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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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My Irish friends would probably disown me if they saw this.

The best part is the animation (IMHO), which may have taken a while to make but was fun nonetheless.  This was another quickly thrown together announcement for New Community, like all our videos. This time about the Irish Folk Dance party we were going to have last spring.

Obviously(?) I’m not British; I did have fun making this even though it’s more embarrassing than entertaining. Ah to reminisce back to when I had a sweet beard and long hair.

The dance party was a smashing success, and my video didn’t offend anyone beyond reconciliation so it was a win win situation for everyone. Much to my disappointment it turned out I was completely wrong about how the Irish dance. I need to scrounge up that little website I made, or at least that animation to share.

Though you wouldn’t know it my sister, Kaarin, filmed this. She’s pretty good at everything photographic.

Interesting fact: The island commonly referred to as Ireland is occupied by two countries, Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK).

Slightly less interesting fact: While staying in Dublin I met a Danish kid who sounded purely Scottish when he spoke. My buddy Clive Strawbridge (who’s from Chard, just south of Bristol) and I were flabbergasted.

VASTLY less interesting fact: My towel started to fall off at the end there, thankfully my tactful editing skills saved you from losing part of your vision.

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This is probably the most odd video we have, which is saying something. (come back later for photos, I’m currently away from my external hard drives)

I made this to promote FORMA (a retreat) for New Community. The guys dancing are two of the pastors, Rob and Ryan. Rob, if you didn’t notice on your own, is featured twice.

I made this whole thing in Photoshop and After Effects,with their somewhat express permission. At least they let me take photos of them in strange poses. The dance floor was animated by simply brightening different squares at random times (it was a static image). The dancing pastors were created with the Puppet Tool in AE, and the song is Technologic by Daft Punk.

I think it worked, there was a good turnout, and no one has ever asked to see more of the dancing in the year that’s followed.

Interesting fact: I photoshopped all the pimp gear on the duo.

Slightly less interesting fact: I can’t listen to this song any more, I went crazy animating to it.

VASTLY less interesting fact: If you like Daft Punk you’ll LOVE Justice.

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The original Christian Pill got taken down from YouTube for being too awesome. They claimed that it was due to copyright infractions, but we all know the truth. So I’ve finally gotten it up on Vimeo instead, and here’s how it used to look and sound in all its glory:

This video was quickly becoming our most popular when it got muted. I was looking up the search terms people used in finding it and was amused to discover that most revolved around “crazy Christian.”

This is (obviously) a satirical take on what much of Western Christianity has become in the US, at least how many people view it today. We made it for a college retreat, and I’m sad to say it wasn’t received as well there as it has been elsewhere. At least they didn’t seem to really get it (although the pastor that solicited my help still thinks it’s hilarious).

Jimmy Van Orsen is simply a character that I compiled out of my impressions of sleazy car salesmen and televangelists.

Kyle Taylor did a good job being the depressed white trash, and we had a fun time working together. He didn’t really drown, in case you’ve been worried this whole time.

Interesting fact: If you buy the Christian Pill it won’t do anything for except make you healthier because it was actually a multivitamin.

Slightly less interesting fact: The benefits listed at the end of the video are totally worth watching.

VASTLY less interesting fact: I’m not sure when exactly in our chronology this was released, so it’s finding its way into the blog at this point as an approximate release order… ish…

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