Brian Kameoka's blog

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 4: Moving On!

"I said nothing corpse."  Jeff Lewis has a great season.  So far he and Clara have my favorite lines.

I neglected to mention Frank Ashmore's debut as Ollie in last episode. You may recognize him from the original science fiction mini-series V. He's an incredibly nice guy and gives a great performance this season. Here's a pic of Frank looking much less pirate-y:

NOTES:

• First episode this season without the full Guild (Tink and Clara do not appear).
• A website dedicated to the Palm Pre posted a "Palm Sighting" for this episode since Bladezz uses a Pre to snap the photo of Fawkes kissing Codex.  Because of the Sprint sponsorship, when you see a phone on The Guild it will be a Sprint phone... in this instance, I remember that because we were on location, we didn't have one of the Sprint-provided prop phones on hand, so director Sean Becker's Pre was used.
• We see the Cheesy Beards office for the first time... big thanks to Archie McPhee who gave the show tons of great pirate stuff.  It allowed the production designers to really go overboard (heh) with the set dressing for this fictitious pirate-themed restaurant.  Spotted in this episode:
  
  Pirate Wallet, Pirate Organizer, Pirate Sticker Collection (and Pirate's Life), Pirate Pencil Toppers, Pirate Magnets, Pirate Grog Mugs, Mini Maurading Pirates, Pirate Clock, Calico Jack's Pirate Flag, What Would a Pirate Do? (on the door), Deluxe Pirate Eye Patch (water heater), Pirate Notepad with Stickers, Poor Yorick Skull. Did I miss anything?

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 3: Oversupportive'd

Episode 3 of Season 4 of The Guild.  Ahh, the "Team Cawkes" painting. My Season 4 blogging dropped off as Comic-Con approached and I had tons of other Guild work to do, but now I'm back and playing catchup.

This episode debuted at Comic-Con at The Guild panel, which meant once again Wil Wheaton helped make the panel epic (at SDCC 2009 it was first announced that Wil was joining season 3). The "Team Cawkes" painting which appears here was painted by Greg Aronowitz (check out his blog entry here for a great behind the scenes look at Comic-Con) and the image of it on The Guild's Flickr page has almost 100K views.  While filming the behind the scenes for Season 4, we captured Greg as he arrived on set with the painting, and got reactions from the cast as they first saw it.  Hopefully some of that will make it onto the DVD in the bonus features.

I love the teaming of Clara and Tink, especially because it's great to see Tinkerballa back in The Guild after last season. 

NOTES:

• Reminder - don't forget to check the great episode reviews from Pinkraygun.com, and of course the CompanionCast of S4E3 from Knights of the Guild, the official fan podcast of The Guild.
• Zaboo is wearing the J!NX shirt "Sorcery and Technology" and Fawkes is wearing "Caffeine Molecule" from Think Geek.
• Codex's bathroom, at the end of the episode, is actually the same bathroom where Two Hot Girls in the Shower is filmed.  And you can see a Pwned Pennant and Devil Duckies from Archie McPhee in the background.
  
  
  
  

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 2: Strange Allies

Episode 2 is up, with some really great quotable lines.  For all that Felicia is known for (actress, gamer, geek goddess, social media power user, web series pioneer), I think it's easy to forget that she's a great writer.  Producer Kim Evey has told me about being impressed with her writing way back when they first met at Acme Comedy Theater (hopefully she'll share those stories in the future).

<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/browse/originals/the-guild?videoId=d0fa6983-84d4-4ab0-9bbd-933e400be67b&fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Episode 2: Strange Allies">Video: Episode 2: Strange Allies</a>

For more episode commentary, see Higlet's the last geek bus home blog and her reviews on PinkRaygun.com, new fan site TheGuildBank.net, and of course, the new CompanionCasts from Knights of the Guild.

NOTES:

• The opening webcam was shot on a Flip camera.
• "Raiding!" Fawkes answering the phone with what he was doing was not originally in the script, but added on set.  A great little character detail.
• Who stores marshmellows in little jars?  Vork, apparently.
• I love the return of the Zaboo "thumbs up" (from Season 2).
• On Twitter, a few people noticed the rack of DVD's in Codex's room, though this is not set dressing (or product placement), but simply the DVD's that are in the bedroom of the room where that's shot.  If you listen to last week's KOTG CompanionCast, you'll hear Sean Becker talk about how in Season 4 he's trying to open up the world for each of the characters in their webcam shots.
  
  
  
  

How I mourned the loss of 'Dollhouse'

Friday I watched the return of the now-canceled 'Dollhouse.'  Sad to see it go, especially since I think it has gotten better and better.  In fact, Friday's two episodes were so great, that I got more and more pissed (even while enjoying the eps) that the show will not continue.  I also experienced regret that I didn't participate more in the fan movement to push to save the show, perhaps best exemplified by the Why I Watch campaign (such amazing work, check it out at WhyIWatch.com).  I guess it's a small consolation that Fox has committed to airing the full 13-episode order, and that Joss Whedon and the writing staff will get to wrap the series up.  And, I was glad to read that Felicia Day will be coming back (in the series finale, I assume).

There are a lot of great write ups about the two episodes, so I won't do that... instead I'll point you to the io9 piece by Charlie Jane Anders and Alan Sepinwall's quick recap.

Here's what I will say: I mourned the loss of 'Dollhouse' on Saturday by (1) retrieving my Dollhouse DVD from a friend (to rewatch Epitaph One, and the DVD extras that I haven't seen yet) and (2) breaking out the Firefly DVD to watch the unaired episode 'The Message,' which (if I recall correctly from the commentary) was shot shortly after the cast and crew learned that the show had been canceled.  The ending scene, in which the crew of Serenity deliver the body of their army buddy Tracey to his home, was especially sad since it also served as the wake/funeral for the show itself.

Mal with Tracey as he dies. Make sure my eyes is closed, will ya?

Captain Reynolds in the final scene

 

Firefly screencaps from Can't Take the Sky, A Firefly Site

Sacramentjoe Episode 2: California State Fair

Just posted Episode 2 of 'Sacramentjoe' - Joe and I trekked out to the California State Fair for this one. What resulted includes cinnamon roles, livestock, bellydancing, and a terrible Schwarzenegger impression. Oh, and Joe hits on a Pea (you gotta see it to understand).

Here's the episode:

Come check out 'Sacramentjoe' - 2 episodes so far plus a few "vlogs" (video blogs), all of which are available on our YouTube Channel.  Hope you'll subscribe on YouTube, and we'd also love it if you would connect with us on the various social networking sites:

http://myspace.com/sacramentjoe
http://facebook.com/sacramentjoe
http://twitter.com/sacramentjoe

There was a delay between episodes 1 and 2, but episode 3 is actually ready to go.  We'll leave it up to our viewers - once we get 500 hits for episode 2 we'll post 3.  Enjoy!  Thanks for watching...

The Guild - Season 3, Episode 1: Expansion Time

Season 3 of the popular web series 'The Guild' has launched on the web via MSN video (check out the embedded player below to watch the episode)

<p><br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=6f31eb66-4360-439a-ad62-f2bdf28f550e" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 1: Expansion Time">Video: Season 3 - Episode 1: Expansion Time</a></p>

I'll be blogging over the next week or so about this great web series and some of the work I have been doing for/with them.

More from Comic-Con: Pictures and Video

I was really looking forward to using my new camera on the trip to Comic-Con and I was able to grab a bunch of great pictures.  There was so much to see and photograph, and you can check out my Flickr sets for many of the photos I took.  One of my favorites is this one of Belle Chere as Red Sonja.  While at Comic-Con I posted my photos to several groups (this is one of the great powers of the social networking features of photo-hosting sites, being able to tag and share content from live events can instantly give you a worldwide audience).  Very quickly this photo became viewed by the hundreds, and then thousands, favorited, commented, etc.  What's even cooler to me is that someone commented asking if that was Belle Chere.  I had no idea who she was - but before long Belle Chere herself posted a comment saying "That's me!" and asking if she could use the photo on her site.  Turns out she's a well-known cosplayer and works by day as a theatrical costumer.  Pretty awesome - if you'd like to see more of her amazing costume work, check out her webpage here.

In addition, I spent some time hanging with Greg Benson of Mediocre Films and helped him to shoot some stuff.  We filmed a bunch of stuff walking around, but the first thing that made it up to his YouTube channel was this prank about throwing away handbills:

I loved this prank and had a hard time suppressing my laughter as we shot it.  Greg was actually drawing a crowd as he did this.  The next day, the video had something like 40,000 hits - I was amazed, but Greg said that with those numbers, for him, it hadn't gone viral, it wasn't really hitting and people weren't passing it around.  It was fascinating hanging out with him and learning some of the nitty gritty of YouTube videos.  The other video I filmed was the famed "stripper bus" that was transportation for the cast of The Guild on the day of the panel:

Fun stuff.  Greg is a YouTube star and I love his stuff.  He has two channels on YouTube - Mediocre Films and Mediocre Films2 and I recommend subscribing to his stuff (you can also be a fan on Facebook here).

Sacramentjoe - new web series about Sacramento

Check out 'Sacramentjoe' - a web series I created with Joe Styron.  We just finished and posted episode 1 to YouTube.  Hope you'll subscribe on YouTube, and we'd also love it if you would connect with us on the various social networking sites:

http://myspace.com/sacramentjoe
http://facebook.com/sacramentjoe
http://twitter.com/sacramentjoe

Here's the trailer, and below that is episode 1.

World Baseball Classic 2009

Photo "April 15, 2006: Baseball" by Matt McGee licensed under a Creative Commons license

What a game - Japan wins 5-3 in extras to repeat their 2006 inaugural World Baseball Classic win.  I watched it on tape delay, and had to do my best to avoid hearing the results (I was at a bar in the evening and had to sit facing away from the TV's as well as look away when I used the bathroom-they had a TV over the urinals, and of course I had to avoid reading Twitter).  Luckily, I did succeed at staying in the dark, and it really paid off.  This game gave us:

- A tight score - great pitching and defense by both sides really kept either side from running away with it.

- Names you know - Ichiro.  Iwamura.  Even Johjima (who's star has faded with the Mariners but was great for Japan in his first WBC appearance).

- What's in a name?  It was kind of funny to hear Jon Miller/Joe Morgan/Steve Phillips struggle with the names.  They gave a good effort, and were self-deprecating more than anything.  I did hear Miller call Uchikawa "Ugi-yuchi" at one point, and guys, if there's a player named Bum Ho Lee, please find a way to say it without making it sound like "bung hole."

- Names you will know - Shin Soo Choo, who I was a fan of as he rose in the Mariners organization.  Even though he's a Cleveland Indian now, I'll be rooting for him to become a big star.  He played like a star in this game.  And Uchikawa, who in left field had one of the greatest plays by a left fielder (ever).  Yu Darvish claims he doesn't want to come to the US to play, but if he ever does, he'll be a huge star.  Oh, and by the way, stop telling us how Aoki has "surpassed Ichiro in hitting" in Japan.  Ichiro is, and always will be, in a league of his own.

- A comeback! Extra innings! - Also, I kind of have a sick fascination with the statistical anomaly in baseball that a pitcher can get a blown save and then the win...

I was already a fan of the WBC after it's debut in 2006.  I'm even more a fan now.  I love that it's March 24th and we've had some amazing baseball already.  Though the US team had better get it together and get serious about the WBC.

Kevin Dorff

Kevin Dorff's playing Portland again.  SEE THIS SHOW AT THE BRODY THEATER ON SATURDAY!  I wish I were going to be there!  If you're near Portland, Oregon, you should check the show out this weekend - he'll be sitting in on the Saturday night's 8pm show, a new long form show called I'll Make You a Better Me.  I just spent time trying to figure out if there was any way I could make it up, but I can afford neither the plane ticket nor the nine-hour drive this weekend.

These days most people know Kevin Dorff as writer/performer for Late Night with Conan O'Brien, or for appearances on 30 Rock, The Office, Adult Swim's Delocated and soon, the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Improv folks who've been around know Kevin for his extraordinary talent as an improviser.  He possesses a legendary improv resume - the Second City revue Paradigm Lost (won Chicago's Jeff Award and was documented in the VHS-only Second To None), the seminal long-form show Jazz Freddy, and ImprovOlympic house team Blue Velveeta.  He's also among a handful of Second City mainstagers to go "super mainstage," as he put it - meaning stepping down after a long run as opposed to going direct to a TV gig.  One of the few gigs he did, between leaving mainstage and joining Conan, was to come out to the Brody Theater in Portland and teach workshops as well as sit in with us.  Hard to believe that was ten years ago!

Here's a pic of me and Dorff in 2001 in Vegas:

On a personal note, Kevin has been a friend since we met in 1992 when he and Noah came to workshop and sit in with "rv" - I group I was in while in college.  My nickname "Cuke" came from Kevin - from a scene in a show we did.  Since he's moved on to the bright lights of network TV, we don't see each other much but have stayed in touch via email (and now text message), and have met up a few times when possible.

Some "link love" - follow the Brody Theater via Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr.  For the more old fashioned (web 1.0?), you can also bookmark their website and/or join their email list.