Although this would be even better WITH a vocal track added, it is fantastic the way it is now, just as a visual extravaganza. If you want to add a vocal track, get in touch with Larry G Jones, a Las Vegas impressionist known as the man of 1002 voices. You can see him perform on his website at www.lasvegasacts.com. His contact info is available there, and I can assure you he could do a wonderful and amazing vocal track for this, TJC. If you are hesitant to contact someone you don't know, let me know and I'll contact him for you. This could be a smash hit IMO and with Holiday season here, do it fast if you are going to do it!

Holy cow, that must have taken a ton of time! The end result payed off though, I got a kick out of it, especially on day 10. Just awesome work, TJC. Extremely well done, especially for a first attempt.

Thanks so much Dee and Red Ant! Your encouragement means a lot... and Dee, the addition of a vocal track sounds neat, but a bit daunting logistically and possibly expensive! To begin with, I wasn't sure whether the "glorified slide show modality I fell into (the novice rearing it's ugly tone deaf head) would enhance the parody or end up an amateurish boondoggle! To put this in perspective, here are a few clues to my true 'cluelessness': I took days to find and photoshop (yeah, basic stuff with Elements 3.0) the hundreds of pictures (many disgarded or seen for a fraction of a second)... using PS mainly for isolating the subject, colorizing or desaturating, or on occasion, compositing (ie, scooter with espresso maker seat). Several more days to place and animate pictures and titles. Timing issues took yet more days (all done after work, or weekends). This was all preceeded of course, by the audio track work, which for most computer literate people, I'm sure would have been a breeze... It took ME, on the other hand, several days to find a freeware program to convert the MIDI I found on the web into an MP3 and then experimenting with slowing it down from the original's 125BPM to 97BPM so the 'slides' weren't just a blur. I spent another day hunting down a free program (Audacity) which can manipulate multiple tracks in the hopes of adding a spoken vocal track (given my severe singing limitations)... Another day messing around with microphones and my computer's sound card (mismatched impedances, cheapness of headset mic, robotic speaking voice?) with poor results. Then decided on an all subtitled presentation with all those timing issues revisited, and to tell the truth, still not quite there. Then uploading to Google Video or YouTube was another learning experience with initial horrid results on YouTube due to their 100MB size limit which necessitates huge compression ratios.. Google has no size limitations on submissions, but, again, they control the degree of compression with the resultant poor results you see (I ended up, after experimentation, using MPEG2 compression with a bit rate of 5MB/sec and a resolution of 640x480, which was the best the program would output (ProShowGold). An electronic oddysee, at least for me! On the upside, I feel I've garnered a few new 'skill' (tongue in cheek) sets and a new appreciation for anyone who embarks on and completes detailed presentations of any sort. Given your kind encouragements, I think I'll try another, MUCH SHORTER piece. AND...I'd really love to see anyone else out there (you creative geniuses, you) give your primo parodies some sort of visual accompaniment! Sorry for rambling on...

I must say that this is a first for me: a lyrically dense parody WITH NO VOCALS. It works, though, TJC. Excellently The content recalls Allan Sherman's "The 12 Gifts of Christmas," and obviously I'm a fan of "12 Days" parodies that start over with a fresh list every verse. Major kudos on the visuals; this is one of those pieces that I can see getting forwarded along from email list to email list to email list.

Wow! Now I know where you've been. This is truly amazing, TJC! Bravo.

extraordinary stuff TJC! I downloaded it yesterday but didn't have time to comment. There are just so many witty gags and visuals that my only complaint is that they fly past too quickly for me to truly appreciate them - and I loved the little marital tiff at the end along the same lines as all the little subtle marriage gags from "Mr and Mrs Smith" - just constructing it must have been a labour of love - because you couldn't have managed to work thru all the problems you had getting it to play on the net if it wasn't - bravo! - and congrats on the dozen new skill sets!

Thanks Spaff... I was thinking of your 'gold standard' when I wrote it. Love the Sherman version, too, but quite repetetive... it relied on his amazing performance skills and huge choir back up, both of which are currently eluding me.... John: Thanks... yeah... I've been busy at work and busy with this. You've certainly been cranking out those premium parodies at an alarming rate of late (late=last 3 years!). Stuart: Thanks mucho... and you're right... it ended up a labor of love... though I was feeling fully effaced and dilated for the last few days of it!

Truly wacky and original, TJC. Thanks for brightening my holiday!

I would have to disagree with everyone's comments. This was boring and the MIDI sample music was horrible. The frames are so busy that the viewer is left to decide which is more important - reading unfunny text in a poorly chosen typeface or looking at flying, rotating, pixelated pictures that require total concentration to view before they speedily retreat off screen - by the time they have made their choice more menacing text and creepy pictures appear. As I was viewing this I felt like a victim of ancient Chinese ear torture in which a person is paralyzed with a poison while narrow tubes are inserted in each ear and tiny flesh-eating insects ascend the tubes and enter the ears eventually eating their way through the skull and exiting through the hollowed out eye cavities........

The man posting abbreviated F. U. C. K. is completely right. Thanks for the amazing insight! This movie almost brought me to tears and I was contemplating suicide.

Rick C.-- thanks, I appreciate it. Franklin U.C. Krump--you don't pull any punches do you (lol)! Fair & Balanced... a la Fox News! ... Part of me is actually pissed at your aggrieved tirade... the other 55% recognizes some underlying truth in what you say... the pixellation and rapidity of slide changes/intra-slide motion effects degrades the whole experience. In my defence, the original MIDI at 125 BPM, while musically better, was way too frickin' fast for the presentation. I experimented down to 75 BPM and it sounded like a funeral dirge, finally settling on 97BPM... As to the quality of the MIDI (and it's MP3 conversion), I can only say that I thought it was quite creative. I found it on the internet (don't know who did it) and it was by far the best of the bunch. All the net available MP3's had vocals, which on attempt at using voice-extractor software, were truly derranged sounding with weird vocal remnants and howls! Don't forget, this was my first try at any sort of visual presentation, humorous or otherwise. As to the underlying humor content, well that is truly subjective and I'm sorry to have wasted your time; I'll admit it did rely heavily upon bizzare juxtaposition, punning and hyperbole...but I don't think it was quite as bad as you imply... (although, some of my poorer unpublished material actually could physically impale your head on a stake!). I would welcome any constructive suggestions, rewrites you might come up with. Regarding your medically incorrect, but none-the-less amusing description of your excruciating "Chineese ear torture", with "flesh eating insects" entering your ear tubes, etc.---well, dude, all you had to do was change the eu-stachion!

After watching the movie again, and getting about 1/3 of the way in this time, I realized that it is really funny. There's some very basic rules when it comes to slide shows or flash videos. First rule is you need some lyrics. Even if you record your own voice over an instrumental, you need it. The lyrics are what people bank on, and yours have potential. Second is, if you are going to force people to read, keep the text still. Its bad enough they are trying to focus on a spinning image, but trying to read a moving description at the same time is virtually impossible. Third rule is making the video quick enough so people don't get up and vomit. Its not natural for people to watch a movie for that long. You state that the faster BPM causes the video to move too fast, but in reality, it causes your animations to move fast. Drop the animations and you can squeeze all of that into a much smaller time frame. Later on this week, I'll pop some Dramamine and I'll try to sit through the entire thing. -FBL

FBL: I appreciate the constructive criticism... esp. the basics of video production. Probably my major faux pas was choosing such a long, repetitive OS. One more point, though, I assure you FBL, if I sang...it would suck way more!

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