Behind the mini-episode

So for this particular mini-episode, my sis, Tina, was in Los Angeles for Bat's Day in Disneyland so I wanted to take advantage of her presence here. (She comes from San Francisco, by the way). She did "You're vs. Your" which was a popular skit so I wanted to have her do the same idea with "There vs. Their." Now, I could have done "There vs. Their vs. They're" but that proved to be too complicated with this skit.

I actually wrote this skit in January and although I could have had anyone play this, I write skits for certain people in mind; this one was written with Tina in mind.

Now, it just so happened that Tina was staying over at Reiko's place so I thought to kill two birds with one stone and film them both. I was supposed to write something separate for Reiko but due to my busy schedule, I didn't have time... So I figured that we were going to improv something together. Between Tina and Reiko, they decided to split the lines and that actually worked out pretty well.

Reiko was self-conscious at first in front of the camera, which surprised me because she's always naturally funny. But some people are like that... they are put in front of the camera and they have a tendancy to freeze, no matter how naturally funny they are in front of friends.

The way we fixed this was pretty simple. We did several takes of the same lines. First, I wanted a schoolmarm delivering the lines. Then I wanted a take with attitude (basically, a ghettofabulous take). Then a "wild" take where they can do whatever they wanted. Tina, is already used to my type of directing and I look for different takes so I can edit the best takes all together for the final product.

For the wild take, I saw what Reiko was doing and she had this "effortless snobbish I'm better than everyone attitude" to her delivery. It reminded me of the Heathers from well... Heathers. When I mentioned "Heathers," everything gelled into place.

After that, Reiko suddenly grabbed the box of raisin bran and talked about "colon health." Tina and I died on the floor laughing. The take in the mini-episode was the second take because we just could not stop laughing immediately after her improv take.

Ultimately, if you have fun on camera, it shows and it's enjoyable to watch.