This week's episode of STBD lays the groundwork for Rich Mathis's run for mayor -- as well as explaining Todd's recent bout with homelessness.
It's also only 5 minutes long, which signals a slight shift in STBD thinking -- shorter, more tightly-packed episodes (that are a bit easier to produce, week after week). Tell us what you think!
The Making of "Mathis 4 Mayor" involved:
- 1 hour of raw footage
- 1 shoot (since the Todd sequence was a holdover from last week's episode)
- 12+ hours of editing
Fun Facts, Scene by Scene:
* Believe it or not, this ENTIRE episode was improvised by the cast (with minimal direction and suggestion from yours truly).
The only elements that were even semi-scripted (meaning, the actors were given specific prompts to include) were the reasons for Todd's descent into homelessness and the general structure of the Mathis campaign meeting. EVERYTHING else came from the cast.
* Funny thing about editing so much improvised footage: it takes forever. That's because the camera is almost never in the right place, nor do the various "takes" always match up.
But the most exciting (and difficult) thing about carving this episode down from so much improv was deciding what the story actually IS. Depending on what dialogue was kept, and used in what order, the meaning of certain sequences could be completely reversed.
Example: when Rich initially lures Liz and Caroline into the boardroom by way of brownies, they quickly find themselves embroiled in Rich's impotent political scheming. But, as filmed, Liz and Caroline actually walked out of the room, and Rich had to track them down later in the day, apologize, and make them wildly impossible promises, just so they'd return and take him seriously.
Realizing that entire sequence slowed the pace of this now-taut episode, I needed to cut it -- but I had nothing to cut TO. We never filmed anything that suggested the girls actually STAY in the room (or sit down).
So, when sifting through dialogue, I located the sequence where Liz says "Rich, we have work to do," and I went hunting for something Rich could use as a filibuster to keep them occupied. Instead, I found the clip where he starts raving about his passion for "a parklet on every corner - YES" and I realized, "when edited in THIS order, it makes it sound like he's deluded himself into believing Liz is actually on his side..."
After that, it made perfect sense for Rich to keep rambling, and for the girls to stick around out of morbid curiosity.
* Many, MANY lines were cut from Rich's brainstorming session. Suffice it to say, there are only so many people we could offend (and so many bad ideas we could pitch) in a 3 minute sequence...
(My personal favorite line that didn't make the cut comes when Rich mentions "kissing babies," and Liz reminds him, "They have laws about that now." To which Rich turns to the whiteboard and writes, "Change the child touching laws...")
* Despite its brevity, the episode was still posted later than we would have liked... because we had to make a
Mathis4Mayor wiki, a
MySpace page and
t-shirts. (We take our politics VERY seriouslly...)
* We have no idea what a sugarshoe is, either...
Labels: behindthescenes, campaign, caroline, erikschark, liz, mathis4mayor, politics, richmathis, somethingtobedesired, stbd, video production, web series, web video
On November 6, the people of Pittsburgh will vote someone into office as the next mayor... and we here at STBD strongly believe it should be Rich Mathis!
