What's That Smell?!

Happy days are here again! For I, your humble blogmeister, have returned from the wasteland with an all-new, all different video entertainment! You'll find it directly below. But before you simply scroll down and ignore the embedded video before tracking down your favorite Smurf-related porn site, I think a little explanation is in order.


Once upon a time, some dude named Brian opened up a barbecue restaurant in the city of Wichita. And he called it Fire It Up Pit BBQ. My dear cousin Ky, being good friends with the aforementioned Brian, became a part-time employee of this lovely establishment soon after. Early in January of this year, Ky and I discussed the possibility of shooting a few cheap (we have no money) commercials for Fire It Up for late-night local television.

Now that hasn't come to pass (not yet), but that little wrinkle didn't stop us from brainstorming a series of bizarre and completely inappropriate ideas for these hypothetical  advertisements. Over one especially long night spent drinking various spirits, our ideas became increasingly nonsensical and divorced from the restaurant we were supposedly attempting to shill. Half of our so-called "commercial ideas" had literally nothing to do with Fire It Up, aside from what has since become something of a trademark for us: shouting "Fire It Up!" at the end of each pitch.

A few weeks ago, inspired by some of our advertisement concepts, I came up with an idea. It was a simple enough premise: an average slob comes home from work late one evening and tries to relax, while some faceless presence unknowingly watches his every move. A classic stalker story, no? I explained this to Ky, as well as my concept of using extensive split-screen effects to show the viewpoints of both of our tale's characters simultaneously. Simple?

Maybe, but I've never tried anything like this before. It's all new to me. I didn't even know if my outdated editing software was capable of pulling this shit off. But dammit, I was certainly willing to try. So inspired by one of my cinematic idols, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, I grabbed both of my available cameras and we set about our task. The filming was easy. It only took about an hour to get all of the footage I needed. Then came the laborious editing process, and I would find out if this little experiment would actually work.

The next morning, I decided to put together a very rough assembly of the available footage. 13 hours later, I had finished the final cut. Red-eyed and exhausted, I passed out on the keyboard. When I woke up and actually watched the video, I was honestly proud of it. It's not perfect. Hell, nothing's perfect. But out of all of the little projects I have constructed, this one is the closest I have ever come to truly realizing my "vision". As a touching homage to Mr. Hitchcock, I cut the video to a few choice music cues from his masterpiece Psycho by legendary composer Bernard Herrmann.

Below, you will find the short film, entitled Fire It Up!. I do hope you enjoy it, Dear Imaginary Reader. We worked... well, we worked on this damned thing. The least you can do is watch it. And after you've watched it, take a few extra seconds and post a comment below, telling me how I've just wasted six minutes of your life, and you wish me bodily harm.

FIRE IT UP! - In DUO-VISION!



P.S. -  Find Fire It Up Pit BBQ on Facebook here.

Edit - Only after posting the video did I realize that I spelled the late Bernard Herrmann's name incorrectly in the end credits. I am an idiot.