As Kitschmeister General I love, love, love the San Fernando Valley, just inches from the center of Hollywood and pumped full of Kitsch like a buffet line at Trader Vics. This is the first in a series of short films I’m making glorifying the Kitsch monuments that abound around me for bigisgood.tv. Part 1 features everything from Roman architecture and giant submarine sandwiches to clowns, frog families, volcanoes, giant fish, horses, shoe cars and very happy houses.
For the full glorious and kitschyfied tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRxzFdByMQs
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Douglas Wood
This is great– in addition to You Tube is this also on TV? If so, where? And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a kitschy graphic design glitch in the show– the little cut-out Allee in the opening has been “flipped” so both the right and left profiles are the same. Unlike the real Allee, the cut-out Allee has short hair on both sides.
Allee Willis
Oh, that discovery is fantastic. I never saw it because I didn’t watch that closely, literally a first-time experience for me because this was the very first time I’d ever let anyone else edit footage of mine. I really liked the guy who shot this. We only had to discuss things once and he shot exactly as discussed, cheesy moves and all (a rarity in my experience). I liked his sensibility enough that I decided to see what would happen if I gave him first shot at editing. We planned everything on the spot as we jumped out of the car, rolled very quickly and only did one take of almost everything. We shot nine locations in an hour and 20 minutes. So I was pretty confident it couldn’t be that far off. And I’m really good at taking the second pass, rearranging, layering and adding things once I see them laid out. When it came to the opening with my double-sided head I was up to my eyeballs in work so we just had a brief discussion, I chose a shot of me to use and said to throw it over locations in the film, shake the title and make me jump around and spin out. It was supposed to be a really ratty opening so I never noticed the double headed Allee as it all seemed to be bad enough and appropriate for the genre (though I wasn’t at all consciously thinking that as I really didn’t notice the filmic no-no until you said something.) The really significant thing here is that as much as I function on a high level when it comes to some of the music/art/design/vid/tech stuff I do I’m the one who chose the shot and it never once dawned on me that the profile would be different when my body was flipped. So here’s the thing about me and Kitsch. A large portion of my brain lives there and I functioned on the Ed Wood level for real.
Allee Willis
I forgot to say that this is only on the Internet, not on TV. But it was made for a new Internet channel that a friend of mine is launching next week, bigisgood.tv (though the site is already up so you can check it out.)
Douglas Wood
I thought the piece had a nice, spontaneous feel to it– your explanation of doing nine locations in an hour and 20 minutes would account for that. Sometimes speed and low budgets actually produce better results than time and money, which can lead to indulgence. I personally like cut-out heads and figures so I actually thought the flipped Allee might’ve been intentional on your part. In any case, it worked– in fact the whole spot did– you could tell the guy who shot this “got” you, and didn’t attempt to turn you into something you’re not. I also thought the post-production effects were clever.