Ricky Coulter is a Death Metal Caveman!
NPCC Film Festival tomorrow
Well, as of the time of posting, anyway. We’re showing some long-overdue short films created during my time at National Park Community College. I find it’s amusing that the vast majority of the videos we’ll be showing were either created by me or that I was involved with in so me way – people who stop by will be seeing my VG Theory Productions introductory splash about 7 times in the span of two hours, so that’s cool.
We’ll be debuting the world premier of “The Early Birds, The Movie: The Good, The Bad, and The Hungry”, starring Peter Danner Hess and Samantha Proffit. It’s arguably the most cinematic short film I’ve ever worked on, and there’s even talk among my partners that we will pursue a feature-length “Director’s Cut” this summer which could well find it’s way to film festivals if all goes well. What, you want to see what we’ve got so far? Fine, here’s the trailer(watch it on Youtube for higher-resolution versions).
I’ll grant: I have an agenda, too.
Just like those assholes that insult my intelligence by lying to me and throwing fabricated and misconstrued “data” in my face day in and day out, I have an agenda. When someone tries to tell me that a favorite pastime of mine, playing video games, is bad for me – one that’s served to provide me countless hours of entertainment that might otherwise have been filled with acts of violence or self-mutilation or thoughts of suicide – or whatever socially-unacceptable behavior you want – it strikes a nerve.
It wouldn’t bother me if the vast majority of people were smart enough to see through the bullshit, but they don’t. The “enlightened” bourgeoisie of this country and their “ignorant” proletariat, apparently, would rather have their hands held and their decisions made for them, and for their children as well. You have the freedom to say what is on your mind in this country, and kudos to you for having it. However, fuck you for having the gall to try and abuse your freedoms in order to take mine away.
My agenda is simple. I like my hobby. I don’t want power-greedy motherfuckers elected by blissfully unaware citizens to try and twist and distort my hobby, or tell me what I can or can’t play, in order to score what they perceive as real power – the ability to tell the underlings of this country what to do, what they can or cannot do, and to mix up their poor, soft little brains in such a way that they give the rulers of this oligarchical institution thinly veiled as a democratic republic all of their earthly goods and previously established freedoms. And hey, while we’re at it, I want otherwise intelligent parents to stop lying to themselves about why their kids are miserable, antisocial fucks and do some real goddamn parenting – maybe even find a way to become an inspirational figure in your child’s life.
Like I said, it strikes a nerve.
3DS Musing
The 3DS is being marketed not for it’s technical capabilities, which put it somewhere around the Gamecube 3d level, but for the myriad of input devices it contains. Accelerometer, gyroscope, multiple cameras, touch screen, microphone, as well as it’s wifi capabilities. Oh, and the 3d display gimmick – a feature I will no doubt turn off if I ever decide to get one sometime after launch when some decent games hit. There are, indeed, some augmented-reality games being developed for the platform, including a rather unique one that’s Japan exclusive – it’s some kind of dating sim by Konami that uses the camera to detect what the player looks like in order to prevent cheating, presumably under the auspices of immersion.
I guess it’s somewhat unique, but I think there’s too many veggies boiling in the kettle, myself. Nintendo has a history of making developers implement stupid gameplay mechanics in order to utilize all functions of a given hardware platform – i’m looking right at you, DS. I pretty much loathe touch screen gaming, and the idea that i’ll actually have to combine that with waggling just makes me want to throw up.
I don’t hate hackers per se…
But fucking script kiddies just piss me the fuck off. Have I stressed this strongly enough yet? Anyway, i’m restoring from some slightly older backups in a quirky way but things should be more or less working smoothly. I’m gonna purge a shit-ton of old users that have either never posted or haven’t posted in a long, long time. Doesn’t matter, but I figure I should mention it…
Shit to do, shit to do…
Summer Update
Busy busy, indeed. Since spring semester let out to make way for summer break, i’ve been working on an indie movie project making a fairly nice salary – better than I get doing work-study at the college. Once that’s done, I will also be doing some more work-study during summer and again in the fall semester. Not a bad summer job lineup, if I do say so myself. This indie project, though, has been presenting me with quite a few interesting potential opportunities, including-but-not-limited-to acquiring a decent used van at a nice price. My director’s a pretty nice guy.
Eventually, when I find some free time and have the energy, I plan on revamping the blog and cleaning things up. I’ll be adding sections for all of my video projects, updating my bio, and things of that nature. I may even start posting a bit more regularly, though don’t hold me to that. I do most of my status updates as of late on Facebook. Feel free to hit me up and send a friend request, although I must warn you that I am pretty strict about the definition of ‘friend’, so write some sort of unique note to let me know who you are and how you came to know(of) me and we’ll see what happens.
There’s lots to discuss, but my mind is pretty drained at the moment, so adieu, comrades, adieu.
Making The Theory on Archive.org!
In a bout of nostalgia, I have uploaded an ever-so-slightly earlier cut of Making The Theory, a documentary included with the ill-fated Video Game Theory, Volume One archive dvd(it shames me to admit that this mp4 version is actually higher quality than the final dvd version). I figured I would give it away online for free just in case someone gets curious. Eventually, whenever I can find a good way to do so, I will upload the entire archive of Video Game Theory episodes as well for the illusion of posterity.
I am not fooling myself. I know, in the grand scheme of things, this entire post is moot, minute, absolutely meaningless to the rest of the world…But it’s important to me. I want people to know where I got my start. I want people to laugh at the ridiculousness of a group of naive kids surrounding a shitty mic, talking out of their asses. For almost two years, Video Game Theory was my life. I take full responsibility for not giving the show it’s due, but I am proud of what I, what we – Dillon, Josh, and Addison – accomplished with no experience, no budget, and absolutely shite equipment. It was a tremendous learning experience.
I only wish the guys would drop by and say a few words.
Ballads – Session 1
Directed by: Ricky Coulter –
Vega: Pete Hess –
The Bad: J. Phillip Ruff –
Crazy improv antics.
Tangled Threads trailer
Time flies, or something like that. It was a fairly hectic semester, let me tell you. Anyway, a new year, a new decade, and hopefully a few new shorts from Film Group this time around.
College makes for a crazy caveman
Between Physical Science, US History, Intro to Philosophy, Creative Writing, and, well, WORK, I am finding myself to be rather busy as hell. Even as I type, I am listening to a lecture from my Philosophy instructor, which makes typing kind of tricky, ironically enough. We’ve had a few film group meetings so far this semester, and it seems as though everyone will be working on some rather interesting projects. My own project, “The Wynter Project”, is currently on the back burner, but we will get to it as other films are completed, so that’s cool. Goodness knows I could use the time to finish up the script.
Just a quick update on my landlady: she’s still a bitch.
There is a small possibility of an experimental fake news podcast, depending on whether or not my employers(the college) approve of it or not. I honestly don’t know what to think about this. Working for the college has proven to me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I HATE Bureaucracy and Political Correctness. These elements of our fucked up society are both dehumanizing and decidedly bland, and when I found my studio for real, these will have no place in my business. I would very much like to follow the early Atari methodology, in that the employees work hard because they love the work, not because they’re being forced to do it. Fuck 9-5, fuck suits and ties, as long as you make multimedia magic, as long as you maintain respect for the studio and for the contracts, you are your own boss.
Well, anyway, it’s a nice dream, a nice change from the sterility of my current phase of life.
VG Theory Productions Presents: The Carl Jr.
Description: The Carl Jr. features bumbling pitchmen in an infomercial trying to sell a “terra-freakin-tastic” GPS device called the Carl Jr., named by one of the pitchmen, Carl Carlson, after himself in one of his many fits of pretention. His unwilling partner, John Smith, has a knack for consistently failing miserably to keep Carl’s exaggerations and exclamations in check. Do ‘you’ know the running man?
Backstory: I’ve typed this up once before, to no avail, so forgive me if the quality suffers this time around. It’s 2 in the morning and I just couldn’t be bothered, so that’s that. The Carl Jr. is a project created during my 2009 Spring Video Production II class at National Park Community College. During our brainstorming sessions at the beginning of the semester, this was the only consistent idea to come about, but not due to any particular drive or effort.
The Carl Jr. had no single director. Presumably, this is obvious. It did end up having some writers, though the writing came in late to the game, as it were, and were the result of a quick rapid-fire back and forth between Phillip Ruff and myself, Ricky Coulter. We projected this new script onto the wall for use as a teleprompter, set up a green screen and a desk, and started reading.
The initial concept behind the Carl Jr. was that it was to be a relatively short commercial selling an as-yet unnamed GPS device that was supposed to stereotypically match it’s user’s personality type; that is to say, it was supposed to exaggerate these stereotypical qualities to ludicrous levels. If the user is black, the GPS personality would become a gangsta rapper-type. If the user was a dim-witted blonde with an insatiable urge to shop and little else rattling around in her brain, the GPS personality became, oh, I don’t know, an effeminate gay man with a taste for fabrics.
See, the biggest problem with this project was a serious lack of direction. Not even the idea’s originator wanted anything to do with the decision making process, and half of the group, myself included, was much more interested in working on “To Each Their Own Ending”, an ultimately unfinish-able Phillip Ruff masterpiece. So by the middle of the semester, we had a few particularly unfunny testimonials and little else. The idea was then for moi, the volunteer for any voice acting or narration that goes on at that school, to write up some dialogue to tie everything together into a commercial and, oh yeah, make these unfunny clips funny. Oi.
Phillip and I became quickly determined to salvage this project, and so the decision came to make the commercial into an infomercial, and, well, the rest is in the video. I would argue that the majority of the editing and post-production was done by myself, though I’m not trying to puff up my ego: merely that I did plenty of work to save the project. I’ll say this, everyone that ‘worked’ on the project ‘worked’ on it, if you know what I mean.
Credits: Woohoo, this time, the video features actual credits, so that’s a nifty bonus.
Be sure to wait until the end for my VG Theory Productions(www.vgtheory.com) splash(or ‘that piece of vanity’ as Juan Balderas calls it).
Tags: awesome-rific, carl, carl's jr, commercial, film, film group, final cut, funny, goofy, gps, green screen, independent, indie, john, juan balderas, motion, not bad, npcc, phillip ruff, pitch, pitchmen, quirky, ricky coulter, sarah rogers, stupid, terra-freakin-tastic, vg theory, vg theory productions, video production