"Every Year" & "It's Not Funny"

I once had a professor in college who gave feedback on people's projects in front of the class. I also had a friend in college who I teamed with on most of my projects.

Once, the only feedback we got on our video was, "You know, every semester I have students take a video camera into a bathroom and think it's funny. This semester is no exception."

Ouch.

'Bathroom Rhetoric' was meant to be a humorous look at how graffiti is sometimes a mirror to society. In hindsight, it wasn't all that bad.

Perhaps Dr. Pierce didn't find it funny that we quoted him from a toilet stall.

Maybe he wasn't amused with the shot of feet lined up in consecutive stalls that damn-near showed the genitals of our host - or the fact we covered it up with a twirling heart.

Then there was the news story I did on Andrew "Dice" Clay protestors in Portland. I used footage from one of his concerts and did a poor job bleeping out the F word. So when the story ran in class, instead of hearing 'f***' - my class heard 'f*uck'.

Anyway this isn't about 'Bathroom Rhetoric' or a news story with audible swear words in it, it's about our next project which we named 'The Running Rodent'.

Our assignment was to produce a game show that broke the rules of broadcasting. It's a common way to teach students about the rules by allowing them to break them. Because if we tried to produce a serious game show that followed rules - it would suck big time.

My production partner, Sean Smith, and I decided our game show would have rodents as contestants (broken rule #1). We made the assumption that in the world of our game show, rodents were intelligent enough to answer simple questions (rule #2). We also decided that living through the entire contest was not a given (rule #3). There were some other minor rules that we broke also.

We lined up a couple of friends to host our show, bought our contestants at a local pet store and started chasing gerbils around in little plastic balls with a video camera. What ensued was a hellacious several weeks of uncooperative animals, over sleeping talent and all night edit sessions.

Feedback from Dann Pierce: "If these guys could get their tongues out of their cheeks, they could be dangerous." - Is that good?

The production values are mediocre at best.
The audio is poorly mixed.
The acting and writing are suspect.
The chances we take are bold and cutting edge (meaning we may have crossed a line somewhere).
Entertainment value is minimal.

It's kind of like a car wreck - you know hard to look away...well actually it is easy to look away.

It's not all that good.

Anyway, check out part 1 - and if you want to see how all the gerbils die watch parts Two and Three.