How to make a movie for Sci-Fi Channel

Posted on May 24, 2009 by jeffalopolis

If you haven’t watched Sci-Fi Channel before, you aren’t aware of the sheer volume of original movies they play every weekend.  Not just anyone can pitch an idea to them and be given permission to make a Sci-Fi Original Movie.  The minimum qualification is that you have a pulse, or at least people around you that care enough to do a puppet show with your body to beg for funding.

The first step in creating your movie is that you need to come up with a creature that will be in it.  Your creature should either by mythical (dragon, gargoyle, vampire) or an animal that can be enlarged to wreak havoc on the world.  If you can’t think of one, list a few animals and mythical creatures out on a dartboard and let the darts decide for you.  If you land on more than one and end up with something like a Vampire Squirrel, the better for you as that would make a fantastic movie. 

Once you have your creature in mind, get extremely drunk and barge into the Sci-Fi Channel offices (hint: it’s the back room of a strip club) and mumble incoherently for several minutes about Vampire Squirrels.  Try to use several different accents so they think you’re really worldly.

When the Sci-Fi Channel people are suitably impressed by your ability to vomit with a Welsh accent, they will hand you piles of money and tell you to get to work.  Immediately spend the money on hookers and crack since you don’t need any of it for filming and head back home.

Once home you will see that Sci-Fi has delivered a tall, wooden crate to your doorstep.  This crate contains Stephen Baldwin, so don’t open it until you’re ready to start filming, or your house will become infested with Baldwins and there’s no way to get rid of them all.

The next thing you need to find is a female friend who looks good in a tanktop.  Sci-Fi channel movies mimmic the real world in that all scientists are quite attractive and expose their cleavage constantly, so it’s important that you can find someone with the talent (breasts) to pull off this demanding role.

Once you have a girl with large breasts, you should have no problem going online and finding someone willing to do all of the computer animation work for you for free.

Your casting work isn’t done here, though; you still need to find a supporting cast.  Go back to the strip club the Sci-Fi Channel headquarters is in and round up some strippers and patrons.  Promise to give them some of the crack you bought earlier when filming is done.

Go back to your house, unpack your Baldwin, and take everyone out to Sci-Fi Scenery Valley, where you can pick your shooting location from: small town, lake, woods, rustic village, or college.  Remember that they have several films shooting at once and other directors are hard at work making their own movies, so just pick whichever setting is open.

Don’t really bother too much with story, plot, and other things that people talk about with movies, because they’re all useless for yours.  What matters is having all of your extras shriek in terror as they pretend they are seeing an oversized vampire squirrel coming at them.  Remember that since gunshots could be heard in the other movies they’re filming at the same time, your gunshots will be added on with computer graphics later. 

It is extremely important to remember that if you fail to get your scientist wet so her tanktop becomes see-through, you will forfeit your movie making rights and have to pay Sci-Fi back the money they gave you and they won’t pay return postage on your Stephen Baldwin, so he will end up living with you.  Since your movie is about a vampire squirrel, it’s perfectly logical that you would try to drown it or something and there’s a mishap with the hose and your scientist gets soaked.

After you get bored of killing off strippers and bar flies, have your Stephen Baldwin electrocute the monster (this is yet again required method of death for Sci-Fi monsters) then hand the footage to Sci-Fi Channel.

In three or four hours, you will be able to sit back on your couch and watch your movie shown on Sci-Fi!

Posted in Guides | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

So you want to make a harem anime?

Posted on May 23, 2009 by jeffalopolis

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, a harem anime almost always centers around the slightly dorky main character who for one reason or another ends up surrounded by beautiful girls that all for in love with him (for one reason or another.)  There are a few elements of a harem anime that are so pervasive throughout the genre that they surely must be governed by Japanese law.  So if you want to make your own harem anime (or manga) and don’t want to run afoul of the authorities, here are a few things to keep in mind:

The main character of the story has to be an average guy; after all, there’s really nothing interesting or otherworldly about a really good looking guy having a lot of women in love with him.  Keitaro from Love Hina is the perfect example of a harem anime lead.  He’s not especially good looking, he’s not particularly suave in social situations, not super successful, and most importantly he’s pretty dense when it comes to women.  This is a hallmark of harem animes, that the main character usually has absolutely no idea that dozens of women are in love with him.  The male lead is usually a good natured person who helps those around him out and keeps an upbeat attitude no matter what the circumstances.

The ladies of the harem anime are the other important part of the equation and this is where the laws governing harem animes are the strictest.  If you want to make one, you MUST have some, if not all, of these character types:

  • The Childhood Friend: This character has either grown up living in the same house as, or the house next-door to the main character.  She has always loved the main character and has always spent most of her life looking after him.  Naturally her chances of actually getting him in the end are pretty slim.
  • The Sister: Like The Childhood Friend, this character has always been in love with the male lead and is never actually his blood relative.  This character is pretty interchangeable with The Childhood Friend except there’s usually more sexual flirtation as there’s always a scene where the “brother” walks in on her bathing, etc.  The hallmark of the sister character is jealousy at the other girls starting to gain the attention of her beloved oniichan.
  • The Tomboy: This character can usually be found on the softball, volleyball, and swimming clubs.  Her exposure to the main character is pretty much the first time she has ever felt anything towards a boy and her lack of experience costs her in being able to confess her feelings for him.
  • The Ruri-Type: Ruri Hoshino from Martian Successor Nadesico was such a wildly popular character that anime creators haven’t been able to resist carbon copying her into their own shows.  The Ruri-Type is easily spotted since she has the body of a 12 year old, but is usually older than the others thanks to having missed a few years of school due to illness; so she’s conveniently 18.  This is convenient for the reason that a lot of harem animes started life as ero-games, so the game makers need a way to skirt around obscenity laws.  Like Ruri from Nadesico, these characters are always soft spoken, yet quite snarky and are always quite intelligent.  Her hair, like Ruri’s, is always from the blue color palette.
  • The Rich Girl: This character is even easier to spot than the Ruri-Type since she arrives to school in a limo, has large curls in her hair, and laughs into the back of her hand. She’s also usually surrounded by falling rose petals.  She’s never a serious contender for the main character’s love, but she serves to get in the way of the other characters and pad things out a bit.
  • Big Breasted Big Sister: This character is more comic relief than anything else.  While she does naturally love the main character and usually ends up with his face buried in her chest, she is generally the older sister of the childhood friend and doesn’t want to get in the way of things.  Her existence is primarily for stretching the limits of breast bouncing and she offers sage advice now and then, which is remarkable since she is usually portrayed as being quite dippy.
  • The Dimbo: This character is part dim-witted, part bimbo, but with a heart of gold.  She usually wins the love of the viewers (but not the main character) by saying things like “I know I’m not good at anything,” or “I know he wouldn’t want someone like me.”  She’s usually friends with the childhood friend and plays a relatively minor part in the show.
  • The Tsundere: This character type is defined as being prickly and unapproachable, but quickly reverts to being cute when in the presence of the person she loves.  A good example of this would be Naru from Love Hina.  This character usually is the one who ends up getting the guy. *

The show ending can switch around about who ultimately gets the guy, but Japanese law does require that your anime contain at least four of the character types.

The minor characters of the show are the classmates, of which you have That Guy, who always says something to get slapped.  You also have the metrosexual who makes overtures to both the main character and the other girls in class. As an added bonus you normally get super perverted fat guy who is also there just for comic relief.

The other absolute requirement for a harem anime (and most animes in general) is that the parents are not in the house.  They’re either dead, or working in another country; either way they never play any part in the show.

 

* Thanks to Mathew Snyder of http://theillien.blogspot.com/ for pointing out my omission of this character type

Posted in Anime, Guides | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How to contact tech support

Posted on May 22, 2009 by jeffalopolis

A lot of people come to me for help with their computer and between working with them and having done tech support years ago, I have come up with an extremely helpful guide on how to convey what is wrong with your computer to whoever is helping you.  This guide works well whether you are calling into phone support or trapping a friend/relative into helping you.

Remember that it’s not important to know what any part of the computer is actually called.  If you are talking about the tower, call it the hard-drive.  If you are talking about the monitor, call it the CPU.  It doesn’t really matter what part of the computer you are talking about, so long as you know the name of random computer parts.  The person helping you will automatically know what you are talking about, as well as be impressed with your knowledge.

Remember that computers don’t respond well to common sense, so don’t try to use any by diagnosing the problem yourself.  If your keyboard doesn’t work and there’s a purple tipped cord dangling from it, it probably doesn’t go into the purple colored port on the back of the computer.  Sure the colors are the same and sure the male and female connectors match up, but that’s likely just a trap, so don’t fall for it.

Remember that if an error message pops up on the screen, don’t write down what the error is, just mention to whoever is helping you that you had one and they’ll probably automatically know what it is.

Remember that your friends and family who know something about computers like nothing better than fixing them.  A dinner date is the perfect time to bring your laptop along to have them look at. 

I hope these few pointers have been helpful to you and will serve you well the next time your computer dies despite your keeping it warm and snuggly with that space heater sitting next to it.

Posted in Guides | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How to tell if the movie you’re making is bad

Posted on May 22, 2009 by jeffalopolis

A lot of people have come to me over the years seeking my advice on various things.  One of the questions I always get is “is the movie I’m making horrible?”  Here’s a simple checklist to go through to see if your movie will be bad:

  1. Did you write, direct, produce, and cater the film?
  2. Is the sole camera used for filming your mom’s?
  3. How far into the movie do you go before showing breasts?  Usually the sooner you resort to nudity to gain interest in your movie, the worse it is.
  4. Is the soundtrack death-metal from you/your friends’ band?
  5. Does your friends’ band double as the cast?
  6. Did you goto a rave and hand out free drugs to anyone willing to put on zombie makeup?
  7. Did you forgo professional sound equipment and rely on the on-board mic on the camera?
  8. Does your movie have one filming location and is that location your house / school?

Hopefully some of these tips will help you to better decide if the movie you are working on is worth working on.  And remember, when in doubt of the quality of it, throw more nudity in.

Posted in Guides | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How to survive a Renaissance Festival

Posted on May 21, 2009 by jeffalopolis

Ever since my inspiring and quite helpful guide on How To Avoid Death At Sea, I’ve been bombarded with letters and emails from people begging me to write on more topics.  (Well, not really, but that’s never stopped me before.)  Fortunately this weekend I went to the local Renaissance Festival and was able to observe quite a few things that will help out anyone getting ready to goto one of these things.

Firstly, let’s go through what it’s appropriate to wear if you’re a guy:

1. Jeans and a tshirt (note that the tshirt has to either be faded, black Star Wars shirt, or of a death metal band that no one has ever heard of.)

2. An authentic kilt and scottish attire, or just a pleated skirt and a nice blouse.  Make sure to mention several times per minute how convenient your outfit is when you’re in the port-a-john, because we all need that mental image burned into our minds forever.  While you’re at it, try to mention a few less times how convenient your Sporran (that would be the belt purse) is since you can keep your wallet, car keys, phone,and how there’s a hidden pocket inside in case it’s that time of the month.

3. A rug draped across your shoulders held together with a wide, leather belt.  This is to either give the impression that you are a barbarian, or were spending the weekend at your mountain cabin and racoons stole all your clothes so you just threw on the area rug and hoped no one would notice.

4. Don’t wear armor, but spend lots of time talking loudly to your friends about how you’re spending X dollars having your armor completely redone.

5. Captain Jack Sparrow!  Nothing says Renaissance quite like 15 guys all dressed up like a pirate from a Disney movie.

6. Your favorite video game character!  After all, you spent all that time working on the outfit for the anime convention, why put it away so soon?

7. Tights with no underwear…actually, no one needs to see this…ever!

For the ladies out there, your outfits are pretty simple:

1. Sexy (fill in the blank.)  It doesn’t matter if you choose to be a sexy barmaid, a sexy farmgirl, a sexy princess, a sexy priestess, or a sexy nun, your outfit should practically seep sexiness.  Remember that everyone in the world needs to see as much acreage of your breasts as possible, it doesn’t really matter how pale, or saggy they are.  And if your breasts are not spilling over the top of your dress to create that appealing Muffin-Top look, then you obviously are not doing something right.

2. Skin is in; your weight is directly proportional to the amount of clothing you can wear.  Simply dvide your height (in inches) by your weight and that will give you a good idea of how many yards of material your outfit should contain.  So for example, if you are 5’2″ tall and weigh 600 pounds, your outfit should be made out of 0.10 yards of cloth.  Remember that as you wear less material, it automatically increases your sexy level by +1.

Posted in Guides | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment