Wagwan! A returning web log entry has been well overdue, so here we are again after recently completing the second Peace Patrol outing. Although an unofficial sequel, Peace Patrol's 12 Days of Christmas picks up where the clumsy, frankly lame (intended, mind), 'eco-friendly' double act of Lenny and George left off; with more attempts at helping 'save the world'.
Admittedly, we initially struggled to get the ball rolling, with the original idea of producing a 'proper' sequel to the tuna-rescuing feat of the first outing. However, with one half of JikeMez chillin' on a beach in Australia chomping Coon cheese, and the other enduring slave labour at a half-arsed snooker club, time was of the essence with the production plane firmly rooted to the ground. After a crisis meeting (yeah, let's be dramatic!) Jez conjured up a light bulb at the last minute, presumably while attempting to parody 12 Days of Christmas somewhere in the archives of his brain. A 'eureka' moment if there ever was one, and so Peace Patrol's 12 Days of Christmas was born!
Once what was happening on each day was 'executively' decided, it was simply a matter of donning the Peace Patrol gear and getting the hell on with it. In theory. We originally intended to shoot a number, if not all, days in advance of the twelve days of Christmas, but unfortunately we unable to make the time. If that plan had surfaced we would've released a video for each day, as a way of attracting interest as a result of greater activity, and because it'd make sense and maybe be fun. Alas, we weren't benefited with enough seconds on the clock for that, instead more or less forced into releasing a compilation in a single video. Not such a bad thing really, as it turned out ok in the end.
Prior to the two frantic, badly-planned days of filming in the 'studio' grounds, we had a fair and rather amusing crack at recording the vocals for the Peace Patrol's Christmas song, which you will find situated in the latter part of the video. Excellently written and pieced together by Jez, we needed some festive ambience. After searching far and wide on teh internetz for a free instrumental of 12 Days of Christmas, we resorted to legally, yes legally (there's nothing wrong with that, kids!), purchasing a version of it. So in addition to giving the public world-saving tips, we also contributed towards the wellbeing of a dodgy music label's existence with the acquisition of a karaoke version of the song - wonderful happiness all round! Anyway, the song pleasingly took little more than 15 minutes to record, despite some lung-bursting endurance singing! Was a laugh to produce and quick to apply to tape and edit to boot. Phase Uno complete.
Now the tricky part; 'acting' and filming the entire twelve 'days' in 48 hours. It was wearing to say the least.
But we did it! (Obviously, otherwise this post would never have happened.) With the patience of a few crew members running wafer thin, the energy-sapping process, nay victory, of successfully shooting ten days out of twelve on the first day was a feat we never saw coming, but thank Jesus, Joseph and Mary that we did! A bit of piecing together of the 'days' here and there also took the heat off Day Two of shooting, affording us a bit of time to chillax a little. Namely me (Mike) to kick some candy ass on Modern Warfare 2 while note-scrawling for a future review, which will feature here soon. (A bit of shameless advertising, there.)
Suffice to say, we had fun filming again, particularly the burning of the Christmas tree, which was excellently unearthed (not literally) by Cerys, our cameraperson and additional creative director. Two quid it cost. TWO English pounds reduced from twenty. Bargainal stuff! Many thanks go to the merchant at Homebase and, of course, Cerys' mad haggling skillz! Without them, we wouldn't have created a mini inferno in the front yard of the studio; where, despite the cold and damp, and with a helping hand of turpentine, the tree burst into violent flames in a matter of seconds, thus complimenting Peace Patrol's epic failure perfectly. Top stuff, and pretty much how we envisaged. You ought to expect to see the burning in more detail in an outtakes video coming to a YouTube near you soon. For now, enjoy the video (<-- click that bit there), leave comments, criticism, lambasting and maybe some praise, and this'll be Cynical Mike signing off once more.
Merry Christmas and auf wiedersehen!
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