Batman: Community Service

Batman: Community Service

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Length: 7:03

Blooper reel!

Comments from Phil:
Batman: Community Service was one of the Batman videos I wrote that I actually got around to filming. I think there were two or three other scripts I had started before this one, and they were all much larger in scale. I guess it was easier to do this one because the scenes were all short. It didn't turn out as planned, though. What you see here are three scenes done as musical sequences, or little music videos. The original script was actually supposed to just be dramatic/comedic shorts, like a regular movie. A number of things contributed to my decision to turn it into what it is now. First, the movie wasn't completely finished in the writing department. The littering scene wasn't actually even written at all and I had a fourth scene I wanted to do where Batman settles a dispute between two kids about how to share their popsicle. That was never written and never cast. Even though I wasn't done writing, I felt like I needed to get some new content out for the site since it was the summer and there was a lack of content for some reason. So I rushed into it a bit too quickly. Less planning = lower quality. There were a number of shots I wanted to redo later on, but due to scheduling and laziness, I never got around to it. I wasn't particularly happy with my own performance (being serious is hard!), some of the shots could've been tighter, and I wanted to shoot a few more filler shots to beef up the scenes. But I think the main thing that caused me problems was the amount of wind we had to deal with on those days. In the j-walking scene, I'd say 99% of the dialogue isn't audible, and it was pretty bad in the littering scene as well. So what do I do? I have incomplete scenes and unusable dialogue...time to get creative! This is why editing is so important, and why I enjoy that part so much.

The idea to make them into music sequences came about when I was thinking about how I can deal with the inaudible dialogue. I was trying to put together the littering scene, and I started thinking about using subtitles. But that started to look a little tacky and it felt like it slowed it down. And then I thought about the old silent films, where there'd be dialogue screens. And then it hit me...do it like that! I had an image I could use as the dialogue screen, and I got a hold of this nifty "Aged Film" filter for Adobe After Effects that added the scratches and dirt to the video. Excellent! So that worked out pretty well. I planned to do the other two scenes the same way, but I thought variety would be better. "Littering" turned out quite well, I think, and that energy in the song was perfect to shove in your face after the light "Seaside Rendezvous" by Queen. I even surprised myself with the widescreen thing. The plan with that was to just have it for the shot of my eyes (similar to what they do in Samurai Jack and the new Ninja Turtles cartoon), but I accidentally left the black bars on the entire video, and it just worked out so perfectly. All the shots seemed to cater to it. Then there's the j-walking scene, which is my favourite. I like the feel of that song and sometimes the lyrics seemed so right for Batman beating on some black guy for something so small. All the craziness of the other two scenes just came together in that one, I thought.

That's pretty much the story of how I salvaged a supposedly doomed video. I was going to just scrap the entire project, because for such a small production it was being dragged on for too long and if I ever went back to filming it, the focus might change and I wouldn't have the same passion for it. In the end I just forced myself to go back to what I had and worked with that. I'm more than happy with the way it turned out, though. It could've been a lot worse.

The intro shots and littering portion of this video were the first times I went out in public as Batman. They were both shot on the same day (Average Citizen was done later that day as well after we finished filming "Littering"), and the other two scenes were done at later dates.