SoundCloud

I finally moved on an ages-old suggestion by Threeboy to jump on SoundCloud and do some audio dumping. I've put up some of the back catalogue of musical and aural things I've come up with for various TrueNuff projects of the past - I don't think it'll just be final stuff though, I want to throw up some of the bits and pieces, the works-in-progress that make up the vast majority of the things I've actually recorded.

If it weren't for the deadlines of things like the video projects I don't know if I'd ever release anything as final. Perhaps I should rename my personal studio to "Development Hell."

J.Rai's sounds on Soundcloud

King Kong Delta

...and we're back!

Finished my first shoot today with the new team. What team, you ask? King Kong Delta.

Impatient Theatre Company is rolling out a new project codenamed ITC Digital featuring several production teams all creating new videos in parallel. Hopefully with this much motivated talent we should be churning out a healthy stream of content very soon (first video already released!)

My production team is called King Kong Delta. I will be wearing the producer hat with them, due to my involvement with the mighty TrueNuff TV! The planning of writing meetings and shoots is a routine I'm kind of used to, and I can also contribute to the technical junk since we did the guerrilla DIY production game for several years, and we're working sans budget. WIN!

The shoot was a lot of fun: short, but it felt good to wear those shoes again. Out team is awesome and in the future we'll be casting people outside the group so it'll be good to work with various people and learn from each other.

So a little over a year later, I feel like there's enough going on to update here again. Not that I couldn't have found things in between, but if there's any relevancy to be had here then at least I should be allowed to be specific. Upcoming topics include more classes with Impatient Theatre, ITC digital, the Canadian Comedy Awards, and some other shows I'll be getting involved in. Hope to keep it interesting.

Beer Pop/Music

As I mentioned previous a couple weeks ago while I was in Vancouver visiting I hung with the TrueNuff boys and did some video-ing. While I was there James also showed me the newest addition to the merch store: a Cute little Japanese "safety bottle opener" they labeled as the "Beer Popper." We wanted to shoot some kind of commercial clip for the new item (even though by the time it went live they'd already sold half their stock!) We did land on an idea of something in the vein of Vince "Offer" Shlomi of ShamWow and Slap Chop fame:



What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:



Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"



So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:



Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.

Flashback to the west coast, future in the east

While I was visiting Vancouver a couple of weeks ago I got a chance to do a little drop-in work with the TrueNuff TV guys. Running a sketch comedy group as a business is a really tough go - be it with friends or business partners - because even when you're not concerned with making money, where that money goes or what you should do it is still an easy thing to disagree on. It's also really easy to get distracted by that and forget to make with the funny.

Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!

Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.

Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.

When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!