videos, and they made me laugh. These are some of my favorite moments with the team the last few years.

Enjoy your weekend!

Blowhard political host Saxony Beauregard hosts his program live from the Superhero Convention where Awesome Man prepares to accept the Superhero nomination for President of the Galaxies to face the heavily-favored Evil Party Candidate Admiral Death!

Everybody got that?

The admittedly confounding, convoluted concept aside, this was a chance to have a lot of fun with the coverage of this year’s election while making some goofy superhero jokes. The real challenge in this video was trying to match the pacing and overload of a cable news show while keeping our video coherent. We spent a ton of time in the editing stage with this one, deciding which gags to keep and trying to work out the right graphic look – cluttered but smooth.

Lots of credit to Kevin, who knew exactly what he was going for with this character (could we really have cast anybody else for the role?), and I think Ted did a nice job as the menacing (but specific) Admiral Death.

Favorite moments:
-Awesome Man’s commercial is a definite highlight, especially his “Noooo!” moment.

-Saxony’s interview with Admiral Death really hits on a number of satirical issues we were going after – I think there’s a lot of good writing there.
-Professor Tickles!

Enjoy!

This particular video is almost ten years old now, long predating my involvement. You will, however, hear Todd Luker’s voice during the narration, and you have Ryan Pickett to thank for the severed arm shot, which is perhaps the highlight of the video.

The skit itself has some decent laughs, in my opinion (setting aside the fact that it was a blatant SNL rip-off, which was a Rock TV speciality in those days). Watching it today, it’s clear how much the production values and writing in our ministry have improved over the years, but funnily enough, we rarely get the sort of rapturous response that this video received back in 1999.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for a 10-year old Micah Darling.

Enjoy!

This video was a not-too-subtle take on a television program you might have seen called Jack Van Impe Presents, where one can learn each week how various news headlines are definitive proof of the coming apocalypse.

In crafting this video, however, we didn’t limit ourselves to potshots at Jack Van Impe (that’s just too easy). We also spent some time tweaking other elements of Christianity’s bizarre broadcast TV culture while trying to fashion a message that says something positive about the community and discipleship one can find in their local church.

I’m really happy with this video – in the end, I think it will probably become one of a handful of my favorite Rock TVs. Much of that credit should go to Kevin and Todd for their performances as Jack & Cinemax Von Trousner, as well as Jordan’s amazing job as the “hip” youth pastor.

As a bonus to those of you who enjoy the video, we had enough material left over after editing that we also put out a clip of deleted scenes. There’s some good, funny stuff there that we hated to lose, but the video just got too long.

Enjoy!

This video pre-dates my involvement in Rock TV, but it was always one of my favorites. I remember particularly enjoying the pumpkins arbitrarily setting on fire after they’ve been run over.

For those of you wondering, regular posting will resume next week!

A few years back, Rock TV did a video called The Viewmaster, a collection of short sketches that didn’t really turn out as well as we’d hoped. For a long while, the talk within the ministry was that this was a fertile concept that we just failed to execute properly. This video is our attempt to correct that missed opportunity. I’m still not sure whether we were totally successful, but I do feel that we did a better job this time around.

The advantage to a video like this is that it gives us the opportunity to get silly and run with ideas that would otherwise be immediately dismissed. A great example of this is the “Mumsy” sketch. Kevin pitched this at a number of meetings, and I still can’t honestly believe that it ended up getting shot. In the end, though, it makes me laugh more than probably anything else in the video.

I’d also like to note that the running gag of Todd and I explaining pre-1995 pop culture to Jordan comes right out of a number of conversations we’ve had with him. This video became a fun way of playing with those real-life discussions.

Some other bits I enjoy:
-Todd’s hinted-at depression surrounding Ms. Pac-Man, which was an ad-lib.
-The rapture insurance bit is a really solid concept and features footage of my cats, which is probably my wife’s favorite part of the video.
-The ambiance in the antique shop during the headband sketch is great. Kudos to Ted for the Sean Connery voice he used for some reason.

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry about that ending. We didn’t really know where to go with it.

The video was posted on YouTube when it first came out, and over the last year, it managed to collect just over 12,000 views and become the most watched Rock TV ever. Unbelieveably, the video was featured on the front page of YouTube yesterday, and has been viewed over 100,000 times in the last 24 hours. That is completely nuts.

The most interesting facet of this recent spotlight is the comments the video has garnered – a mix of positive and negative. Generally speaking, the positive feedback seems to have come from Christians (which makes sense, given that the satire would only really hit home with somebody familiar with today’s Christian landscape). Much more amusing are the negative comments, a few of which I am happy to share with you now:

ducktill writes:
I didnt laugh once , how come?

I don’t know, ducktill. Did your cat get run over recently?

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oXxBENNYxX0 writes:
Be very care folks !!
joking about Gods stuff/PPL is like playing with a mad viper !!
trust benny !!
and ya NEVER really know ,Sometimes who IS real/Really Gods !

Eloquently stated, sir. I shall indeed trust Benny in the future, because ya never really know who IS real/Really Gods, whatever the hell that means…

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AznElf1 writes:
Boo, this is completely painting another view on us. Is this what America has gone to? I think so.

I can’t make heads or tails of this. Who is “us”? What view have we painted on them? Why is an Asian Elf watching Rock TVs?

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TJZA1986 writes:
what a sh*t. My time was wasted watching this.
you clearly don’t have anything good to be done out of your meaningless lives.

Excellent point, and quality insight. Hopefully my honorable suicide can still set things right.

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koreaboi6 writes:
i found this very offensive…as i’m sure many other people did
some of it sounded like a weak imitation of dane cook to me. anyway, they didn’t have to involve pastors and christianity. pastors really have a rough time in the increasingly secular world today. i find comedy that doesnt aim for a larger audience and that offenses a large population very inefficient

Thanks for paying attention to the video, koreaboi.

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And finally, supershroom164 writes:
no wonder America is sucking so much.
America wastes money on stupid offensive productions that arnt even funny.

This video cost our ministry about $60 to make – it was spent constructing the Beaker puppet. Apparently this money tipped the scales toward our nation’s cultural demise. On behalf of Rock TV, I would like to apologize to supershroom and the world.

We’ve had a lot of fun in the past riffing on themes of Christian dating, and this time we wanted to look at things from a decidedly female perspective, and from the hindsight of marriage (as a number of the writing team members are married these days). It’s great to be at a place in the ministry where we have enough women actors to even do a video like this.

A few thoughts:

-The bit with Jim driving the truck made us laugh harder than anything during editing. This is the kind of thing that is constantly pitched at writing meetings and rarely makes its way to the screen (normally for good reason).

-Yes, Leroy really did stick his tongue in the fan. We actually destroyed the first fan we tried to use by trying to stop the blades with a pencil (that footage will probably end up in an outtakes video down the road). After that, Leroy volunteered to just use his tongue.

-My favorite moment in the video is Jordan’s line delivery when he says, “Hey, I’m Johnny Bowflex.” There’s just something unsettlingly intimate about it that makes me laugh.

-The sweetness of the ending was something we really came to appreciate about the video in the editing stage – it’s something different for us. I think that Rachel’s great reaction shots to Kevin have a lot to do with the tone that comes across.

Enjoy!

This is from 1999, way before my time in the ministry. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I’d like to note a few things:

-What I find interesting about this video is its lack of outright jokes, and I mean that as a compliment. The whole thing is like a tone-gag, where they keep straight faced and buttoned-down about an idiotic song and terrible recording.

-The pre-production for this video involved Jeromy Darling (one of the founders of Rock TV) writing this boy band style song – “I Can See It In Your Eyes” – and recording it with the other guys. Kudos on the work – I think the song is great, and funny in a subtle way.

-Why is Leroy bald in this video? I have no idea, but God bless him anyway.

-Years later, Kevin Sawyer came across an a capella group online (don’t ask) that had covered the song and changed the lyrics without permission. Their changes altered the song’s content to PG-13 status, which I found puzzling, and apparently Jeromy wasn’t pleased with their unsolicited contribution.

-This Pop-Up version of the video was put together about a year after the original music video was completed and got a great reception at the Rock (it was literally received better than any Rock TV of the last 7 years). I believe it was done to allow Ryan Pickett and Todd Luker to passive-aggressively make fun of the actors in the ministry.

Enjoy!