The Ark

Whatever floats your boat...

Further back we go. So far we visited 2006 and 2003.

As always this blog is meant to provide background information as to how the work of *ahem* art came to be. This takes us to the year 2001. I had just left the German equivalent of high school and was doing alternative civilian service as community worker in a small town (1300 people). In other words: I was bored out of my skull.

To help this problem I stayed in the theater group of my school for a year after I graduated. The group of students of all ages contained a group of 10th graders that presented me with a problem. Homework.

They were given the assignment to make a satire of a popular phenomenon for their social studies group. A satire in whatever form they saw fit. Knowing me they chose to make a short. The phenomenon of their choice was the soap opera in all it's nastiness. I loved the idea.

Overly dramatic acting, bad sets and stories that evolved purely around who loves whom, who is dating whom, who f... you get the idea. Any actor who had/wanted to leave the show developed sudden on screen leukemia or *fill in fatal disease here*. Or their character had to leave the country/continent/planet on urgent matter for an indefinite time. OH! Also homosexuality was always a crowd pleaser when it came to soaps. At least in these here parts. The script wrote itself.

Later this week I will present you the re-edit of 2006 when I was preparing all for the archives. The short was done at a time when I rigged two VCRs together to cut between tapes. Trivia: soundtracks were added by filming stuff from the TV set while letting the stereo play something. Innocent times. However that version never made it onto the PC so the re-edit will have to suffice.

A word of warning. Not only is this badly executed on purpose (I had actors who weren't on screen reflect on surfaces or looking directly into the camera to mock the bad TV that is the soap), the script is also anything but politically correct. I would say "we were young" but even now I think, it served it's purpose.

Another Day - Another Tumor (2001/German/Eng. subs)

goes up sometime this week. Enjoy ;-)

Views: 14

Comment by BlancheNoE on December 7, 2009 at 6:20pm
YAY ! I can relate to this one. Um, and thanks for covering for us with Chig. Your twenty bucks is in the mail,...'course that works out to 'bout a half a Euro.
Comment by Pypermarru1 on December 7, 2009 at 9:25pm
I can't wait. I love a good smarmy soap opera, made with low grade equipment. SWEET
Comment by NatureJunkie on December 9, 2009 at 3:17pm
"Another Day, Another Tumor." Great title. In the states, that would fall under a particular prime-time sub-genre: Disease of the week.
Comment by SydTheSkeptic on December 10, 2009 at 2:29am
Sounds like fun. Bring it.

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