October 2009 Archives

Pulp Awareness is a segment where we highlight upcoming or recent happenings, events, or sightings of anything revolving around the pulp culture. This week we see the return of a classic show as well as a collection of all things alternative.

Venture Bros is slated to hit your televisions this coming Sunday. If you've already seen the season four promo video that's been hitting the airwaves, you know that this season is set to raise both the level of absurdity and vintage awesomeness that we all have come to love. Check it out this Sunday on Adult Swim at 11PM.

APE Expo returns this year. If you are a native of San Francisco, this year seems to be quite a treat. One neat thing that might not be known about attending APE is that if you attended this years Comic-Con International, you can get into APE for free, just present your badge at the check in.  Check it out and for all the Arcade Fans out there, send us your stories of this years APE Expo and we'll publish your story on the site, making you a Junior Scientist of Pulp Arts. Send all stories to js@arcadeteamgo.com. Keep a look out and enjoy the week.

At Arcade, we are hear to promote the awareness of Pulp Culture and put the science back into the things we love. It is with great honor that we publish a junior scientist (not really a junior scientist but in our world he is) article about a video project he did in school. Please welcome Alex Douglas.




First off, I would like to say this video was because of "Team Nitrotech Productions" from my group in my video production class in high school. We had to make a commercial that had to get people interested to buy this product. We researched other product commercials to see how we ourselves thought of these commercials and how we reacted to these commercials. We looked at the serious commercials like the ones to buy and sell gold. These made us uninterested because it didn't show any excitement and had terrible acting. We looked at other commercials that were more "action-packed" such as the commercial for "Bow-flex". This got us more interested and had a lot higher percentage to actually want to buy the product if we actually were going to purchase the item or actually have money. Then we remembered the fake commercials that were introduced to the beginning of the movie "Tropic Thunder." These commercials made us the most attentive because it was focused on comedy while still advertising these fake movies especially the "Booty Sweat" commercial. So we decided to make a combination of both the action-packed and comedy-oriented commercials to get the audience their full attention.

The next part was to make a script. This was actually pretty fun to do. We wanted the product be a "Man-cake" because it wasn't just a cake because it was manlier. Our teacher made it so we had to do the commercial on an existing product so we chose "Nitro-tech." We kept a cup cake in there to keep its originality. I was chosen as the nerd cause i was the only tall white skinny kid in our group. We made it so I changed into a tall African-American for more of a comedic approach. We originally had two girls run up to him to show that "Nitro-Tech" attracted women and made you all around better. This didn't work because the two girls could not keep a straight face doing it. Due to the short amount of time we had we decided not to repeat that scene.

We also had to get props. We made sure I was completely nerd-like. We did the basic nerd look with a hint of "Star War" nerd look thanks to the white socks, sandals, rolled up pants, tucked in fully buttoned up shirt, "Star Wars" belt buckle, and big glasses. We got the glasses from Cody who was in our group who wore them anyway. We wanted duct tape on the glasses but could not find any.  The shirt was from the director/voice of this commercial, Michael Calderon. The rest were from me except the belt buckle which I received from my brother and decided to keep. We found the cone just randomly a school and decided to use it.

The last part was the editing. All we did was transfer from the video camera to the computer. We edited for about two hours because we only had to put in music and special effects. The music was already on the computer and we decided since it sounded exciting and more "action-y." We were messing around with pitch of the voices because we were bored. This is why the voice went from really deep to sounding like a chipmunk. We used a "Pop-in Pop-out effect" for me turning into the big African-American. We also did the scene with someone throwing the Nitro-tech at me at least ten times cause the girl who did, who was actually one of the girls that tried to be in one the earlier failed scenes, could not get the throw right. Luckily she hit above the waste most of the time. Me actually eating the cupcake with the Nitro-tech on it was a scene we only had two chances to do it because we only had two cupcakes. It took only one cake but I still ate all of them both. Even the bite with Nitro-tech, I ate it. If you look closely I actually coughed up some of it and it blew out. They were tasty after that.
 
This was a very fun project that I was happily part of. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Have you ever wondered what is real and what isn't in the world of Horror? We disect the fact from the fiction and delve into the ideologies of what really makes horror horrific... REALISM. To be honest though, most of everyone doesn't believe in anything, including air.

We here at Arcade are always thinking of ways to promote Pulp Culture and inform the uninformed. The past few months, we have intercepted a frequency being produced from a rip in the psyche plain appearing to be beamed in from a place called "the sub-verse". For a while, we have been passing the transmissions on to you, our loyal supporters. Aside from these transmissions, we've seemed to of neglected our home base site, but all of that is about to change. While our operations will remain covert still, just know that change is brewing here at HQ and will be presented to you in a timely manner (i.e. very soon). Keep your eyes keen and sharp and await the arrival of something new.

We are Arcade Team, and we are GO!