Production Notes for Know Your Meme: Keyboard Cat

The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies presents its findings on ‘Play Him Off Keyboard Cat’

(Holy crap, I completely forgot to hit ‘publish’ on this weeks ago.)

So I have a little bit of this thing called Founder’s Syndrome.  Don’t worry, my case is mild, really, but I know it’s there, and I know that it affects Know Your Meme. As a founding member, sometimes I get the feeling that no one except for Ellie, Jamie, Drew (EP) and I know how this show is supposed to go.  And because I’m a founder, and as long as view counts are up, I can insist that everything be done my way. Until that moment when it fails.

Producing the episode for Keyboard Cat should have been one of those moments.

When we write scripts for KYM, we go through this process of research, debate, first draft, second draft, script meeting, final draft, and then we edit for language and style long before we get to the actual shoot.

As the one who gets the story structure and rhythm of KYM better than anyone, I’m usually responsible for the final draft. In this case, I failed miserably. My jokes weren’t funny, the pacing was terribly off, and I’m not sure if I even told a coherent story. I mean, I did my job, but I was horrified.  The script I turned in after so many revisions, after so much work had been done, ended up being total crap. It was a dung ball about 8 KB wide.

Even so, I started to insist on shooting my script as is.  Fortunately, my duties as Director of Operations for Rocketboom took me out of the studio for the afternoon. And while I was gone everyone else happened. Jamie and Ellie took my script and fixed the language. Barry ran a decent looking shoot. And the editors (oh, wow, the editors!) Eric Brown and Andrew Kornhaber reworked the cuts, transitions, and music cues called for in the original script and two days later, we emerged with a decent episode. So if you all are reading this, thanks everyone.

Script and research-wise, this was one of those episodes where 90% of the research gets tossed out in order to make the finished piece as tight and efficient as possible. Ellie became an expert on early 80’s outsider art and the VHS aesthetic. New writer Mike Rugnetta (of MemeFactory fame) took a good look into the traffic vector of KBC over time. I became obsessed with the history of jesters and clowns and KBC’s link to Vaudeville, ‘Showtime at the Apollo’, and ‘Family Guy’. All of this research is sitting in a rtf doc on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll soon make it into the Keyboard Cat entry in the memeDB.

A few other notes:

(1) In the opening skit, we set it up as if Keyboard Cat would eventually play Elspethjane off but she doesn’t. We didn’t do it because I kind of felt as if that would be too obvious and that the only way it would work is if we found Ellie a foul up so awesome that people wouldn’t expect it. Alas, we couldn’t find a giant shark costume in time for the shoot.

(2) A few very knowledgable production people have remarked to me that while the actors in the foreground look properly lit, the back of the room gets washed out in blue and that this must be a mistake. This is not a mistake. This is purely intentional. We white balance against 3200K lights and allow the daylight to come through to turn the back of the “lab” blue. And it’s kind of a joke — it’s a reference to the oversaturated, overdramatic lighting of certain procedural dramas. Some people don’t get it but I like the look.

(3) Shooting in the summer is miserable. During shoots, we have to turn off the air conditioning and the windows in the back of the scene face west bringing constant sun during the afternoon. Add the set lights and wearing a labcoat becomes nearly unbearable (Ellie was such a trooper.) So as a small in-joke, I put the Steve Ballmer ‘Dance Monkeyboy’ video on in the background.

Script by Ellie Rountree, Mike, and myself. Research by Mike and Chris Menning. Shot by Barry Pousman. Hosted by Ellie and Jamie Wilkinson. Edited by Eric Brown, Andrew Kornhaber, and Barry. Production assistance from Brad Kim, Greg Leuch, and Mike.

(via: knowyourmeme)

Source: knowyourmeme

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