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Ben Budge has wanted to do this skit for ages, and we kind of got around to it in the most roundabout way possible. Unintentionally of course.

We needed some way to kill Cody off because, at this point, we thought he would be in the Navy before we could film anything else off. Kind of like how we “killed” Dalbey off in Satan’s Seat with his idle hands. No one wants to be around a guy with the devil’s playthings for hands.

This is all in all the most disturbing skit we’ve ever made, the licorice alone is enough to make you gag if you aren’t careful. Olivia made her final appearance here before she moved back to Boston, which was sad enough as it is. We wanted to ‘kill’ her character off too by having her break up with me in iSaber 4, but didn’t get to it in time.

What’s funny is we had a really scary, Edgar-like person approach us with his dog while we were filming in the park. He was dirty and mildly perverted, hitting on the girls we had with us and suggesting we put our videos on YouTube. His dog went about smelling our shoes as we awkwardly tried to get him to leave.

What angered me most, however, was that he was ignorant to the fact that we were already on YouTube. Apparently nobody knows. Not even dirty vagrant perverts.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find a van for the skit, which pretty much ruins the whole thing in a sense. It turns out we don’t know anyone with vans, least of all the creepy mafia/chimo vans we had in mind. I guess we have to have some sort of flagrant error or misstep in every video, that might as well be it.

OR the fact that we ended up recording in mono again… gosh dang it all to heck in a hamper. Actually in watching this again for the first time in a long while I did a terrible job editing it. It didn’t help we were trying to film as fast as we could before we ran out of daylight, but dang. Tons – of – errors.

Interesting fact: Dirty vagrant perverts are particularly attracted to anything being shot on camera.

Slightly less interesting fact: Budge (Edgar) covered himself with mustard to look extra dirty.

VASTLY less interesting fact: if you eat enough licorice while filming the same shots over and over again you’ll get sick.

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Second time’s the charm. Especially when you’ve got a coach.

This one was a lot of fun to film, we actually had lights set up and just had a good time standing around shooting for a few hours. There were, of course, a couple of errors, like recording in mono the entire time, but such is life.

Rainee Palmer made her debut in this one, the deaf hottie. Hot girls that are willing to be around us are hard to come by so we definitely try to treat them right when they do. Her sister, Rubie, one of our old roommates (from our 9-bedroom house featured in most of our early videos) can be seen on the couch in the background along with her boyfriend of the time, Harry.

This was where the pythons came from originally, I’d written this before the “Louis’ Love Corner” sketch and so it absolutely had to make it in. I definitely didn’t pull it off as well as Josh does, probably why it didn’t work…

The whole thing is delightfully ridiculous, IMHO, and we had fun fighting and yelling and pretending we knew what we were doing. The concoction of liquor Cody poured was incredibly strange and fruity, but ended up being pretty good in the end. Kind of like cough syrup minus the mediciney taste.

Another unfortunate oversight was that in the opening shot I wasn’t backed out of the frame completely, my arm is just hanging on the fence while they talk like I can’t hear them… I’m a tool. Should have noticed that in the editing process at least. Or maybe I did and just didn’t have a better take. Either way, suck.

Interesting fact: Cody plays the bartender as well as himself.

Slightly less interesting fact: I may have broken my bluetooth headset when tossing it on the ground.

VASTLY less interesting fact: The skull’s name is Frank, he was like a house mascot for a while. The crazy part was I named him about 30 minutes before seeing that episode of Lost where the skeleton falls out of the van and his name (according to the badge stitched into his jump suit) is Frank. We got a little weirded out by that for a while.

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Because everybody needs a little advice when it comes to love.

Lewis (or “Louis,” as he prefers to be called) came about when Jefe and I were joking about how we needed a character that was a sleazy ladies man. It stemmed from Jefe always calling me a ladies man, and in turn I started calling him Jefe the Womanizer.

Of course that spiraled out of control and we worked on figuring out a usable name. Finally the gag of Lewis wanting to be called ‘Louis’ (like the French kings) in his pompous egotism solidified the character. Used car salesman meets pompous gay guy is pretty much what we told Josh. Of course I had him in mind while we were creating the character, he’d wanted to be in a video for a while and it wasn’t too much different than a role I’d seen him play before in a one act at Eastern.

Olivia was a total sport in acting like a complete floozy, and taking that fall something like 5 times. Of course we hope to make louisthewomanizer.com sometime soon, relationship advice as you need it. There’s a whole development of his character  I have thought out and hope to get to, all in good time.

You can get a head start by asking your questions in the comments below and we’ll put it in the mix to get started.

Interesting fact: The python works best when you finish with the pointing to your toes.

Slightly less interesting fact: we did that video in one take (well, we used one take but took a few).

VASTLY less interesting fact: we hear girls like it when you tug their hair to get their attention.

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You k now it’s true, I don’t care if you’re Brad Pitt there’s at least one girl on the face of the planet that you found yourself unable to hold a civilized conversation with on the grounds of your own sniveling ineptitude.

And who doesn’t run so they can eat? Very few people, to answer my own question. This was the debut of a number of friends, Michael and Josh had been wanting to do a video for a while and I’m glad they finally got in one. I’m also not sure if he prefers Michael or Mike, but I know enough “Mike”s already and “Michael” has just the right amount of class for him. Olivia was a total find, I’m so glad she joined us and equally glad she put up with us.

What’s funnier (or more depressing, depending on how you look at it) is that I’m pretty sure every conversation I’ve ever had with any girl I had any remote level of interest in went similarly to this one. How else would I be so knowledgeable on destroying myself within a matter of sentences?

Lewis the Womanizer was another side of things that hasn’t come to fruition yet. Josh does an amazing job and we need to have more of him at some point. I still want to do an “Ask Lewis” section of the site, for all of your relationship needs.

Interesting fact: We found Olivia via Craigslist. The first and last time we’ll do that. Glad we did because we found her, won’t do it again because it makes us feel creepy to post “need hot girls for video” online.

Slightly less interesting fact: You can buy that shirt from me for $20.

VASTLY less interesting fact: I may have been influenced a bit too much by Charlie on this one… just saying.

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Don’t ask where the name came from, it was meant to sound epic and it has to do more directly with Jonathan’s role than anything.

One thing that seems to go unappreciated by a large number of people is that this is a continuation of geek-soaked fantasy. None of this is real, which should be accentuated by the regular return to reality in those long shots where all we see are a couple of nerds hacking away at each other with sticks.

Thus the question, or rather the statement “I thought he was dead!” becomes a moot point. Although it’s funny that I’ve heard people refer to Brian as “the demon” in this video. That makes some sense at least since he’s wearing the devil’s cloak from Satan’s Seat. I guess I should leave this to speculation; here I go ruining the whole idea of interpretation. So go ahead, interpret.

In fact, I may have just made all that up to throw you off the trail of the truth.

To answer another commonly asked question: no, that girl had no idea what was going on. I hurried us up so that we wouldn’t miss the opportunity to run past her. Partly because I was hoping for a good reaction from her (which we really didn’t get) but also because having random bystanders adds a good element to the atmosphere of the video.

I spent about 22 hours on the lightsabers in this one, which at the time I thought was an obscene amount of my precious life. This was the largest contributing factor to the length of time between this video and iSaber 4. Believe me, an hour of rotoscoping light sabers will discourage anyone from choosing to do so again for a while. (Also, you may have noticed I struggle with spelling light sabers, not sure if it’s one word or not still).

The Batman-esque titles covering the punches were a simple necessity because we never bothered to mask them properly. Our fight instructor at Eastern’s Theater Department, Mac, wouldn’t be too proud of that. I also had to deal with a couple of errant sticks here and there which you can pick up if you’re paying attention. All in all I could have spent more time perfecting this video, but at the time I wasn’t ready to sit in front of my computer any longer.

We had intended to finish the fight then and there, but I had to teach a class at 3PM and we started filming at something like 2:30PM so we didn’t have time.Thus the “To Be Continued…” Not bad for really cranking this one out though eh?

Interesting fact: Frank (Caleb) screams “My Mommy bought me an iPhone!” when he joins the fray with his new iSaber.

Slightly less interesting fact: I made the “sneaky” music deaf. In other words I couldn’t hear it when I was making it because I was pumping it into my computer to be recorded, and it works for how poorly it should have turned out.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Jonathan and Caleb are brothers in real life… I warned you when I said it was vastly less interesting.

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These are just some photos I took while in Seattle with my little point and shoot Canon <3. I was visiting some friends from France who were in town, a quick trip with a single purpose so don’t be offended if I didn’t call you.

A random, unrelated post I know but I thought I’d share them with you.

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This one takes a different twist.

Of course I’m haunted by a few editing choices, and some bad rotoscoping, but it was my first round with light sabers. All in all I think I spent 15 hours on them, and it panned out pretty well.

Yes there is a Zippo lighter app, and no it doesn’t light anything on fire. That would be cool, but it doesn’t do that.

The song is Phantom, by Justice, and yes it is that cool. This (as well as iSaber 3) was filmed by my buddy Andrew Taylor, whose name I messed up in the credits: “Taylor Andrews.”

It was thanks to his skateboard that we could attempt the vertigo effect and almost pull it off. Brian’s looks better than mine, but it’s possible that it’s because he’s that much cooler than I am.

Someone corrected me once on saying “2G Networks” when I should have said Edge, but I recently discovered that 2G networks do exist so take that… er, I mean I knew that when I said it.

In case you were wondering why we had the closeup shot mid fight where all you see is either Brian or me with just our light sabers, it’s because that type of shot comprised about half of the lightsaber fights in the original trilogy. Funny… joke…

Caleb broke two of those fluorescent lamps over my back, leaving shards of glass in my sweatshirt both times. It hurt a lot, but was well worth it in the end. Especially the second shot which I used because a huge portion of the tube bounced directly over the camera.

Why “Frank?” No idea, it just worked well in the moment. To be honest Caleb’s “Frank” is probably my favorite character in any of our skits, he makes the iSaber series what it is.

This is a fairly disjointed conglomeration of thoughts, but if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll answer them!

Interesting fact: We use sticks to fight, wooden dowels to be exact, which makes it possible to add the lightsabers in later with the proper angles and blur.

Slightly less interesting fact: That epic archway Brian stands in at the beginning is part of the science department at Eastern.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Well, more an embarrassing fact, I didn’t make the saber mark on the wall in other shots after the first one. And the mark I made wasn’t quite as good as it could have been… in fact one could say it sucked.

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Ah the beginning of such a good thing. And to think no one thought this was a funny idea.

Well, not no one. I think Seth Gossler and Daniel Fockler thought it was funny… maybe Jenny, but they were probably laughing at me more than with me. Basically we were all sitting around talking about our iPhones, or at least my iPhone and Seth’s touch. I’d downloaded the Force Unleashed’s light saber app and we were playing with it while we should have been working.

I thought (out loud) about how funny it would be if you saw two nerds walking across campus that stopped when they saw each other, squared up, and then unsheathed their iPhone light sabers (hereafter shortened to “iSabers”). They laughed, and I thought about it and figured… why not? So we did it.

Brian Ross, who’s been with us since the beginning, has such a bad ass face with well pronounced features that he made the perfect sith nerd. I had the shaggy, been-out-with-the-sand-people-too-long Obiwan look going so I donned brown (which is why I didn’t wear the traditional good guy white for the last time!).

Caleb shook things up with his mad camera skills and his girlfriend Jenna provided our reality check mid-way through. Obviously filmed on Eastern’s campus we managed to get the whole thing finished in a few hours. This would not be true for iSaber battle 2, iSaber battle 3, or least of all iSaber Battle 4…

And for those of you nerdy enough to understand (or catch), in the opening dialogue I am talking about how to create two columns in an html document using floats. The trick is to put a div underneath them with a clear:both value.

Interesting fact: When in France that beard was long enough that I could grab it with my fist against my chin and have hair protrude out the bottom.

Slightly less interesting fact: The interesting fact above just ensured I would remain single for the remainder of my days.

VASTLY less interesting fact: The music and sound effects we used were all recorded off the light saber app itself.

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After 3 months I’ve finally finished it. I put in upwards of 76 hours, which I’ll describe in more detail in its dedicated blog entry, but it’s done. Hope you like it!

If you got here because of the facebook blitz, sorry to spam you but we’re so bad at promoting our videos half of our friends don’t even know they exist. You can become a fan of us on Facebook though if you feel so inclined, just click on the facebook link in the “find me on” section on the sidebar (to the right).

Leave a comment here (no account necessary) or on YouTube after you SUBSCRIBE! Plenty more details to come.

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iSaber Battle 4 is almost done, I’m working on the credits as we speak. Hopefully it’s worth the wait.

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