I remember the first YouTube video I ever saw. My charismatic older cousin logged on to my family’s shared laptop and searched up ‘Real Ninja’s’, which is a 3.5 minute medley of silly Naruto animated music videos. Another cousin suggested the classic ‘The Ultimate Showdown’ animation as a follow-up. If you aren’t familiar, that’s a flash animation for a song in which each line introduces a new pop culture figure to an all-out brawl. For a kid in 2007 who already enjoyed TV and movies a bit too much, it was like taking two back-to-back hits of homemade pop culture-influenced crack. By the end of that year I was posting my own videos, and needless to say YouTube has been a part of my life ever since.
My output on YouTube.com has varied since the jump. There were movie reviews, vlogs, web series. But the journey began with making original sketches with my friends, and that’s something I’m still doing to this day. And that feels pretty good. I’m not sure if I’ll do that for the rest of my life, but as of now I like that idea just fine. To have a body of work that features the people I like spending time with, collaborating, trying to make each other laugh and tell a story. I still love it. I do take breaks every so often for a variety of reasons. I could write a whole column of excuses for why I’m not producing and releasing work at the volume I wish I were but I guarantee that would be the worst thing ever. Other times I’m making too many things and am unable to focus on any one thing long enough to finish and release it. I’m in one of those periods right now, and have been for a while. It’s not the worst place to be – it means things are being filmed, which is an accomplishment. But my desire is to share the best possible versions of each project, which is the hard part.
2024 was the first time I earnestly tried to find help with post-production. I’m such a slow editor. I’m ashamed, but it also feels good to get that off my chest. I knew I couldn’t take full responsibility for everything I had cooking without neglecting some burners. Because I have dozens of finished videos that are examples of my sensibility and voice, most skilled editors could watch a handful and emulate that. So it’s more a matter of finding someone reliable and affordable. All that to say, the reason I have two new videos for you to watch is Connar Brown Sprenger, who is all those things and more. I was really excited about how both of these came out, and how different they are from one another.
Both of these new sketches were shot in late 2023, a year I will certainly write more about in the future. An IRL meetup for fans of the byzantine empire was actually filmed on New Year’s Eve. I met up with Moses, with whom, fun fact, I’ve filmed with on multiple Christmas Eves in the past. Moses is a very unique guy, and his energy jumps straight through a camera lens. I don’t think it’s coincidence that every time I exploit his humor it performs better than most anything else I do on YouTube (outside of Trolls content). I sincerely hope one day he goes back to making his own videos like he was when we first connected in high school. Until that day I’m proud to host his on-camera outings (he’s working on illustrations and shirt designs though, so check those out). Another quirky pal of mine is Tom Rind, who I met in an Annoyance improv class. Since Tom now lives in New York I mischievously thought of swirling his comedy flavors with Moses’. We all met at Tom’s apartment in Boerum Hill with zero ideas between us. Since it’s worked out a few times, my brain no longer comes up with sketches in advance of when we film them. Within minutes Moses and Tom were discussing the Byzantine empire. I was unmaliciously left out of this conversation. Then came a motion to walk to Prospect Park. We picked up a plastic champagne glass and some juice at Walgreens on the way. The fields were closed for an event so we were relegated to the woods. If you can tell from my shaky-ass camerawork, it was quite chilly that final day of December and we all wanted to be in-and-out, resting up before celebrating 2024’s arrival. Tom and Moses sat on a log and riffed for five minutes. We refined what our story was, reset and did it again. Then we highlighted what the funny bits were and made sure we had those from a couple of angles. For a video like this, that’s the entire shooting process. You don’t want to bring it too far from the loose place you’re starting at. Also we didn’t want to catch colds.
Like I said, the real work is whittling it down in the edit. That was all Connar, as were the graphics in the final video, which really tie the piece together in my opinion. Normally I would try to get a video like this down to 3 minutes or so, but I really enjoy settling in to these characters’ predicament and taking the journey with them. Runtimes are arbitrary anyway.
This stranger invited me inside their home was made a couple of months prior to Byzantine Meetup. I was visiting my friend Rosa in Olympia, WA, having just come from Los Angeles, where I produced the Trolls premiere and Greatest Audition videos with Isabel. The most Rosa and I have collaborated in the past was on college radio programs. The concept for this one came from the countless life-sized stuffed bodies Rosa has made that are residing in their childhood home. There were two paths for a story: hide them and find a way to reveal a plan to sew and stuff my character, or leave the house exactly how it was and play on how these amazingly strange objects were just sitting there all the time. The second was less work. We had the whole day to shoot this one, so I shot Rosa out, or filmed all the shots that they were in first. Then I could really take my time with inserts and shots where I was the only performer in the frame. Like every filmmaker, I’m always in a rush, so for this one I’m so pleased with the number of compositions I was able to get. It’s also a delight to do anything in a house that’s been lived in for decades. There’s a ton of character and story in each room that’s just there for the taking. Connar did such a terrific job piecing this one together, from the shot sequencing to the music to the color grade. I’m super happy with it. Rosa was too, despite totally forgetting we’d made it.
Thanks for hanging out! Hope you enjoyed the videos. If you did, tell someone about them! Next time: a live performance (write-up)!
Love,
Eric