Just wanted to drop a belated line reporting that the first Video/Anime Hell I ran at the Arisia 2005 Convention didn't suck utterly. Despite NO advertising (they stuck me in the middle of a Hitchhiker's Guide Marathon) and nothing in the program, and with little to no technology, I Lsanto weirded out the folks in the video room. I ran stuff off the dvds, kindly provided by M. Nadelman and got some good response. There were a varying number of folks in the room during the time, but most of them liked it (never would have figured there'd be anal retentive Doug Adam's fans). I was asked to repeat it next year and I WILL get a late night slot and more prep time.
Mike
PONG [2001]
"The entire movie explained in the captions" Corn Pone Flicks combines a by-the-numbers heistsploitation fix with a retro video game chaser. And where is that Police Motorcycle, anyway?
Ohayocon '05
Ohayocon always has this unusual vibe for us and our show, but like a lot about the con itself, we seem to succeed in spite of it ^^. Personally it was probably one of my more trying shows, but it’s still always awesome to do once the lights go down so to speak.
Anyway, the 'new' twist rich lather and I created for this Hell, was Choose Your Fate, which enabled audience members to somewhat control the ride into the abyss...
We started the show approximately 50 minutes late, and curtailed the show at about 12:40, making it a bit under two hours, which in our opinion is just fine for our ‘satellite’ Hell show,
The technical issues were huge and awful, and extremely surprising given the room. It was the main events room for the con, had two amazingly good quality rearscreen projectors on either side of a huge stage, and the room is bigger than any Hell venue outside of ACen & AWA. Rich & I poked our heads in the night before during something (AMVs maybe) and from a distance looked at the centralized tech desk and things looked cool, no way we thought could they not have the huge majority of the things we’d need the following night. Besides, they’ve known for weeks what we need and we’d covered a lot of bases ourselves.
Well…..things tend not to work out so well in Hell… Get there, no video playing devices of any kind at the tech desk. Fine, we’ve got dvd players, and have items that if need be we don’t need to show (ie vhs only). Well, problem #2, they have a ‘mixer’, that has 3 inputs..but it’s a scan converter so only 1 input is actual composite video (S), the other two inputs are VGA for outputting computer video to screen…So we’ve got 1 video input, so after kibbutzing, they were trying all sorts of weird things, and I just told them to stack three machines (2 dvd, 1 vcr), run everything through the vcr, and I’d make due with switching back and forth from front and back inputs on the vcr channel select as my makeshift switch. This would have been more than fine and cool, but one DVD player just wouldn’t play right, it would freeze audio or lose one channel entirely. Everything from a bad vcr input jack, bad cables, etc was guessed at to no difference. Oh and did I mention that the vcr started eating tapes? That basically left us doing the entire show with one dvd player without a previewing capability. Much adlibbing and covering took place on the mic when we had to go from disc to disc ^^; Oh and btw, we discovered the real problem with the players (the audio problem Rich mentioned about on the forums)..at about 2:45AM!, during the next to last midnight madness parody. This problem also had caused us to not show ReDeath (yeah that got us quite the reception :P ) when I randomly discovered that the audio popped back to life by taking *OUT* one of the audio cables (the right one I think :P). we did get to show ReDeath, to all of about 15 people that were left at 3AM from the probably 500 who would have seen it 2 hours earlier.
We started with a custom made version of the ‘Day of Doomsday’ movie theater open, followed up by CPF’s Jar of Screaming Blood & Twister II (give a little of the ‘horror’ theme the con had used for this year). We introduced this year our new feature, Ohayocon Anime Hell, Choose Your Fate. I took pretty much all of the Hell material I have captured digitally, numbered them 1-116 and put them on 2 discs. Monty Hall-style, Rich would take the mic out into the audience and selected audience members to pick the # they wanted to see. It worked out better than we hoped, in part because it enabled us to use it as a vamping spot where distraction could be made from me whilst I was grappling with the tech stuff.
Our List of items we were running no matter how the show flowed:
Staplerfahrer Klaus *
Fish Fight! * - by far the two most well received bits on the show, we’ve got two
new ‘staples’. Even got a nice girl come up inquiring about it because she’s decided now to organize a Fish Fight cosplay group ^^.
5 Neat Guys
Gun vs. Katana
Gavv’s *new* L.A.V.A. segment – will tell in private, otherwise it spoils the gag (which by random karma very next clip was selected by the audience was the Sailor Moon L.A.V.A.)
Fate List – those that chose wisely and/or poorly
Titanic 2 Rap (#13)
Doc talks about Masturbation (#69) (let it run into #70, Booby Traps-Private Snafu)
Gaylaxicon 2000 (#42) (followed directly into Hotel Room UV Light bit)
Farting Evangelist II
My Friend God
Sailor Moon L.A.V.A.
Turkish Star Trek
Kool-Aid Kool
Live & Learn – Gas Fire, Roof Jump (amazing, literally while we were trying to figure out what to do, since the vcr had just eaten the vhs tape where I had the PSA tapes cued & I forgot I had vidcapped one small part of it)
Coleco Telstar (on the disc it flows well into Old Glory Insurance, which we then turned into the impromptu MvR segment with Bathroom Monkey and Monkey vs Robot)
Grand Theft Auto trailer (led to Grand Prix/Red Line 7000 trailer)
Katana Incident
Other items that we flowed into at points following Fate selections:
Old Glory Insurance, Bathroom Monkey, Monkey vs Robot, Grand Prix/Red Line 7000 trailer, Fensler GI Joe (sacked,cliff), original Heino segment, Cartoons & You, CPF Signs, some misc commercials…
gavv
Anyway, the 'new' twist rich lather and I created for this Hell, was Choose Your Fate, which enabled audience members to somewhat control the ride into the abyss...
We started the show approximately 50 minutes late, and curtailed the show at about 12:40, making it a bit under two hours, which in our opinion is just fine for our ‘satellite’ Hell show,
The technical issues were huge and awful, and extremely surprising given the room. It was the main events room for the con, had two amazingly good quality rearscreen projectors on either side of a huge stage, and the room is bigger than any Hell venue outside of ACen & AWA. Rich & I poked our heads in the night before during something (AMVs maybe) and from a distance looked at the centralized tech desk and things looked cool, no way we thought could they not have the huge majority of the things we’d need the following night. Besides, they’ve known for weeks what we need and we’d covered a lot of bases ourselves.
Well…..things tend not to work out so well in Hell… Get there, no video playing devices of any kind at the tech desk. Fine, we’ve got dvd players, and have items that if need be we don’t need to show (ie vhs only). Well, problem #2, they have a ‘mixer’, that has 3 inputs..but it’s a scan converter so only 1 input is actual composite video (S), the other two inputs are VGA for outputting computer video to screen…So we’ve got 1 video input, so after kibbutzing, they were trying all sorts of weird things, and I just told them to stack three machines (2 dvd, 1 vcr), run everything through the vcr, and I’d make due with switching back and forth from front and back inputs on the vcr channel select as my makeshift switch. This would have been more than fine and cool, but one DVD player just wouldn’t play right, it would freeze audio or lose one channel entirely. Everything from a bad vcr input jack, bad cables, etc was guessed at to no difference. Oh and did I mention that the vcr started eating tapes? That basically left us doing the entire show with one dvd player without a previewing capability. Much adlibbing and covering took place on the mic when we had to go from disc to disc ^^; Oh and btw, we discovered the real problem with the players (the audio problem Rich mentioned about on the forums)..at about 2:45AM!, during the next to last midnight madness parody. This problem also had caused us to not show ReDeath (yeah that got us quite the reception :P ) when I randomly discovered that the audio popped back to life by taking *OUT* one of the audio cables (the right one I think :P). we did get to show ReDeath, to all of about 15 people that were left at 3AM from the probably 500 who would have seen it 2 hours earlier.
We started with a custom made version of the ‘Day of Doomsday’ movie theater open, followed up by CPF’s Jar of Screaming Blood & Twister II (give a little of the ‘horror’ theme the con had used for this year). We introduced this year our new feature, Ohayocon Anime Hell, Choose Your Fate. I took pretty much all of the Hell material I have captured digitally, numbered them 1-116 and put them on 2 discs. Monty Hall-style, Rich would take the mic out into the audience and selected audience members to pick the # they wanted to see. It worked out better than we hoped, in part because it enabled us to use it as a vamping spot where distraction could be made from me whilst I was grappling with the tech stuff.
Our List of items we were running no matter how the show flowed:
Staplerfahrer Klaus *
Fish Fight! * - by far the two most well received bits on the show, we’ve got two
new ‘staples’. Even got a nice girl come up inquiring about it because she’s decided now to organize a Fish Fight cosplay group ^^.
5 Neat Guys
Gun vs. Katana
Gavv’s *new* L.A.V.A. segment – will tell in private, otherwise it spoils the gag (which by random karma very next clip was selected by the audience was the Sailor Moon L.A.V.A.)
Fate List – those that chose wisely and/or poorly
Titanic 2 Rap (#13)
Doc talks about Masturbation (#69) (let it run into #70, Booby Traps-Private Snafu)
Gaylaxicon 2000 (#42) (followed directly into Hotel Room UV Light bit)
Farting Evangelist II
My Friend God
Sailor Moon L.A.V.A.
Turkish Star Trek
Kool-Aid Kool
Live & Learn – Gas Fire, Roof Jump (amazing, literally while we were trying to figure out what to do, since the vcr had just eaten the vhs tape where I had the PSA tapes cued & I forgot I had vidcapped one small part of it)
Coleco Telstar (on the disc it flows well into Old Glory Insurance, which we then turned into the impromptu MvR segment with Bathroom Monkey and Monkey vs Robot)
Grand Theft Auto trailer (led to Grand Prix/Red Line 7000 trailer)
Katana Incident
Other items that we flowed into at points following Fate selections:
Old Glory Insurance, Bathroom Monkey, Monkey vs Robot, Grand Prix/Red Line 7000 trailer, Fensler GI Joe (sacked,cliff), original Heino segment, Cartoons & You, CPF Signs, some misc commercials…
gavv
Clip of the Month - Fish Fight
Creeping into the vaults of Anime Hell from a quick-minded friend in Japan, comes a performance of the song Fish Fight! by the comic group Yaen (not to be confused with the Greenleaves group that did "Yatta!", but they are similiar groups of guys) done on a japanese variety/entertainment show. The group's no longer together but CDs and even concert DVDs can be found on www.cdjapan.co.jp . Fish Fight! has been stirring up the Hell crowds this past con season in the midwest, and has quickly become one of the crowd favorite bits. Here are a few screenshots. we'll make a version of it available (but not a full rez one, that's what the live shows are for ;) ...
gavv
(a not quite so hot or so small version, temporarily at...right click & save...)
http://www.animehell.org/FishFightVCD.mpg
gavv
(a not quite so hot or so small version, temporarily at...right click & save...)
http://www.animehell.org/FishFightVCD.mpg
AnimeHELL Bittorrent Tracker
We've got a working Bittorent Tracker set up. So, to start things off I'm torrenting Episode One of Prince Planet. Lemme know if there's any problems!
Going through HELL
AnimeHELL is in the process of moving to a new server. Please reset your bookmarks to http://www.animehell.org
Thanks!
Thanks!
JIVEMagazine.com - When I Saw Heino, I Knew I was in (Anime) Hell:
Adventures at Animazement 2004
Nice write up and name check from JIVEMagazine.com:
"I love Anime Hell. The name tends to fluctuate, but the content always remains the same: strange, bizarre, and occasionally grotesque videos. It’s less anime-centric than you’d think—after all, it’s during Anime Hell that I met my hero, a folksy (and incredibly deep-voiced) German singer named Heino. That said, they played a nice variety of clips this year, ranging from The Cartoon All-Stars (best cartoon crossover-slash-drug awareness video ever made) to cleanliness propaganda starring a large bar of soap that makes nighttime visits with an underage boy. Needless to say, time flies by and the videos, more often than not, are hilarious. Two clips in particular were especially pertinent to the whole “pirates versus ninjas” battle going on. While the first clip starred two ninjas, the second pitted those same ninjas against a group of drunken pirates. The question on everyone’s mind: Who would win in a ninja-pirate dance-off?"
Nice write up and name check from JIVEMagazine.com:
"I love Anime Hell. The name tends to fluctuate, but the content always remains the same: strange, bizarre, and occasionally grotesque videos. It’s less anime-centric than you’d think—after all, it’s during Anime Hell that I met my hero, a folksy (and incredibly deep-voiced) German singer named Heino. That said, they played a nice variety of clips this year, ranging from The Cartoon All-Stars (best cartoon crossover-slash-drug awareness video ever made) to cleanliness propaganda starring a large bar of soap that makes nighttime visits with an underage boy. Needless to say, time flies by and the videos, more often than not, are hilarious. Two clips in particular were especially pertinent to the whole “pirates versus ninjas” battle going on. While the first clip starred two ninjas, the second pitted those same ninjas against a group of drunken pirates. The question on everyone’s mind: Who would win in a ninja-pirate dance-off?"
Uncle Goddamn
I was over at my friend Josh's house on Sunday night and had few G&Ts and watched a DVD he'd picked up on saturday called UNCLE GODDAMN. I walked in halfway through a home video scene where the titular Uncle Goddamn is passed out on a couch in a double wide and his family is applying silver spray paint to his face. Uncle's responce? Unintelligable drawling punctuated by "Gawdamm!" But wait! Now Uncle is passed out again, so his family SETS HIS CROTCH ON FIRE and squirts lighter fluid on him. I can't describe it better then that. This may be too cruel for AnimeHELL, but it's something that Surat would show at his Video Sadismo.
"Stay behind my aura! "
Now you too can be as cool as Sean Connery with your very own ZARDOZ Mask! Just go to http://godzillu.daa.jp/lowkaku/zardoz/ print out the paper model and dig in with your x-acto knife and gluestick!
Zardoz
The biggest challenge for me is always deciding what clips to keep and what clips to get rid of from year to year. Obviously, you get rid of what people aren't laughing at, but there are some things you rotate out on the grounds that you don't want people to get sick of seeing it. For example, one of the cornerstones of my lineup last year was the Walker, Texas Ranger clips featured on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. The clips are hilarious, but I don't think I'll be bringing them back this year since I don't want people to get sick of them.
So I've found a suitable replacement. I'm going to show random clips from the movie Zardoz. If you haven't seen it, Zardoz is this crazy movie from the 70s starring Sean Connery. He spends the entire film dressed like this:
Zardoz
Zardoz is of course, a giant floating stone head that spits guns from its mouth while proclaiming that the penis is evil:
Zardoz
Sir Sean finds himself in situations where he has to fight off hordes of senile old folks:
Zardoz
And so on and so forth. The film is so absolutely zany that you can literally just skip to a random scene and use that, and it'll work. There are some parts involving nudity, but I'll try and keep away from those.
The part with the animated penis erection complete with "sproing!" sound effects is definitely going in there though.
So I've found a suitable replacement. I'm going to show random clips from the movie Zardoz. If you haven't seen it, Zardoz is this crazy movie from the 70s starring Sean Connery. He spends the entire film dressed like this:
Zardoz
Zardoz is of course, a giant floating stone head that spits guns from its mouth while proclaiming that the penis is evil:
Zardoz
Sir Sean finds himself in situations where he has to fight off hordes of senile old folks:
Zardoz
And so on and so forth. The film is so absolutely zany that you can literally just skip to a random scene and use that, and it'll work. There are some parts involving nudity, but I'll try and keep away from those.
The part with the animated penis erection complete with "sproing!" sound effects is definitely going in there though.
Cartoon Condoms in the New World Order
Jerry Beck sez: "The United Nations has announced the release this week of The Three Amigos, a series of 20 short, professionally produced animated Public Service Announcements designed to encourage the use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the world. The three animated condom characters are named - get this - Shaft, Stretch and Dick."
Hell Suggestions From Hell
Mike H. is doing a Hell at Arisia in Bahston, and I thought I'd chime in with a few suggestions that are pretty much applicable to any A/V Hell situation:
-Be prepared to run Hell with your own equipment. If the room is small you don't need a microphone. All you really need is a TV, a VCR, and a DVD. Bring a flashlight and a power strip and a few AV cords too.
-Have an introduction speech for the event. Let the audience know what Hell is and what it's about and what they can expect.
-Give a little intro or setup for each clip. If you show the Sailor Moon clip, you can say "Hey, who remembers Sailor Moon? Okay, who remembers the insanely terrible live-action American Sailor Moon pilot? No? Well, here it is." Or you can be as simple as "And now, here's a dog riding a bicycle." Just as long as you give the crowd a little context.
-Don't be afraid to halt the proceedings to discipline the rowdier elements of the crowd. A little audience participation is fine, but if the rest of the spectators can't hear or see due to their enthusiastic fellow crowd members, it's no fun for anybody.
-Sit down with all your material and work up a playlist. I like to group the clips by subject, but whatever works for you is fine. Print it out with a big font so you can see it in dim light. If you have a chance, run the material past friends and family to see if they think it's funny. Many times a clip I think is hilarious winds up being pretty flat when shown to an audience.
-Be prepared to jettison any amount of your scheduled material because of time constraints or in favor of newer, funnier material. Your playlist is a guide, not a straightjacket, and is subject to change at any time.
-Suggestions or requests are fine, but ultimately your gut feeling should rule the playlist. Maybe one or two loudmouths want you to show Monkey Versus Robot, but you have another clip in mind that will suit the mood better. You're in charge and should act like it. Plus, it just makes it sweeter when you run their request later.
-Your audience is depending on you to entertain them and is willing to sit through just about anything for the payoff of a laugh. Make SURE that the payoff is THERE. It only takes two or three minutes of no laughs for people to start looking at their watch and remembering they have somewhere else to be. DON'T GIVE THEM THOSE THREE MINUTES.
-Make sure the audience knows to let the convention organizers know they enjoyed the show
and that they want to see it back next year.
-Be prepared to run Hell with your own equipment. If the room is small you don't need a microphone. All you really need is a TV, a VCR, and a DVD. Bring a flashlight and a power strip and a few AV cords too.
-Have an introduction speech for the event. Let the audience know what Hell is and what it's about and what they can expect.
-Give a little intro or setup for each clip. If you show the Sailor Moon clip, you can say "Hey, who remembers Sailor Moon? Okay, who remembers the insanely terrible live-action American Sailor Moon pilot? No? Well, here it is." Or you can be as simple as "And now, here's a dog riding a bicycle." Just as long as you give the crowd a little context.
-Don't be afraid to halt the proceedings to discipline the rowdier elements of the crowd. A little audience participation is fine, but if the rest of the spectators can't hear or see due to their enthusiastic fellow crowd members, it's no fun for anybody.
-Sit down with all your material and work up a playlist. I like to group the clips by subject, but whatever works for you is fine. Print it out with a big font so you can see it in dim light. If you have a chance, run the material past friends and family to see if they think it's funny. Many times a clip I think is hilarious winds up being pretty flat when shown to an audience.
-Be prepared to jettison any amount of your scheduled material because of time constraints or in favor of newer, funnier material. Your playlist is a guide, not a straightjacket, and is subject to change at any time.
-Suggestions or requests are fine, but ultimately your gut feeling should rule the playlist. Maybe one or two loudmouths want you to show Monkey Versus Robot, but you have another clip in mind that will suit the mood better. You're in charge and should act like it. Plus, it just makes it sweeter when you run their request later.
-Your audience is depending on you to entertain them and is willing to sit through just about anything for the payoff of a laugh. Make SURE that the payoff is THERE. It only takes two or three minutes of no laughs for people to start looking at their watch and remembering they have somewhere else to be. DON'T GIVE THEM THOSE THREE MINUTES.
-Make sure the audience knows to let the convention organizers know they enjoyed the show
and that they want to see it back next year.
CORN DOG 7
Corn Porn Flicks' masterpiece CORN DOG 7 isn't just a brilliant parody of the WATERWORLD movie trailer, it's a scathing critique of bloated action movie formulae. And it's damn funny, too!
"In a world gone insane they were last hope for mankind . . . . THE CORN DOG 7!" See it with someone you love...
Boston Franchise opening soon
Well, I've heard from Arisia and the good news is I should be able to get all the equipment I need, but the bad news is the only time slot they could give me was 5-6pm on Saturday. Any advice?
Heino is Ohio's new Mr. Saturday Night!
Anime Hell will be returning to Ohayocon in two weeks, Saturday night, January 14th (con is jan 13-15). Anime Hell will be run by yours truly and the enigmatic Mr Rich Lather, and run from 10-Midnight, to be followed directly by three hours of parody-laden (both african & european) Midnight Madness. We're working on the final lineup, switching in some new favorites and *slightly* tailoring the lineup to fit a tad into the overall 'horror' sub-motif of this year's con (last year was 'tokusatsu', so we threw in some Dynaman).
see everyone there and be safe with those forklifts!
gavv
see everyone there and be safe with those forklifts!
gavv
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