MORON LEAGUE, SEQUEL!: The 10th Anniversary

When I finished and uploaded my very first YouTube video in December of 2007, I honestly expected it to garner a lot of hate, given how incredibly shoddy it was, not to mention it was basically a parody of (and a tribute to) a rather popular show from my generation's childhood . . . I didn't think that it would not only end up garnering over 20,000 views (which was a big deal, way back when), but that it actually became popular, and that people actually wanted more. It seems only fair to give the people what they want, doesn't it? After a couple of months of putting it together, May 30, 2009 saw the release of the anticipated MORON LEAGUE, SEQUEL!

The sequel was undoubtedly less shoddy than its predecessor, but like its predecessor, it clearly has not aged well. At all. Then again, you have to keep in mind, this was during a time where the tools that I had to work with were even more limited. Although I was just finally beginning to get a grip on Movie Maker by this time (which I have, thankfully, moved on to Adobe Premiere Pro since then), there was still the matter of actually shooting this thing, and happily, this ended up being my very last videotaped production: like the first entry, shooting on videotape meant having to shoot the whole thing in-sequence/in-order, in a linear method, before the entire footage could be digitized for the Internet.

It's not so easy to munk yourself.

Unlike the first entry, however, I did not also perform this live as I was shooting, because I really couldn't. Luckily, by this time, I had downloaded and installed Audacity for sound recording and mixing, so rather than do the voices while shooting, I could record and mix the entire soundtrack for the production separately and sync it up with the video footage in post[-production] (which ended up being something I had to do with almost every production of mine up after this, up until I got Adobe Premiere). The biggest challenge was having to do a squeaky voice for the sequel's guest star, Brittany Miller of The Chipettes. The technique of doing squeaky chipmunk voices pioneered by Bagdasarian Productions, the company that owns the Alvin and The Chipmunks franchise, seems simple enough: record your dialogue at half-speed, then speed it up afterward, creating the familiar squeaky sound that The Chipmunks and Chipettes are known for. Turns out, it's actually not quite that simple, nor as easy as it seems . . . granted, they had decades to perfect this craft to make the characters' voices, inflections, mannerisms, and tones sound natural and believable . . . when I attempted it for this short, it resulted in an unintentionally stilted, disjointed, and robotic sound, much like The Chipmunks infamously had in their earliest years from the late 50s and even into the early 80s.

This was probably my first production where I really had to approach the project from more of an actual film making perspective. Unlike the previous entry, or even most of my Steve D'Monster videos up until this point, more work went into the shooting besides just simply framing shots - this was a(n ever-so-slightly) bigger production featuring a larger cast of characters of varying sizes, which meant more attention was paid to things such as composition: the use of foreground and background space, angles, and focus, among other things. While the composition, as well as the overall cinematography wasn't really that spectacular (the fact that several shots and sequences evidently lacked a tripod to keep the camera steady), it's something that I've put more effort and attention into ever since . . . I like to think that I've improved quite a bit since then; especially since I've gotten an HD camera.

Just some of the "incredible" sets that were put together

The main thing I wanted to avoid this time was having this entry be another straight-forward parody of the source material that inspired it, ACTION LEAGUE, NOW! - instead, this entry featured actual settings and scenery . . . albeit very, very cheaply done. So much so, in fact, that a majority of the Downtown Scarburg street that opens the entry was simply a Fisher-Price SESAME STREET play set, with only one other additional building constructed specifically for the street - out of cardboard, no less. Another major set in this entry was a cave that three Yoshi's were keeping Brittany in: all of this was just crumbled up brown paper set up for cave walls, and rocks scattered around the shooting area. Brilliant, huh? This is another reason why this hasn't aged well at all, but I really wanted to put the characters into an actual world they would fit into (in more ways than one) and not just repeat doing another ACTION LEAGUE, NOW! parody; this is a tradition I'm continuing even into the current production of MORON LEAGUE 4 (which, I promise you, will have much better-looking, detailed, intricate settings than the previous two entries).

Sorry, Yoshis. Our princess is in another cave.

As far as the overall story goes . . . I think this was even more random, non-sensical, and off-the-cuff than the original! Perhaps not entirely off-the-cuff. I don't quite remember after all of these years, but I'm fairly certain when I did the original entry, that I practically just made it up as I went along . . . this time, however, I at least had inspiration, if you can call it that. I had been watching Let's Plays of different Super Mario games on YouTube, which also lead to watching Let's Plays of Yoshi games, such as YOSHI'S ISLAND and YOSHI'S STORY . . . somehow or other, this apparently inspired the plot of having my BD&A Yoshi beanies (just Green, Red, and Yellow, because I never was able to find Blue) "save" who they believe to be a princess for Mario; but, as the Nerdlucks point out, Brittany is no princess (though Brittany says she totally should be).

And, of course, MORON LEAGUE, SEQUEL! carried on the tradition of being shot in the animation/puppetry hybrid style developed for ACTION LEAGUE, NOW!, Chuckimation, so it was really ramped up in this one; so much so, that crashing the Moron Airship became a running gag.

Where did these guys learn to drive, anyway?

Unfortunately, this entry did not get a proper ending scene. In 2009, YouTube still had a rather strict 10-minute time limit on almost all video uploads, and this entry - completed as is - almost clocked in at exactly ten minutes. An ending scene was planned, but ultimately never coordinated and shot, in which the Nerdlucks get into Brittany's concert for free for saving her, but as she's performing, they can't stop talking shop about how successful their mission was, disrupting the concert for others, and getting thrown out of the venue as a result. More than likely, I would have used an actual Chipettes song for the concert (probably "Diamond Dolls" since it's a personal favorite of mine), which would probably result in the entire video receiving a copyright claim from Bagdasarian Productions for the use of the song, thus removing it from YouTube - so, it's probably best that the ending was never included either way.

There you have it; the story behind MORON LEAGUE, SEQUEL!, on this day of its tenth anniversary. Of course, you can see it for yourself anytime on YouTube, but you might want to take a moment to watch it today: