Will Hines Dot Net

Rob and I are going to LA to do a Get Psyched! show at UCBT-LA this Thursday March 4! Guest stars include: Ed Helms, Nate Shelkey, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Jackie Clarke and Jessica St. Claire! And Dr. Lanny Latham and Will Hines. Fun, right? It sure is!

Also, see Lanny’s most recent promo for his book here:

The Indigenous Flowers of Southern California Ep. 1 – Mitch Magee’s first Funny Or Die series. This is right up my alley. Who is this man talking to in his bathroom? Just how many flowers are there? How big IS that bathtub? Adam Pally and Eugene Cordero are great, as is the rest of the cast as the series unfolds. Watch all four parts or else you’re a big nerd. Each one ends strong and the end of episode four is my favorite thing in all of media.

“Flowers bowl me over.”

Numbalex. A commercial for an anti-depressants that tries to get you depressed! I love this! It’s by the beta team The Brig, which I have the pleasure to a coach for. They are hilarious.

Madeline Would Rather Die In The Flames. Starring Silvija Ozols and Will Hines. Directed by Nick Paley. Written and edited by Will. Crew: Benjamin Apple.

Second in a series of “weird” videos I’m trying to do. I wrote this with Silvija in mind back during September’s National Sketch Writing Month (national throughout NYC improv circles anyway). I feel like Silvija is someone who would stubbornly finish her radio show as the building burned to the ground around her. I mean that as a compliment.

After it was shot I realized it doesn’t quite make sense — is she doing a radio show? A podcast? What is going on? And decided it was better to leave it weird.

Nick Paley shot this which is why it looks good. He was sitting in the lobby of the UCB training center one evening in November and as I walked through he said “Hey, let’s work on something.” And I think I attacked him, saying that everyone says that but it’s baloney because no one has time. He told me to calm down and just send him some ideas. I sent him four or five scripts and we did this one.

This was shot at AOL courtesy of friends there. I like scenes in radio broadcasting rooms.

The original cut was twice as long — my character had six or seven more stilted descriptions of the fire. But none of them were jokes really, just more weirdness. My favorite line that just seemed to slow things down was “I am speaking quietly only because I am paralyzed from fear.” But that will have to live on in this blog post only.

Thanks!

Corrupt Mayors’ Super Bowl. Whenever you get Anthony Atamanuik saying “some naked take-off-their-clothes ladies” you’re at least partly right. Written by Erik Tanouye. Filmed and edited by me. Directed by both of us. Starring Eddie Dunn, Anthony Atamanuik and Birch Harms.

Other news:

• Halfway through DC Pierson’s book The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep And Didn’t Have To and I super dig it.
• Got two more videos shot and trying to get them edited
• Would like to never have to shave again. Advice?
• Tried Google Chrome; found that it doesn’t seem to handle GMail well on the Mac.
• Am abandoning these bullet points.

Two videos for you folks today. Macbook Pro Unboxing, the debut offering from The Brig, a Beta Team I have the privilege of coaching. (Sample coaching: “That’s funny. Do that one. See you next week!”).

And then this from Bobby Chicago – Corporate Sponsored Senate. My favorite part is Brandon’s extensive monologue in the middle.

Over the past 2 years, filesize limits for uploading videos has really jumped up! Here’s the settings From Final Cut, I pick “MPEG-4″ for file type to export. Used to do the default QuickTime Movie with H.264 but MPEG-4 gives smaller file sizes that still look great (Nate Dern figured this out while he interned for ucbcomedy.com). All my stuff is widescreen, hence the custom height and width.

Here’s video settings.

For College Humor, which still restricts file sizes to 80mb, I’ll set the data rate to 1500 kbs. Or sometimes make the dimensions 400×225.

Here’s audio settings.

YouTube is the best experience. Upload quickly and is immediately available as a low-res file. Then in a just a few minutes the higher-res version is ready. Impressive and good-looking.

Any comments? Suggestions? Random nouns?

Lanny reads from Get Psyched! Step 5: Enjoy. In this excerpt, Lanny severely overestimates the lifestyle of his readership.

You guys know Lanny’s 7 steps, right? One of the best parts of writing this book was coming up for a chapter to defend each of these steps.
1. Get Psyched
2. Have Fun
3. Pump It Up
4. Go For It
5. Enjoy
6. Drink Plenty of Fluids
7. Get Psyched

Bad First Dates with Gavin Speiller! This series is hilarious. And I dare you to not be charmed by Gavin Speiller! Before anyone in this improv world knew who Gavin was, my brother once had an indie group called “I Love Gavin Speiller” because my brother is smart.

Joe Lieberman Blocks More Things New video from LandlineTV!

I’ll say it: Michael Delaney is funny.

Also, I’m in this at the end.