Well folks, we have officially stepped foot into the uncharted waters of our new dramatic endeavor, Lurker. Like Yuri has mentioned, there is apparently a website in development, and we have drastically changed the model by which we are producing this new series.
I won't re-tread stale ground here, or at least not today anyway. Suffice it to say that we will not find ourselves with Lurker in the same position we did with Break A Leg: held hostage by a global audience of pre-tweens (that's most of you, right?) and not making any money.
No no, no sir, no ma'am. Not on my watch.
With Lurker we want to have an audience and make some actual money, with the ultimate goal of course being to be able to quit our day jobs and do this full time. In that Candyland scenario our adoring fans would get to see real content from us on a truly weekly basis, rather than a semi-weekly basis after months of out-takes and blooper reels.
Yuri and Vlad just write so damn slow. Oh, and our jobs and shit want us to be there working for them like we said we would.
So what are some other differences between Break A Leg and Lurker? I'm glad you asked! I've prepared (and by prepared I mean I'm making this up as I write) a short list called "Compare and Contrast", you know, just like in school?
The sames are of course myself, Daniela, Alexis, and the entire crew. That's Justin, Dashiell, Dustin, Hillary, Hugo, and whoever else bothers to show up and help out. For Your Imagination is still somewhere around here, kicking dust up and looking for change underneath the couch cushions (every little bit helps!). We are essentially using the same camera and shooting in the same format, though with some essential differences (more on that later).
Or how about more on that now? The main difference between Break A Leg and Lurker is a visual one. Using duct tape, glue, some ingenuity, and a spinning mirror, Justin and Dashiell have fashioned an attachment for the camera that allows them to use any standard photography lens. This allows us all sorts of creative visual options while shooting, including the Holy Grail of optical image capture, Depth Of Field. Allow me to illustrate with a (highly redacted) still shot from our recent shoot:
;)
Click me to make me legible.
You see how the background is blurry and the black squiggles are in focus? The squiggles are mostly Microsoft Paint, but the background is all San Francisco. That's depth of field.
The trade-off is that we require shitbuckets more light now in order to get a quality image. By way of illustration, our recent shoot of 3 1/2 pages of dialogue took 6 hours. For the first time in my entire life, I am not exaggerating. We could easily shoot in half the time before.
One important new difference: Sammy! I wasn't too sure about Sammy at first. All I knew about him was that he operated some fetishist-comedy mailing list that my wife had trouble removing herself from. As it turns out he's not a bad guy, though he finds Kristin Wiig hi-larious and that troubles me a bit.
So there you have it! If you would like a higher resolution version of that picture for your desktop just let me know. It may require more redacting though.