The Illustrious Todd Hammer

Kevin Larry Throws A Day Away With Todd Hammer. What can I say about this video? Well... we came up with this great idea, and then proceeded to not write anything (aside from backstory) before shooting. We spent days creating the character of Todd Hammer, and planning out every little detail of his strange life... and then we left everything to improv. We shot for one whole day, and beyond that, there was nothing besides editing tricks to save us.

In the end, I think that Jon (Armstrong, Co-Director) and I would both say that this was a fun project to make, and I believe that Kevin and Billy play their characters incredibly well... but the humor is just so dry and specific that, as my wife puts it, she "didn't laugh once." You had better believe that review is going on the back of the DVD case!

And that's my big sell. This is basically a grown-up version of the kind of videos my friends and I used to make back in high school... so I love it. Regardless of my admission that this may not be an utter homerun, I still recommend giving it a watch. I'm definitely proud of the editing. I mean, it's improv, so a lot of the pacing is based on the actors' deliveries, but there's also plenty of conversations that had to be constructed from mismatched, random clips. Also, it's worth watching just to see two of the funniest guys I know trying to out-awkward the other one. There's definitely some real pleasure in watching the subtleties of these two... I guess you could say it's a character piece. Maybe?

It was a fun project to work on... and hey, it's definitely watchable. Actually, I don't care if you like it or not.

As It Turns Out, Models Do Need Sleep

Jon Armstrong (of The Black Box Society) and I could work together on pretty much anything, but when we're not working ourselves half to death at our real jobs, we tend to shoot videos together. Jon and I generally take on co-writing, co-directing roles, but this was the first time we really tested that dynamic... and it worked really well. We also discovered that our leading man, Dave Alans, was absolutely fantastic, and we WILL work with him again.

This particular clip is a 30 second bumper, concepted for iChannel internet radio. The production level on this was obviously fairly low, as the aim was more to pitch the idea than anything else. iChannel wanted to show that people could enjoy their unique music anywhere, anytime, and in a more intimate way than other internet radio, so we decided to play on the idea that iChannel brings the artist to you... maybe almost too close.