Lincoln VS Norris - Behind the Scenes

Hi, my name is Nice Peter, and this is a behind the scenes look at how we made Epic Rap Battles of History 3. It's a long, hard, awesome process, and I hope this gives you a little peek of what goes into it.

I'll tell you a little more, if you like, but first, special thanks to Mike Schroeder from http://www.youtube.com/thewarpzone for editing this video.

Okay, here's the whole story of how we get these made.

First, me and Lloyd (Hitler, Bill O'Reilly, Chuck Norris) sit down and look through the comment suggestions for a new rap. We are looking for interesting match-ups, people that make sense together but not exactly. With Lincoln VS Norris, we liked it because Chuck Norris has become this mythical American hero, and Lincoln is like this classic American hero, and we thought they would have a lot to say to each other.

Next, we find the beat. That's a very hard part, finding the perfect beat. We found this one from MrFlamez, a very talented young producer out of Chicago. You can check out his other work here:
http://www.youtube.com/hitmansbest

After that comes the writing process, going through every joke combination and reference, finding the story, finding the essentials of their argument. We want these raps to be funny, but also sensible. Lloyd helps me, I help Lloyd, and together we sort it out.

Then we decide who's playing who, sometimes, like this one, it's obvious. In the future we're going to bring in some special guest rappers, but Lloyd will always be involved, don't worry.

Next comes recording, another hard part. Rapping in a different character's voice can be tricky, and I'm a nut about recording. I can't stop working on it until its sounds just right. It takes a couple of days sometimes, but I hope its worth it in the end.

After we have the song, and after we gather the costumes, we get together with our crew, Dave, Jon, and Mike.

We film the whole video with a green screen. The filming part is actually the easiest part of the whole process, we do a close up, a medium, and a wide shot for each character. We also figure out the "dimensional gimmick." In every Epic Rap video there is some sort of visual gag where one character reaches into the other's universe. John Lennon jumped onto Bill O'Rielly's news set, Darth Vader grabbed Hitler's throat, here Abe Lincoln dumps pennies on Chuck Norris.

Then, after all this, comes the really hard part, editing. All the shots are taken in and edited, tweaked, moved, adjusted, synced, stretched, and kissed with love. Mike, Dave, and Geoff all helped on this one.

For the pennies gag in this video, we used $30 worth of pennies, and we dumped them all over Lloyd's head. Then we got 8 shots of pennies being thrown into the air in front of the green screen. We also got all the shots to make Chuck Norris look huge, and Lincoln look tiny.

When it's all said and done, we hope we have an awesome video for you. If you have any other specific questions, feel free to leave them in the comments, I'll see what I can answer.

see you soon,

-nice peter

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• nicepeter
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• abe
• lincoln
• chuck
• norris
• lloyd
• ahlquist

[jackofblades456]

anyone else think he looks like obi-wan kenobi at 1:26?

[FEXOBKN]

- Ladies & Gentleman, Mr Chuck Norris

-Fuck You

THIS MAKE MY DAY

[moviemaker7007]

crunk abe lincoln lmao

[MrsHarryPotter0308]

@OmgDontBeLikeThat Weed? I think it's heroine lol

[ninetailednaruto11a]

Anyone notice how red Loyd gets when he's Chuck Norris?

[socal786]

1:08 fuck you too

[Minecraftnspire]

@OmgDontBeLikeThat Heroin :D

[OmgDontBeLikeThat]

Wait... I wanted to buy some weed!

[stickwars1000]

Chuck Norris doesn't read he just stares at the book until it gives the. Info

[LiveWire134679]

@SirKillerBunny Yeah, I spoke the truth bud. :)

[SirKillerBunny]

@LiveWire134679 You sir....don't know what you have done..