A Parody Web Series

A friend of mine and incredible comedian, Josh Harris called me one day to discuss a project he was working on. He and another incredible comedian, J.A. Anderson, were pitching a web series of the President of the United States Barak Obama in parody news conferences to a national website - Rare.US. J.A. does this side-splitting impersonation of Obama so it was a natural fit for a political web site.

I've worked with Josh many times over the past few years and when we discussed this project I was excited to help him bring his vision to fruition.

We discussed how to film the series and some of the logistics. Since it was going to be a simple, one location, new conference scene I suggested the use of green screen and to really make the video look like a video and not a film - wanted to go for the realistic look. Josh worked up the scripts, budget and time-line and got it approved by Rare.US.

Josh brought on Director Craig Tollis and we all worked together to come up with a shooting schedule and process.

Since we were shooting one location with one primary angle and then one turnaround we thought we could get it all shot in 12 hours. Yes, very aggressive for about 20 script pages, but doable since a majority of the dialog would be J.A. doing his Obama impersonation.

On the shoot date, we got going after a short 1.5 hour setup and banged through the scripts. Since Josh and J.A. wrote the scripts, the primary shots of J.A. went very smoothly. Having two cameras, one for the close-up and the other for the wide, allowed us to go through the primary shot without having to go through extra takes for the close-up.

Shooting the turn-around of the press corps was more difficult as we had to coordinate seat locations for each of the six episodes and block out camera movement as the actors ran through the script. You would think just pointing the camera to the next actor would have worked, but we also had to get the mic boom operator coordinated as well to capture great audio. All in all, the shoot only went about two hours over schedule, which included tear-down.

POST PRODUCTION

Craig cranked through the edits in a blaze, after all he's this Emmy award winning editor as well. I provided him the virtual set for the primary shot of Obama and once he locked the edits I worked on some basic color correction and grading along with some minor sound design.

From shoot date to final edit, we got the six episodes completed in about six weeks and the customer was extremely happy with the results.

Here are the six episodes:

• Episode #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNn1S2gnmkQ&feature=player_embedded  

• Episode #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFwD3aIGEOM&feature=player_embedded  

• Episode #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H6_zS7TLZ4&feature=player_embedded  

• Episode #4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1pwxX0Gvos&feature=player_embedded  

• Episode #5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3rKhPwlTyw&feature=player_embedded  

• Episode #6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zje1HhZIZQ 

Equipment Used:

• Sony FS100, FS700

• Rode Boom Mic

• 10x20 foot Portable Green-Screen

• Avid Media Composer (primary editing)

• Red Giant Looks, Colorista II (color correction and grading)

• Pro-Tools 10 (Sound Design)