This week’s Loading Time is missing one very important thing. That thing also has two thumbs and is this guy. I’m usually around for most shoots, but I had to be away that day, leaving the video in the more-than-capable hands of the rest of the crew.
Kathleen and I wrote the video, as she says, riffing off the idea of casting for a reality TV participant by looking for a specific archetype. I wouldn’t be surprised if some shows actually did just that, but I would hope that they were less blatant about it.
With the benefit of knowing who would be available on the shooting day, the characters were written in kind of a roundabout way. We came up with the three male characters, then determined who would play the roles, then further tailored the characters to the strengths of the actors. In his first major role in an LRR video, Beej really knocked his special brand of crazy out of the park.
In the video above, Paul mentions the original show-within-a-show was going to be called, So You Want to Marry an Axe Murderer?, in which 10 men via for the affections of a convicted serial killer. We changed to Kathleen’s inspired Love on the Rails idea when Paul brought up that the comedic punch of ending with a murder joke would be undermined by opening with one. There’s some sketch comedy 101 for you!
Paul came up with America’s Next Top Guinea Pig while sequestered in the PhotoShop mines, and Kathleen blurted out Fill This Man With Cream a scant nano-second after prompting.
Finally, most of the other contestants’ footage was shot at our local Magic: The Gathering Return to Ravnica pre-release, since we knew there’d be a lot of folks around who would be up for it! Among them were the head and assistant judges of the event, and a member of Magic R&D who was visiting town that weekend. We can only hope that the reality show we’re actually producing will be even slightly as entertaining as this fictional one appears.
