In a bit of nostalgia I have decided to upload this series of films made back in my junior and senior years of high school (04-06) for one of my classes. The class was ONN (Olympia News Network), we produced a 30 min show every month or two that covered some news and provided some variety entertainment (which also often presented some news as a part of it as well). These pieces therefore belong as a part of a broader show and some oddities about the way they begin and end and the topics they cover often reflect that fact. For the most part I did all the writing, shooting, and editing for these pieces and I often starred in them as well. I am organizing them by both subject and quality (worst to best) and I will also note the chronology. So if you are curious about my early video projects, or where I come from, or are just looking for some good blackmail material, be sure to check out my ONN Revisit.
This fifth section is dedicated to the silent episodes of Everyday Heroes that all aired during the mini January episode my second year on ONN. Here I present The Lost Episode of Everyday Heroes, so titled because it was originally intended to be aired during the Holiday episode of ONN. This episode has a particularly complicated history. It started out as a standard episode of Everyday Heroes with a Hero called Mr. Enlighten. Mr. Enlightens power, as it turned out, was self-referential humor. He talked directly to the camera, explaining to the audience what was happening and the kinds of patterns the show was following. It wasnt a great script. Also, at this time the show had only been going for two episodes (and ultimately only had five regular episodes and three silent episodes) so the self-referential humor didnt make sense because we hadnt really established a clear pattern by this point (and there werent a ton of fans who religiously followed the show). Beyond that, for the character of Mr. Enlighten Nathan performed an odd impression of a teacher that I was too polite to say anything about. When I edited it into rough-cut form I decided that it was just a bad episode. I didnt have the time or desire to film a new episode but I also didnt want to miss an episode (particularly an episode this early on in an unpopular show I was trying to turn into a year long series), so I re-edited it. Even while filming the episode I had some clue that it was not going to turn out great and had been thinking about ways I could fix it. I settled on making it into a silent film. The dialogue and the acting were the weak points, problems that were entirely fixed by cutting out the sound. Making it black and white just seemed natural for a silent film. As for the soundtrack, its from a Buffy episode. At the time I was carrying around the Once More with Feeling soundtrack, and it was one of the bonus tracks (and one of the few songs I owned without lyrics). The song was picked for convenience, as the original attempt to make the episode silent was just an experiment. But its not like the music instantly fit with the episode. The music by its own nature had pauses and changes in style and I had to perform a lot of cutting and reordering and transitions to get all the pauses and style changes to work. I also did a lot of work on the footage I had, reordering it, cutting it to fit, slowing it down. Im amazed at how well the piece turned out and how well I got the music to match the visuals. My opinion on the episode changes constantly. Sometimes its bizarre and funny, sometimes I think it tells a story effectively without words, and sometimes its just totally incomprehensible. In one of the funnier bits youll note that even in a silent piece one of my characters has a monologue, although here the other characters have the proper reaction. Ultimately though, after all my hard work, the piece was cut. The director on the show was Annie. Annie (who openly hated my work) brought it to Mr. W because it was too random and not holiday themed. Mr. W agreed with Annie. I lost the battle but I won the war. Normally ONN went straight from the Holiday episode to a Valentines Day episode, but some people this year had proposed a January episode. I told Mr. W that I would produce two more silent pieces for the January episode and make it a theme so that it wouldnt seem random. Cye and I were willing to produce our shows for both episodes (while most of the class produced for one or the other) and were a large part of why the episode got made (together producing four pieces that contributed over a forth of the runtime in a class of thirteen people). Because I was not allowed to just air my short silent piece, I created two more silent pieces, and helped force the production of an unnecessary episode in which to air all three of them. That is why you dont fuck with me.
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MCJ Silent Filmsby whoslistening2u121 views
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