All of the improv in Monty Python films occurred in the writers’ room. Somehow Michael Palin or Eric Idle or both or whoever, it’s been a while, makes sorting mud and shit look natural so the audience thinks it must be off the cuff.
Well they didn't have the budget to film endlessly, it's much cheaper to do your improv in the writing room first. They had coconuts because horses would have blown the budget
Live Action Fantasia... I would actually be kind of down for tbh...
Not actually a movie, they just lace all the artificially butter flavored popcorn topping with lsd and have some guy stand in the front of the theater waving a flashlight and yelling.
I have to give Disney credit for making Fantasia 2000 considering a) the first Fantasia bombed and b) it's hard to think of a less commercially-viable-sounding pitch than 'a bunch of wordless shorts set to classical music'. After that one bombed too no way will they ever make another one, tho
It's unfair to say the original Fantasia bombed, in the traditional sense. It was widely critically acclaimed, and its opening runs were massively successful. It had its legs cut out from under it though by WWII, it wasn't able to be released in Europe and the more widespread American release planned after the far more expensive roadshow runs was scaled back drastically. When you take into account its re-releases over the years adjusted for inflation, it's one of the most financially successful movies in history. It also pioneered, and was the first film to be released in stereo.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
If Disney put real effort in to some kind of hand-painted/CGI Fantasia hybrid it could be breathtaking.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Spiderverse shows it's still possible to do new and crazy shit with animation, even today.
The sound recording and playback for Fantasia was... well, Walt should've probably been committed. He went to RCA and said "Invent this thing that doesn't exist." and RCA said no because it was going to be crazy expensive. And they didn't even know how they could do it. And Walt said "Here's the money."
Fantasound, developed in part by Disney engineer William Garity, employed two projectors running at the same time. With one containing the picture film with a mono soundtrack for backup purposes, the other ran a sound film that was mixed from the nine tracks recorded at the Academy to four: three of which contained the audio for the left, center, and right stage speakers respectively, while the fourth became a control track with amplitude and frequency tones that drove variable-gain amplifiers to control the volume of the three audio tracks. In addition were three "house" speakers placed on the left, right, and center of the auditorium that derived from the left and right stage channels which acted as surround channels. As the original recording was captured at almost peak modulation to increase signal-to-noise ratio, the control track was used to restore the dynamics to where Stokowski thought they should be. For this, a tone-operated gain-adjusting device was built to control the levels of each of the three audio tracks through the amplifiers.
The illusion of sound traveling across the speakers was achieved with a device named the "pan pot", which directed the predetermined movement of each audio channel with the control track. Mixing of the soundtrack required six people to operate the various pan pots in real time, while Stokowski directed each level and pan change which was marked on his musical score. To monitor recording levels, Disney used oscilloscopes with color differentiation to minimize eye fatigue. To test recording equipment and speaker systems, Disney ordered eight electronic oscillators from the newly established Hewlett-Packard company. Between the individual takes, prints, and remakes, approximately three million feet of sound film was used in the production of Fantasia. Almost a fifth of the film's budget was spent on its recording techniques.
It cost almost $4m in today's money just to develop it. And each setup, they needed one for each theater, and it was shown this way in eleven theaters, cost the equivalent of $1.5m.
I saw an interview where Walt said something to the effect of: “I don’t make things to make money, I make money so I can make things.” And sometimes... I believe him
The 2016 Ghostbusters film cemented in my mind that while improv can lead to funny moments here and there, truly timeless comedies are always very tightly scripted, and the moments of improvisation are few and far between.
I think that ad libbed humor can be great, if you're just having a conversation with someone and they say something funny or clever, because part of it is just, "hey, you thought of something kind of clever to say on the fly, neat!" It's fun being part of a moment.
Ad libbed movies feel like they're trying to do this, but it fundamentally can't work that way, because it's never going to feel spontaneous and on the fly. Because it really isn't. It feels like you took fifteen takes of ad libbing and used the funniest one and comes off as something that was scripted anyway, without the polish that would come from it being ACTUALLY scripted.
It's the same reason that if your kid says something precocious on the fly it's funny, but when a kid in a movie says it, it sounds forced. Spontaneity in a scripted work is never going to feel truly spontaneous.
So knock it off, Hollywood. Seth Rogan is probably hilarious to hang out with, but that doesn't mean I want to just watch him babble for two hours.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
If Disney put real effort in to some kind of hand-painted/CGI Fantasia hybrid it could be breathtaking.
Soooooo... Fantasia 2000?
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I don't think ad lib is the same as improv. At least as I understand it, ad lib just means you throw your own spin on a line or two of dialogue. Improv means you make everybody around you uncomfortable and the only people that can stand to be around you also improv.
To be fair, Melissa McCarthy is heavily typecast into comedic roles, but she’s genuinely a good actor. “Could You Ever Forgive Me?” from 2018 is evidence of that.
It's like anything. It's good sometimes but not always and when it doesn't work and you have no backup plan it results in bad movies. A fair number of US comedies seem to have leaned pretty heavily on it as a crutch in the last decade or so and when it works you get, like, Anchorman or something great, and when it doesn't you get ten mediocre movies and a comedy scene that feels stale and lazy.
Disney should just announce the other 45 live action remakes now and save us all the repetitive news cycles
Live-action remake of Song of the South
Wait
I still find it odd that in the parks, you’ve got Splash Mountain and all of the br’er characters but there’s nothing out there to watch these characters in.
PSN Fleety2009
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Disney has flip flopped back and forth, at one point their CEO said they wouldn't do anything with Song of the South as it was antiquated and offensive, but at other times other C-level people have said they wanted to do something with it. When Whoopi Goldberg got inducted into their hall of fame thing, she stated that she wanted them to re-release it. They put out chunks of it in other things, I remember owning an album with Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah as a kid and seeing it show up on their TV show way back when.
WB released all the old Bugs Bunny material with a decent warning plaque at the start. I think they could possibly do a decent learning thing with Song of the South. Get Whoopi to narrate a learning about racism deal over top of the various parts or in between them and release it to schools.
The 2016 Ghostbusters film cemented in my mind that while improv can lead to funny moments here and there, truly timeless comedies are always very tightly scripted, and the moments of improvisation are few and far between.
I think that ad libbed humor can be great, if you're just having a conversation with someone and they say something funny or clever, because part of it is just, "hey, you thought of something kind of clever to say on the fly, neat!" It's fun being part of a moment.
Ad libbed movies feel like they're trying to do this, but it fundamentally can't work that way, because it's never going to feel spontaneous and on the fly. Because it really isn't. It feels like you took fifteen takes of ad libbing and used the funniest one and comes off as something that was scripted anyway, without the polish that would come from it being ACTUALLY scripted.
It's the same reason that if your kid says something precocious on the fly it's funny, but when a kid in a movie says it, it sounds forced. Spontaneity in a scripted work is never going to feel truly spontaneous.
So knock it off, Hollywood. Seth Rogan is probably hilarious to hang out with, but that doesn't mean I want to just watch him babble for two hours.
Rumor has it that this scene with Matt Damon reminiscing about his brothers and their final night together before going to boot camp was ad-libbed: https://youtu.be/8_iXD1Gcoek
And that's such a powerful scene: it still makes me laugh and then tear up in the same space of time that Matt Damon does. When see an example like this, or Han Solo's "I know" or Dustin Hoffman's "I'm walking here!" I think the true potential of Ad-libbing is when an actor is able to fully realize their character with a deeper understanding than the writer has.
I'm curious if they'll ever try and remake Song of the South. Honestly, it might be a good idea.
wandering what are you talking about that is literally the worst idea in the world
Well maybe...but imagine if they got a black writer and black director and reframed the story to be a big fuck you to white supremacy. Instead of a story about an idealized, happy-go-lucky plantation, it could be a story where the white plantation owners are the villains. Instead of Uncle Remus being an innocuous dispenser of folksy wisdom, he could, instead, be a rebel who inspires rebellion with his tales of a wily trickster rabbit outsmarting more powerful antagonists.
Disney has flip flopped back and forth, at one point their CEO said they wouldn't do anything with Song of the South as it was antiquated and offensive, but at other times other C-level people have said they wanted to do something with it. When Whoopi Goldberg got inducted into their hall of fame thing, she stated that she wanted them to re-release it. They put out chunks of it in other things, I remember owning an album with Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah as a kid and seeing it show up on their TV show way back when.
WB released all the old Bugs Bunny material with a decent warning plaque at the start. I think they could possibly do a decent learning thing with Song of the South. Get Whoopi to narrate a learning about racism deal over top of the various parts or in between them and release it to schools.
Splash Mountain is entirely Song of the South themed too. I still have a read-a-long book of it with a tape from the mid 80s somewhere.
Warner Brothers released almost all of the Bugs Bunny material. The Censored Eleven are still unavailable in any official release. There was talk in 2010 that they were going to do a full restoration, and release the eleven as kind of a historical time capsule, with bonus features and a lot of backstory about them, but that never materialized. We know the restoration of at least 8 of them is complete, because they were screened in 2010 at the TCM Film Festival. Jerry Beck has even said they were as far along as doing box art, before Warner pulled the plug without a reason.
All of it's still available though, less officially. Thanks to copyright laws in Japan being far less strict, Song of the South is in the public domain there and got put on laserdisc, and people were nice enough to rip it. It's a pretty high quality copy, even.
To go back a few pages, I genuinely like GB2. It has some really funny parts, some scary parts, and everyone gets some quality screen time, especially Ernie Hudson. Everyone seems to enjoy themselves, even Murray (or at least he was willing to fake it). It's not as good as the first, but it's better than any sequel to the first has a right to be. When considered on it's own merits, I think it holds up.
To go back a few pages, I genuinely like GB2. It has some really funny parts, some scary parts, and everyone gets some quality screen time, especially Ernie Hudson. Everyone seems to enjoy themselves, even Murray (or at least he was willing to fake it). It's not as good as the first, but it's better than any sequel to the first has a right to be. When considered on it's own merits, I think it holds up.
GB2 is fine. It's totally fine. It's just, the first one is right there. It just doesn't do much that's really new or different. It's just more, slightly less original Ghostbusters. MacNicol is really fun in his role. The movie is fine.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Ad Libs when it's the first time it happens and gets to print is awesome.
Like "WHY IS GAMORA?" was an ad-lib and made it into the film from the first take.
But those are moments. If all you do is Whose Line Is It Anyway? the entire film it definitely suffers, regardless of who you've got playing in it.
Ad Libs when it's the first time it happens and gets to print is awesome.
Like "WHY IS GAMORA?" was an ad-lib and made it into the film from the first take.
But those are moments. If all you do is Whose Line Is It Anyway? the entire film it definitely suffers, regardless of who you've got playing in it.
I think ad-libs can work great as an extension of an already planned script. When they replace the script itself you are basically hoping magic happens and, like, that's not a good bet the majority of the time.
The 2016 Ghostbusters film cemented in my mind that while improv can lead to funny moments here and there, truly timeless comedies are always very tightly scripted, and the moments of improvisation are few and far between.
I think that ad libbed humor can be great, if you're just having a conversation with someone and they say something funny or clever, because part of it is just, "hey, you thought of something kind of clever to say on the fly, neat!" It's fun being part of a moment.
Ad libbed movies feel like they're trying to do this, but it fundamentally can't work that way, because it's never going to feel spontaneous and on the fly. Because it really isn't. It feels like you took fifteen takes of ad libbing and used the funniest one and comes off as something that was scripted anyway, without the polish that would come from it being ACTUALLY scripted.
It's the same reason that if your kid says something precocious on the fly it's funny, but when a kid in a movie says it, it sounds forced. Spontaneity in a scripted work is never going to feel truly spontaneous.
So knock it off, Hollywood. Seth Rogan is probably hilarious to hang out with, but that doesn't mean I want to just watch him babble for two hours.
Rumor has it that this scene with Matt Damon reminiscing about his brothers and their final night together before going to boot camp was ad-libbed: https://youtu.be/8_iXD1Gcoek
And that's such a powerful scene: it still makes me laugh and then tear up in the same space of time that Matt Damon does. When see an example like this, or Han Solo's "I know" or Dustin Hoffman's "I'm walking here!" I think the true potential of Ad-libbing is when an actor is able to fully realize their character with a deeper understanding than the writer has.
Robin Williams ad-libbed the story about his deceased wife farting in bed in good will hunting and it enhanced an already great scene, that's always the winning formula
I recall once hearing that the showing wounds scene in Jaws was an ad lib, but then you read up on it and actually it was like 3 iterations of writers taking a piece at the scene with Robert Shaw himself writing the last version.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
To go back a few pages, I genuinely like GB2. It has some really funny parts, some scary parts, and everyone gets some quality screen time, especially Ernie Hudson. Everyone seems to enjoy themselves, even Murray (or at least he was willing to fake it). It's not as good as the first, but it's better than any sequel to the first has a right to be. When considered on it's own merits, I think it holds up.
Peter MacNichol steals the whole film.
We are all like the buzzing of flies to Viggo the Butch.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Every time I think of Ghostbusters 2, I think of this article. Its a slightly long read and has some terrible things in it but to me its a fascinating look into the life of someone who everybody knows who they played but not who they were. Vigo was a monster of a character but the man playing him was no saint either.
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Well they didn't have the budget to film endlessly, it's much cheaper to do your improv in the writing room first. They had coconuts because horses would have blown the budget
Not actually a movie, they just lace all the artificially butter flavored popcorn topping with lsd and have some guy stand in the front of the theater waving a flashlight and yelling.
It cost almost $4m in today's money just to develop it. And each setup, they needed one for each theater, and it was shown this way in eleven theaters, cost the equivalent of $1.5m.
It's probably much better than Shrek
I think that’s just Cirque de Soleil.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I think that ad libbed humor can be great, if you're just having a conversation with someone and they say something funny or clever, because part of it is just, "hey, you thought of something kind of clever to say on the fly, neat!" It's fun being part of a moment.
Ad libbed movies feel like they're trying to do this, but it fundamentally can't work that way, because it's never going to feel spontaneous and on the fly. Because it really isn't. It feels like you took fifteen takes of ad libbing and used the funniest one and comes off as something that was scripted anyway, without the polish that would come from it being ACTUALLY scripted.
It's the same reason that if your kid says something precocious on the fly it's funny, but when a kid in a movie says it, it sounds forced. Spontaneity in a scripted work is never going to feel truly spontaneous.
So knock it off, Hollywood. Seth Rogan is probably hilarious to hang out with, but that doesn't mean I want to just watch him babble for two hours.
Soooooo... Fantasia 2000?
Watch this and tell me Melissa McCarthy doesn't know how to legit act:
They aren't even that funny, they're probably fun to make though so
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I still find it odd that in the parks, you’ve got Splash Mountain and all of the br’er characters but there’s nothing out there to watch these characters in.
Its your fault I'm about to be unproductive and watch hours and hours of Kids in the Hall again
I recently got the entire series for a song at an FYE, so it's been my morning ritual for weeks.
WB released all the old Bugs Bunny material with a decent warning plaque at the start. I think they could possibly do a decent learning thing with Song of the South. Get Whoopi to narrate a learning about racism deal over top of the various parts or in between them and release it to schools.
Rumor has it that this scene with Matt Damon reminiscing about his brothers and their final night together before going to boot camp was ad-libbed:
And that's such a powerful scene: it still makes me laugh and then tear up in the same space of time that Matt Damon does. When see an example like this, or Han Solo's "I know" or Dustin Hoffman's "I'm walking here!" I think the true potential of Ad-libbing is when an actor is able to fully realize their character with a deeper understanding than the writer has.
wandering what are you talking about that is literally the worst idea in the world
Well maybe...but imagine if they got a black writer and black director and reframed the story to be a big fuck you to white supremacy. Instead of a story about an idealized, happy-go-lucky plantation, it could be a story where the white plantation owners are the villains. Instead of Uncle Remus being an innocuous dispenser of folksy wisdom, he could, instead, be a rebel who inspires rebellion with his tales of a wily trickster rabbit outsmarting more powerful antagonists.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Splash Mountain is entirely Song of the South themed too. I still have a read-a-long book of it with a tape from the mid 80s somewhere.
Warner Brothers released almost all of the Bugs Bunny material. The Censored Eleven are still unavailable in any official release. There was talk in 2010 that they were going to do a full restoration, and release the eleven as kind of a historical time capsule, with bonus features and a lot of backstory about them, but that never materialized. We know the restoration of at least 8 of them is complete, because they were screened in 2010 at the TCM Film Festival. Jerry Beck has even said they were as far along as doing box art, before Warner pulled the plug without a reason.
All of it's still available though, less officially. Thanks to copyright laws in Japan being far less strict, Song of the South is in the public domain there and got put on laserdisc, and people were nice enough to rip it. It's a pretty high quality copy, even.
Having seen these guys live I can tell you they are absolutely improv pros.
Peter MacNichol steals the whole film.
Like "WHY IS GAMORA?" was an ad-lib and made it into the film from the first take.
But those are moments. If all you do is Whose Line Is It Anyway? the entire film it definitely suffers, regardless of who you've got playing in it.
Ghostbusters 2: you went looking for Ghostbusters and couldn't find it but didn't feel like changing up your plans that much
I think ad-libs can work great as an extension of an already planned script. When they replace the script itself you are basically hoping magic happens and, like, that's not a good bet the majority of the time.
Robin Williams ad-libbed the story about his deceased wife farting in bed in good will hunting and it enhanced an already great scene, that's always the winning formula
pleasepaypreacher.net
We are all like the buzzing of flies to Viggo the Butch.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
https://deadspin.com/the-hateful-life-and-spiteful-death-of-the-man-who-was-1737376537