FOUND FOOTAGE CAN GET LOST (Patreon)

Most of you by now will have seen that there's a new instalment in the Mr Biffo's Found Footage universe - Mr Biffo's Lost Footage. That now takes us up to 11 complete episodes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4J9BeFb1Yg&t=132s 

I quite like the fact that it sort of arrived mostly unannounced, in the way that modern popstars  release albums without any advance hype. That wasn't intentional. It happened that way because I only had the idea on Friday morning! 

Actually... that's not entirely true. Let's rewind a bit to the end of last year. No, wait - let's go back a couple of years to when I'd finished Mr Biffo's Found Footage.

I'd really, really loved making The Trojan Arse Protocol - the mini movie that concluded the series. I'd had an idea for how to make a sequel to that, even writing up a story outline. I wanted to make a short film that was a Found Footage version of Blade Runner. Kind of. Within a tiny budget.

But I put a pin in it. People had just had a whole series of Found Footage, and the viewing figures had kind of decreased over the course of it, as I got more and more weird and obscure, and it became less about random funnies, and more weird sci-fi.

Also, Trojan Arse was a complete departure from what had come before. Dunno. Just a feeling, but I didn't get the sense there would be enough people who were willing to back it. I toyed with doing a podcast called Mr Biffo's Sound Footage - essentially an audio-only version of Found Footage - but FF was so visual, I couldn't think of a way into it for me, creatively-speaking, that got me excited.

And so I did the next most logical thing: launched a crowd-funding campaign for Digitiser The Show. 

Even then, over the course of editing the series, you can see Found Footage leaking through. The same thing has happened with the Digi Minis. Gradually they've become more and more Found Footage-ed up, to the point where the Digi Deluxe eps have somehow become as much about the cutaways as they are the main point of the eps. 

The Christmas ep from last year went full-on Found Footage for a big chunk of its running time. Check it out if you haven't already.

THE LOST SOULS

Some of you might recall that last year I was touting something called Mr Biffo's Lost Footage. It was something different to the Lost Footage ep that's up now. It was much more ambitious - something I couldn't have done without proper funding (or crowd-funding anyway). 

Heck, even in October last year, Sanja and I were scouting locations out in the desert of California. Literally right up until the second we were in a car accident and nearly died.

It would've been a proper sequel - a mix of Trojan Arse and Found Footage. But then recovering from the accident and other issues delayed the fulfilment of Digitiser The Show rewards - it really is a mammoth task that I think people underestimate and don't really understand - and I've kind of lost my appetite for crowd-funding as a result. 

To say the least...

SKIP!

So skip ahead to last week. With this unprecedented global situation, I've been trying to find ways to get content out more regularly, to help keep our spirits up (I'm basically the new Vera Lynn). 

Sanja and I haven't been well over the past week, so our plan to record some vlog-style videos didn't come to fruition. However... I could still edit... and she told me a few days ago that she wanted to film some sketches! I've never really seen myself as a performer (believe it or not, I'm far, far more comfortable behind the camera), so I wasn't too sure... but, oddly, our head was in the same place.

I contacted Voiceover Pete with a view to him reprising Goujon John. Pete, as you might know, has had quite a couple of years; since he featured in Found Footage, he's become a genuine viral phenomenon, with over a million subscribers to his own channel on YouTube. 

Consequently, with his Fiverr days behind him, he doesn't come cheap anymore. But... that's what Patreon is for, right? And he knocked it out of the park this time. He knows the character now, knows what's called for. I mean, he still got one of the lines wrong - as he always did! - but I worked with it. 

And on Friday morning, while waiting for that to come through, I thought about putting together a compilation of the little clips I've been shunting out on social media recently, and some which had featured in eps of Digitiser Deluxe... I realised I had almost enough for an entire episode. 

With a new GJ in the offing too, I could add some brand new stuff... and the always brilliant Chris Jerden-Cooke offered to write and record a new song in less than a day (my lyrics took all of 15 minutes). It's now one of my favourites ever.

WHY?

I don't know why I told people I was going to put it out on Friday evening... but that's what I was aiming for. I guess I work better under pressure, with a deadline? Dunno. Voiceover Pete delivered his video late Friday afternoon, and it was around then I realised I shouldn't rush it. I mean, it was still a rush... but I pushed back its premiere to Saturday.

I had a new title sequence to create. I had stuff to animate. I had to link all the clips together. And I finally got to complete Hitler In My Fridge - which was an idea I had for the original FF (the animation dates back to then), but decided not to do. Y'know: because people are understandably a bit touchy about Nazis. I realised that if I had him shoot himself at the end then it might give the sequence the out that somehow made it okay. The fridge becomes the bunker. 

But anyhow... we now have a sort-of-new ep from the Xenoxxxverse, put together in record time... It's a bit rough-and-ready, not quite as (un)polished as I'd like it to be... but it has reminded me just how much I enjoyed playing in that world. 

It's very much in the style of the early eps of FF - if I ever do a bona-fide follow-up (and I might) I've another idea for how I might want to move it on a bit.  With most things it's a law of diminishing returns if you do the same thing too often. I like that this just stands alone as a special... and that may be the way forwards for the series/world; a series of occasional specials.

Found Footage had a very, very passionate audience, but it isn't as large as the (still relatively small) audience we get for regular Digi eps. It says it all that after Lost Footage went up yesterday we lost a load of subscribers for the first time in ages. Which is weird - I mean, it's just one episode - but it is (deliberately) intended as a love-it or hate-it thing, so fair enough. The views on it are lower than we get for normal episodes on the channel, but as ever I'd rather have a very passionate tiny audience than a large, ambivalent, one. 

I mean, even if I wanted to go that route... now is not the time for a new crowdfunding campaign, and the eps aren't cheap - this one alone cost several hundred quid, which I really shouldn't be spending right now. Licensing music and footage, and hiring Voiceover Pete, doesn't come cheap. CJJC kindly gave his contribution for free this time. 

People have suggested to me about pitching the show somewhere, but it's a really, really hard thing to pitch, because I'd as much be pitching the creative process - which is kind of instinctive. It's not really written in a traditional way - it comes together in the edit. And there aren't jokes as such - I kind of aim to create an atmosphere over trying to be funny. I want the audience to have an emotional reaction, and I don't care whether they find it amusing or not. 

Also, I worry about it getting watered down, or there being outside interference. FF is probably the most pure "me" thing I've ever done - even the Digitiser Minis and Digi Deluxe kind of makes concessions for accessibility. I love the freedom of it more than I'd love to have a proper budget to play with. But anyhow... suffice to say, I'm reinvested in the format. I can confidently state that, one way or another, Lost Footage isn't the end...

Paul