The Somaturge reports following the first filming session for the new series, "Helter & Skelter's Bubblegum Boogiedown Showtunes Show," a review series covering... what else... musical theatre.
This video introduces Skelter, the snarky co-host who usually works with Helter. You don't get to meet Helter until the review is finished, but here's an idea of how the chicken "talks" to the audience. I do use him a lot more in the review videos. Here he's just been kidnapped nd helf hostage by that puppet-building psycho, the Somaturge. Not that that stops him from snarking every chance he gets.
Right, to the point. My script for the first episode of my review series has been as finalized as it's going to get in written form and is really, TRULY ready to start filming. I know I've been saying that elseqwhere for like... 4 or 5 days... but now I actually mean it due to having had some valuable insight from a beta reader and rewriting the beginning and the end. And here is why.
Initially, when I decided to review musicals, my reviewer was basically a less evil version of the Somaturge. Then I found a chicken puppet so it was the Somaturge and a chicken puppet. I wrote the script to incorporate humor wherever I could think of a place to make a joke, but incorporating the chicken was awkward and had a lot of potential to just look... tacky and pointless. The jokes were pretty funny, I thought, but I wasn't sure how to put them on film, since dubbing in a voice recording is still something I'm working on being able to do more seamlessly.
So after doing little bits of tweaking and not making it much better, I finally devoted a good solid half hour to doing nothing but just THINKING about it while I did other shit I didn't have to think about at all, and I figured it out.
First, my character, Helter, is not going to be just me trying to act as the Somaturge in a less intimidating way. Helter's just a completely different character. Different voice and everything. I came up with this idea that this golden feather pin I'd been wearing in my hat could be a prop -- this feather is what lets the chicken talk, but only to the audience. He talks in subtitles, which I, as Helter, can't read. I only read his body language and view him as a sort of adorably psychotic pet.
Okay, so... why do I have this feather? Where the fuck did I get it?
That's when I started breaking down boundaries of reality. Christ, I have a camera and apart from reviewing real musicals, there's no reason why I should limit their existence to this world. So... Helter, I decided, is not this guy's real name. I crossed out my original intro in the script and shortened it down to just a few lines where I casually mention that I'm a former adventurer recently returned from a successful quest, which is where I got this feather, and now I'm in witness protection, as a precautionary measure. The chicken, speaking in subtitles, turns out to be sort of a sinister character who immediately outs me by "yelling" my character's real name to the audience -- Helden Griffin -- and making a vague and sinister reference to an evil entity who is still alive and coming for me.
A Daedra.
Like... from Elder Scrolls games.
So my schtick now, rather than being something vague and just weird for the sake of being weird, is that I'm actually a video game PC who stole a magical artifact from a Daedric god (which one will be revealed in time... MUAHAHAHAHAHA...), and then escaped into the "real" world where I'm hiding from the pissed-off god and making videos because I'm kind of bored. This schtick might make more "sense" if I reviewed video games, but I think it is FUNNIER to have ae escaped video game character reviewing SHOWTUNES.
I don't know much about what the artifact I stole does, I just took it because stealing magical artifacts is kind of just something TES-universe adventurers... do. A lot. I will eventually assign SOME power to it that Helter knows about and explain why he thought it was something worth stealing, but allowing the chicken to talk to the audience is its primary relevant function at the moment.
So now... Helter is a complete 180-degree shift from the Somaturge, who is a sociopathic magical mad scientist with messianic delusions. When the Somaturge gets riled up, he does so very quietly, and then people die. A lot. When Helter gets riled up, there's no subtlety about it. He'll scream at you to shut the fuck up or sing praises about things he likes and it's a bit hammy but not so much so that it stops him from getting right back to the point. He also doesn't take himself too seriously, and will tease and dance and be a bit of a clown sometimes. This is very in keeping with his role as a supposed "hero" but of dubious heroicness. We know he did something epic -- stealing an enchanted thingy from a god -- but he doesn't come across as a typically honorable knight sort of hero. He's enthusiastic and self-assured, but every so often we'll get to see that even the chicken can intimidate him when he wants to. In fact, he's basically the chicken's bitch without realizing it.
...this is going to be a fun series to develop. Because it IS still mostly about the reviews, but now it's coming from a character with a lot of potential for additional epicness.
First, I got an opportunity to do a title card for JewWario, of youcanplaythis.com, thatguywiththeglasses.com, and the upcoming Blistered Thumbs site, a branch of Channel Awesome.
So I've been drawing. A lot. I've also made one new movable puppet and FOUR "puppets" that are really just drawings of characters who hang on the marionette rig strings in the background if I want to take the big puppets down.
Second, I have finally, FINALLY figured out what my review series is going to focus on. Of course in hindsight it seems almost PAINFULLY obvious. I won't give it away yet, but I managed to figure out this one particular genre of entertainment that is NOT covered by any of the reviewers on Channel Awesome (as far as I can tell), and that I know a LOT about.
Oh, and I can do my videos with heavy involvement from a chicken puppet. Which is hilarious.
I'm going to try to get a finished script down tonight and HOPEFULLY even get some filming done after I finish Justin's title card.
I'm actually really excited to do this series. I may make two videos before I release any of them just to see how well it holds up over multiple productions, but I think it will. I have a massive stack of CDs and a singing chicken that says it will. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.
Well, there's a video of me testing out my golem rig as the Somaturge using a hand-drawn puppet of the Nostalgia Critic.
Now I know it's been a while (...by my definition...) since I last updated. SO! How long did it actually take me to set this up?
Drawing all components of the rig took... ehh... about 5 hours at the outside. A lot of them had to later be adjusted and have elements added to them after initial tests. And there are actually still more pieces of this puppet I haven't filmed or even finished, there are still a few expressions half-colored and not yet cut out. And the gun... that needs work.
Filming all of this? An hour and a half, I guess, and then another half hour or 45 minutes for editing. It's simple and short, I just had to go through the 6-8 takes I did of EVERY. SINGLE. MOVEMENT. and pick the best ones to put in the video. And then there was the time it took the switch the faces and hats to get like... 2 seconds of footage.
To me, this is worth it. Because this is AWESOME.
My next project will be trying to do an actual movie review. This may or may not be successful, since... if you hadn't noticed, I haven't yet figured out how to edit in clips from other shows or movies. But if I can figure it out, I want to do a full review of the movie Perfume, using zombie versions of two of the film's dead characters as hosts (the cat and MAYBE one of the women... I think the distilled cat would be funniest, though).
That's all that can be said about what I have managed to do with a few screws and nails behild the bar here in the basement studio.
So you get a video... consisting entirely of some clips of the Somaturge setting up the golem rig with a test puppet, set to some rockin' tunes from three of Ven's favourite artists.
There is a great deal of camera-whoring going on here. But it's okay because I look awesome. There are also plenty of shenanigans introducing the faceless puppet I made to test out the rig, the Styrofoam head that has now become my nemesis and been named Naga, and my essential badger familiar who serves basically the same purpose as Harry Potter's owls, except badgers are cooler because China Mieville says they are basically immune to magic which is why they are used as messengers in Brock Marsh, the wizards' quarter in New Crobuzon.
I feel I should take this opportunity to mention again that my Somaturge character is heavily inspired by Judah Lowe from Iron Council by China Mieville. I honestly am not trying to rip off his character -- the first time I read that book, I bonded with Judah by the time I was about 1/4 of the way through it. He is one of only 3 or 4 characters I have ever encountered in any media form who I would say are a really accurate representation of a large part of my essential core being. So a lot of the Somaturge was with me already, all I'm really borrowing from Meiville's influence is some little details referencing his world (like the badger messengers) and the more refined definition of what a "somaturge" actually is. And yes, I got the name from his book. Credit where it's due.
Now I'm just showing off the fact that I can make it look like I ACTUALLY CAN animate golems back here. That kicks ASS, man! I mean SERIOUSLY!!!
The Somaturge is the main character associated with Somaturgy productions. The character both is and is not me. The character is... a refined, focused collection of aspects of me, reflective of many of the elements of my personality that are most essential to who I am... but not all of them, and not in a balanced way.
The Somaturge is a fictionalized and idealized self. Idealized in the sense of having what I feel to be an "ideal" personality based on a few primary components, not in the sense of being without flaws. The Somaturge is an incredibly flawed character -- but in a way I control and in a way I find interesting and entertaining. If sometimes in a somewhat sadistic way.
The Somaturge is genderless, but mostly meant to be read as more "male" than "female." I'll therefor use "he" to refer to him. So... he is a mad scientist with the heart of a poet. You don't see much of the mad scientist element in this video, but that's to come soon enough. He can be played to comedic or dramatic effect as necessary, having somewhat of a leaning towards the archetype of the "sad clown." He has, naturally, a sordid past and manically unstable life in the "present."
There has always been a Somaturge character somewhere in my repertoire of creative works -- a character I invent and play with who fits more or less this same pattern. So I can't say that there is actually very much of this character that I've based on other people's works -- but to give credit where it is due, there are a few who helped to shape the naming and definition of the Somaturge and his purpose.
First and foremost, the word "Somaturge" is one I first saw in the book Iron Council by China Mieville. That character, Judah Low, is one of the three fictional characters I most identify with, the other two being Therem Harth rem ir Estraven from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and Pierre Gringoire from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. From that book comes part of the idea about golems connecting with stories, but I really learned about golems a very long time ago, from the movie It!, starring Roddy McDowall (my favourite actor of all time) as a museum director's assistant who discovers how to bring a golem to life and use it to his own advantage. It's a blatant rip-off of Frankenstein but I like it so much better.
There will be a lot more to be said about the Somaturge as this project lurches forward, so I think I'll leave it at this for now until other aspects become apparent through my ability to SHOW them in videos as well as EXPLAIN them in over-long blog entries. Just know that there's more to the character than the rather emo critter you see in the video above.
About This Series
Somaturge poetry WILL be a continuing series. I have been a life-long lover of poetry and I strive to show others how to appreciate it. There are so many people who say they "hate" poetry, usually because some dumbass grade school or high school teacher "ruined" it for them by forcing them to dissect some poor dead sap's verses to the point of meaninglessness. It's tragic. I've kept several blogs in the past that consisted only of reposting poetry I enjoyed, but I think dramatizing it and reading it aloud may help to get the point across and translate to a broader audience what I see and feel and hear when I read my favourite poetry. I want to do that with the Somaturge (as opposed to reading as myself or any other character I make up for other video series) because I think poetry should be as genderless as I try to make that character, open to interpretation from everyone. The Somaturge will inevitably end up cast as different "roles" (just wait until I'm ready to tackle J. Alfred Prufrock, JUST YOU WAIT, muahahaha!), but still remain always himself in some sense. I like the challenge of that. And I like thinking that I can eventually hone my film-making skills enough to make my dramatized readings entertaining and interesting enough to make my favourite poems accessible to more people.
Additional Notes
Just as a point of interest, that's not real wine. I mean... it could have been, but it's not. It's water that got colored as a side-effect of my testing out a science kit I want to review on polymer properties. The dyes turned the water the color if white wine. I funneled it into an old bottle and poured and pretended to drink it.
Why didn't I use real wine? Well... because I'm still sadly a recovering victim of a cold that tricked me into thinking I'd recovered from it, then hit me again the day after my filming session for my last video. So now I have an annoyingly persistent cough and am living off Hall's cough drops.
I don't know if you've ever tried to mix cough drops with wine, but trust me... the taste is a lot worse than pretending to drink dyed water. Besides which, I don't exactly need any alcohol to make my brain fuzzier than it's making itself at this point. :P It would have been a waste of good booze to use real wine when I wasn't going to drink it. But I think this looks real enough.
And finally... it's worth noting that most of the footage you see here comes from the FORTH time I filmed this. The first takes, based on my original concept, were filmed in Mouse's parents' boiler room, of all places... I had this idea about being backlit and shooting a silhouette against the weird diagonals of the woodwork under the basement stairs... and it might have been pretty cool, if I hadn't shot all the takes I did about three centimeters to the right of where I should have been, leaving a tiny sliver of a bulb exposed, but it was enough to make all of that footage totally useless. Except for the audio track, some of which is pasted into this video over my NEW footage.
And I honestly do like this better -- the original footage is just... a talking head. I feel like this at least makes a gesture towards telling a story and setting a scene. It is vague, but I like it, I like that it contributes to the development of the Somaturge's character by letting me ~act~ instead of just showing... a talking head.
