I’m thinking of entering into the world of video blogging, but I don’t want to be another run of the mill media critic. I need a gimmick, a hook that let’s the viewer know that I have no shame and I’m not afraid to prove it.
The following is a collection of v-blog pitches, some are sheer brainstorm brilliance while others are train of thought train wrecks. At the end, you can vote on which ones are which.
Genre Fiction Mad Libs
Author, Christopher Booker believes writers keep recycling seven basic plots. Let’s prove him right. Collecting over-used film tropes I’ll outline the templates for making a romantic comedy, a home invasion horror movie, and a dystopian teen empowerment fantasy. I’ll compose five minute mad lib plot lines and invite the audience to help fill the character details in. A week later we’ll see the results unfold.
Pitch Perfected
Viewers suggest the worst movies they can think of and I’ll pitch them like they’re awesome, polishing these steaming turds into Oscar statues.
Listen to me pitch The Phantom Menace as a political intrigue thriller. Jar Jar Binks, a Gungan without a country, assumes the role of bumbling imbecile to trick members of a religious order into saving his world from a genocidal conspiracy.
Listen me intellectualize The Room as one woman’s descent into terminal narcissism, an unflinching examination of how personality disorders play into infidelity, a film that holds a mirror to society, forcing us to take a critical look at ourselves.
Listen to me call Gigli a shocking exposé of the mental healthcare industry, a rallying cry for the handicapped, and a mature look at sexual identity.
Listen to me nominate Troll 2 for inclusion in the Criterion Collection, calling it a film with a strong message about the environment.
Nostalgia Nostradamus
Nostalgia Nostradamus predicts which beloved children’s cartoon will be turned into Michael Bay’s latest series of sunsets and tracking shots. Thunder Cats? Voltron? Gargoyles?
The trick in Nostalgia Nostradamus’s tricorn hat is his ability to predict how producers of these reboots will get everything wrong:
– He-Man cries, “I have the power” as he raises the barrel of his new lightening gun.
– She-Ra’s wind resistant skirt is replaced with pants.
– Filmation’s Ghostbusters get’s rebooted. Not the team with Egon, Ray, Peter and Winston, but the one that drives around with a gorilla in a talking ghost car.
Feminize a Video Game Franchise
I come up with plots for female leads in male dominated video game series. For example:
An Assassin’s Creed game starring Vultur, a Romani woman struggling to save her family from the Spanish Inquisition. Vultur uses theatrical weapons to strike fear into the hearts of Templar witch finders.
A Zelda game where Zelda takes the starring role. The sorcerer, Ganon abducts Hyrule’s princesses to use their blood to open a doorway to the dark world. Breaking out of her cell, princess Zelda works her way through Ganon’s dungeons, collecting weapons, freeing her fellow captives, and ascending the dark lord’s tower for a final confrontation.
A God of War game that takes place in the aftermath of Kratos’s resignation. Goddess of War follows a Spartan woman who stumbles upon the Blades of Olympus while the minions of a new crop of Gods burn her village down.
Stock Photo Theater
Original programing made with unoriginal pictures. Stock photo sites are all too happy to provide the cast, their blank business figures are begging to be turned into actors. All I have to do is supply the dialogue.
Shutterstock already has so many images of people laughing, isn’t it time they put out a sitcom? How about a whodunnit? Turns out the boardroom meeting, in this picture, is a gathering of all the suspects. How about a science fiction series where angry desk jockeys fight their technology? With all the shots of people shouting at their screens, we already have everything we need.
Batman or Ingmar Bergman
A game where viewers guess whether a line of dialogue came from a Batman movie or a film from existentialist director Ingmar Bergman.
1. “… the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death.”
2. “One day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness.”
3. “I wake up from a nightmare and find that real life is worse than the dream.”
4. “There is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge… Me.”
Answers:
1. Batman
2. Bergman
3. Bergman
4. Batman
Franchise Fixes
I pitch reboots for your favorite ailing film franchises, raising Hellraiser, reviving Highlander’s immortality and calling Howard the Duck back to earth. Find me a series that’s at death’s door and I’ll bust out the defibrillator. Just call me Dr. Drew.
Writing Confessions
I list all the dirty tricks I use to ensure my output, like describing a setting before I know the characters or conflict that will fill it, writing dialogue with the intention of discovering the action, or planting the setups for my plot twists in later edits.
I’ll confess everything from how I spare my darlings to how I repurpose fan fiction.
Wednesday Watches
I recommend low budget, soon to be cult classics, for you to uncover on Netflix. They’re not always great movies but they’re entertaining enough for a Wednesday evening.
Clickbait Writer’s Room
A sketch comedy series, where a team of freelancers set out to ruin journalism, in order to rase their demon master Mammon. Writing titles with cliff hangers, the clickbaiters target would-be Nobel Prize winners, distracting them from their discoveries. Upsetting viewers with the first half of their captions, the clickbaiters promise to restore the world’s faith in humanity with the other, but they never do.
This coven of content creators will churn out listicles, slideshows and viral videos. Casting darkness over everyone’s newsfeed. Once they’ve sacrificed enough of our time, Mammon will rise up and claim his digital dominion.
This is my first round of ideas. Please vote on the ones you like and leave suggestions in the comments.
Great post, Drew. But please, stay out of video blogging. I like your blog but I hate video blogs, and I would hate to lose you to that dark dark world.
Fair enough. I’m trying to find a way to streamline entries so I can focus on my novel. Video was one of those ideas.
That and as much as I love Photoshopping I think I’m going to have to scale that back a bit. It can be time consuming. I was thinking of maybe doing 1-2 pieces per entry, including the text and an optional video of me reading the piece. That way if someone doesn’t have time to read it, I’ll read it to them.
This is just me workshopping ideas. Thanks for weighing in.
Hey man, do what you want. Don’t let my issues get in the way. And I did hear you read that one short atory about the band front man, and your voice is cool enough to listen to that I might not hate listening to your v blog.
I could see it become another division of labor. I guess I’m following Neil Gaiman’s advice, throwing out dandelion seeds, seeing if any of them take root. Most of them don’t, but a few of them do.
I have 3 novellas, that I’ve been sitting on. Once I release the next one, I’d like to do something cool for it on YouTube. A series of book trailers.
Hi Drew, I actually like the idea of merging disciplines, but only when the result is more than the sum of its parts. A case in point is Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Monro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9D7_6ceRpM
The audiovisual treatment takes the basic ingredient—the reading of his novel—to a whole new level. Mere reading becomes a multi-layered performance. And it’s a joy to watch. Dandelion seeds are fine, but why hybridize others’ work when you can cultivate your own unique writer’s voice? I would love to see an audiovisual treatment of your own work. You have the material, the voice, a photogenic head, and the balls to boot. Go for it!
I’d like to do that too. I had some ideas for a series of monologues, featuring local actors dressed as characters from some of my stories. The Demon Curator in Terms and Conditions has a great speech on how reality bends to the consensus of humanity. I always wanted to get someone in demon makeup and have him recite it to the camera.
Some of what I’ve listed above are just jokes, train of thought stuff. I could see myself doing a proper reading with a good microphone and then using the Ken Burns effect to pan the camera across the visuals.
Thanks for your feedback.
I can only vote for one?! 😛
I suppose you could put the runner ups in the comments.
Winner:
Pitch Perfected
Runners up (in no particular order):
Writing Confessions
Stock Photo Theater
Franchise Fixes
I’m thinking the Clickbait Writer’s room scenario might make for a better short story.
Definitely. The one’s I listed have the potential to carry on over a longer period of time. And there’s no rule that says you can only do one. You can do a weekly rotation.
Week 1: Pitch Perfected
Week 2: Writing Confessions
Week 3: Stock Photo Theater
Week 4: Franchise Fixes
Week 5: Chapter One of Clickbait Writer’s Room
Repeat until done. 😀
Well, Dr. Drew, I am torn between Pitch Perfected, Franchise Fixes, and Writing Confessions. The first two just sound real damn entertaining. And regarding writing confessions, I think it’d be interesting, hearing about your writing techniques and it would complement the content already on your site. But are you sure you want to share your secrets with the world? 😉
When you started pitching the really bad movies, you had me at Jar Jar Binks. Haha! Also, you sound like you should be narrating movie trailers. I’ve said it before, great voice, personality…twas entertaining.
Good luck!
I’d love to do Pitch Perfected. As long as I’ve seen the movie in question, that segment would require the least amount of prep time, although I should digitize some footage and press materials.
I’ve thought about doing Franchise fixes as a monthly article, my Highlander treatment got so long I had to break it in two.
Writing Confessions is very much in the spirit of what I’ve been doing. I’d take a lot of my two thousand word essays and summarize them in five minutes.
I’m thinking Clickbait Writer’s room might make a good short story after the one I’m working on. (I’ve got a hardcore horror story in the pipeline)
The feminism video games did make me laugh, but I think I’d go with the franchise fixes. There’s so much to work with. And if you went with Pitch Perfected, I could definitely send titles of bad movies your way. Dark Water, Shadow of a Vampire, Megashark Vs Giant Octopus, Man of Steel… and those are just off the top of my head
Man of Steel would be a tough pitch to fix. 😉
I’d like to more with Franchise Fixes myself.
Thanks for ready and commenting!
My issue with MoS is, primarily, that Superman causes so much distruction on earth. He’s supposed to be protecting the planet…you’d think he’d try to avoid hitting EVERY building. And also, the ending… that had to have been a joke
Oh Drew! How have you not become a voice over for movie trailers yet? You *have* to do Pitch Perfected! It is just so you.
But you have so many creative ideas I don’t know how you sleep. I think a vlog is definitely something you should go into, based solely on this preview! 🙂