JikeMez's Christmas Presence

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!

Us two guys are gonna save the world!

The eagle-eyed among you would've already noticed and hopefully watched the final cut of 'Peace Patrol vs. John East' and, at the time of writing, we've managed to amass 45 views and a suspicious yet totally legitimate 5 star rating! Not a bad start at all. To top things off, as far as viewing pleasure's concerned, we've also compiled an 'outtakes' video, comprising of the most amusing cock-ups and dodgy camerawork we managed during the shooting process. It's quite good, so take a look here. Make sure you watch the proper video first though! And please leave comments if you have anything you'd like to say. Ta!

Winding back a bit, we were quite chuffed with how the video ended up, particularly during the slow-mo' scene, where we managed to match the pace of visuals with the music to a tee. After that, when you see Lenny's cupped hands release the tuna into the sea, everything else fell into place like a Scooby Doo's villain's plans. Except we got away with it at the end!

As far as editing went, it couldn't have gone any smoother; although a time-consuming process, it was rarely a chore. On occasions we had to alter or enhance some sound here and there, but the raw footage we shot was mostly exactly what we needed. Personally (Cynical Mike aka Lenny, here), the car boot scene's unintended but excellently fitting seaside background theme matched the mood perfectly, and captured the clumsy atmosphere we were striving for. It basically acted as a useful indicator to not take us seriously (if that was still needed by then), so thank you quirky Barry Island!

Fits of laughter were abound, however, when putting the finishing touches to the final product, courtesy of having to speak 'seriously' when doing a Don LaFontaine impression. After around ten minutes of attempting to record the whole script in one take, it was finally ready for the introduction's montage. If it wasn't for our jobless reputable vegetable farmer, it would've been completed in three takes or less! But his image etched in my mind while reading it was too much to take! Good times.

Other than that it was a relatively smooth ride until the very end, where converting the video to a DivX-friendly format proved to be a bit annoying. For some reason, after two 'successful' conversions, it decided to omit either the beginning or the end of the video, seemingly disliking either Jez's unnecessarily American announcement or the 'maaaase' at the end. Eventually it behaved, and that is what you see on YouTube right now.

To avoid further rambling, it's time to tantillise and tickle: originally we had a couple of ideas for our next project while working on Peace Patrol's first outing, but now we may have something more familiar for JikeMez viewers in the pipeline. As ever, watch this space and have a nice day!

We'll be back.

Action Satisfaction

If you've been keeping up with JikeMez's recent tweetings you'll know that we finally got some filming done for 'Peace Patrol vs. John West'! Although unsure at the time, we're fairly certain we managed to capture all the shots we needed to at last complete this rather drawn-out affair.

It's remarkable what a bit of preparation can do, as our script and storyboard, both produced back in June, did wonders in helping us get to started on day one of filming. So, (rather amusing) costumes at the ready, a few accent tweaks here and there and it's 'take one' of many! Thanks to the storyboard and script, we knew how to begin and, unlike 'normal' filming, we started at the start! Rather than trying to be clever, we thought best to shoot chronologically, so we knew exactly where we were progress-wise. We're only amatuers at the moment, after all...

Getting into character proved a little tricky (we're only amatuers at the moment, after all...), while talking to the camera and driving the 'Peace Patrol Wagon' was quite enjoyable, with many-an-outtake ready for use in our 'Peace Patrol Bonus Features' video, coming soon (once the editing of the main feature is actually completed). So we had fun with the initial stages, and from what we can tell insofar, it should all merge together as a harmonic entity when the jigsaw is complete! With a few improvisations now and again, the public interfering with our shooting (we don't yet command the respect to get people to piss off, because we're only amat... Ah, you get the idea by now!), the discovery of a creepy but perfect horror movie backdrop in Barry, a (hopefully) amusing car boot (trunk, to the Yanks) scene and some tuna-releasing safe-spot locating; our first day (or few hours) with cameras, microphones and exaggerated accents drew to a close as daylight was of the essence. We swiftly learned a lesson here: 'note to selves: get our arses ready before half bloody 2 tomorrow!'.

And didn't we just! The second and hopefully final day (my frustration at it not being done becoming evident towards the end) didn't feel as fruitful as we would've liked at the time, but on reflection we did quite well. We re-shot the tuna-releasing safe-spot locating scene just in case, successfully avoided 'Speedo Man'*, got Jez an accent, "released the fish", froze our arses off in shorts and sandals on a miserable September afternoon at the sea side, drew a few on-looking spectators in and wore the camera's battery to a 'must... sleep... gaargh!' degree (dramatic death scene, you know what I mean)! Not at all a bad day's work, taking all into consideration.

There's a slight concern, however; we're unsure whether the shots we managed for the releasing scene were all that good, or any good at all. Although we haven't played back the video properly yet, we're unsure whether it looks convincing enough. Considering it's meant to be our 'money shot', I couldn't help but feel despondent that it hadn't panned out as originally hoped. We took various shots though, so providing there are no horror shows, we should have enough to piece together to make it look half decent. With any luck re-shooting won't be a neccessity, and we can finally move on from this project! When it's done, drop us a line and let us know whether it was cringeworthy or not! Public opinion/criticism is key to our future improvement.

As soon as it's up and running on our YouTube channel, you'll be sure to know via Twitter and probably here. For now though, this is a relatively pleased 'Cynical Mike' signing off.

'And I'll see ya next time, turrah!'














*'Speedo Man' (not the guy above) was some bloke who thought it'd be wise to have a swim in the not-exactly-tropical tropical temperatures of the Bristol Channel. He wandered up and down the shoreline, seemingly attempting to find a warm spot, intruding our camera's lens twice, looking grumpy at the sea's apparent lack of heat and buggering off home. Seriously, Speedos, at the end of September, at Barry Island! There's a comedic short film in there somewhere...

And we're back!

About time too! Having had a few problems in getting to the JikeMez 'studio' in the last couple of weeks due to other commitments, we've been unable to continue developing our creations. Fortunately, that brief hiatus proved to spark us into action, actually getting on to producing a few things, which will all become clear over the next few weeks, we can assure.

Firstly, our first ever JikeMez sketch/skit/small film is edging nearer, having finally sorted a prop out and begun the next stage of development. Having completed the script and storyboard back in the months of 'summer' it was a well overdue exercise. As a result, the 'Peace Patrol' banner is finally complete and ready for action (check it out here) providing it isn't too big! Oddly, it was done in 'one take' and great to see that our intended tackiness turned out exactly how we wanted it to! By some stroke of fortune the two-week folded flowery fabric set out a stencil making it simple to get the letter sizes right, and the two peace symbols fitted in perfectly. One problem has arisen, however, and memory says that the banner is unfortunately too big for its purpose. Hopefully the readily-suspended foot won't kick us in the teeth when we try it out...

The video production side of things has finally got under way, where the introductory stages for 'Peace Patrol vs. John East' are near completion, having recorded the 'public service' message, chosen the images for the subsequent montage and selected accompanying music. We had trouble deciding whether to record a voice over for the montage or simply use on-screen text, so we're gonna try both and decide what's best then. At the moment, it appears that Jez prefers on-screen text, while I'd rather an exaggerated voiceover... FIGHT!! We'll have to wait to find out who wins that one.

Most pleasingly of all, we came up with an ident that'll appear at the end of every JikeMez production. Jez dug up a memory of something I said randomly in a recording during our university days and thought it'd be good to re-record (considering the original recording is now condemned to eternal Hell on a mini disc...) and it surprisingly sounded amusing! In addition, I drew some potential accompanying characters, which we aim to include in either animation or in a more sneaky still form, possibly progressing into various themes that potential fans could one day get involved in. Stay tuned for that one; as all will become clearer once the Peace Patrol episode is finally complete!

And that just about wraps that up. Time seems to pass too quickly once we step into the 'studio', yet we hope this is the gradual build-up to some good work over the next few weeks.

So roger that, this is 'Cynical Mike' over and out!

The First of Many...

Greetings Citizens,

It would appear that I have the honour of writing the first ever post on The JikeMez Productions Blog; which is cool, if not a little intimidating. We set up this blog yesterday after deciding in a meeting last week that blogging regularly about the work we'd been doing was a good idea, it certainly won't hurt! We had a good day yesterday, the first of many to come we hope. I've been saying that a lot recently, the first of many... Filming will begin soon on our first of many productions, we signed up to Twitter and have welcomed our first of many (hopefully) followers, our time yesterday was productive and hopefully the first of many productive days... it goes on.

Yesterday, we finally designed our company logo and created a splash to put at the end of all our productions. The logo is pretty random but does link back to us subtly (very subtly), I'm not going to tell you how because we may make a competition out of it someday or something... all things are possible. You can see our logo in the banner at the top of the blog and you'll be seeing the avatar (above right) on our YouTube and Twitter accounts. Exciting stuff!

As well as the production of our first release "Peace Patrol vs. John East", pre-production has also begun on future projects. We will be producing our first documentary (that's right we do serious stuff too) about a subject in which I'm sure many of the British people will be interested... more details coming soon. In the coming weeks, JikeMez Productions will also debut "The Mighty Jez Show", a talk show style comedy programme that will not only entertain you (hopefully) but keep you up to date with our latest stuff with previews, trailers and whatnot... so look forward to that!

That's enough from me for now,
this is the Mighty Jez signing off...