iJust Finished Watching

[Darth Geek]

Yeah, the That Guy With The Glasses didn't stick around after they did their Rifftrax Presents. I liked their Lion King riff, but it definitely wasn't the best of the lot. It won because of the TGWTG fanbase. And I did really like their Rifftrax Presents of Batman Forever.
But since iRiffs is open to anybody, they really didn't do anything wrong in the contest. They were huge fans of MST3k and Rifftrax like the rest of us, and just happened to have a fanbase of their own.
I would really like to see another contest like that. Heck, make it so the winner does a VOD instead of MP3, since those tend to sell better nowadays anyway.

[poobah103]

I remember the iRiff contest getting really heated. Overall, while the thought of consulting with "the guys" was hugely tempting, I think it was a negative. Certainly the response to it seemed like a headache to deal with, so I don't blame the site for never mentioning it again.

Riffing is hard to do. Our big obstacle was (and continues to be) all the tech aspects of it. Keith and I had never done any recording or sound editing before this, and it shows. Our early rifts sound pretty bad, with inconsistent volume, clipped lines, this weird buzzing noise that took us forever to figure out how to fix, sync lines that would drift so that THEY were off even if the track itself was synced, etc etc.

Point is, riffing is a lot more work than it seems at first, and most of it isn't the sexy, joke-writing kind of work. I think a lot of people just never got over that first hurdle and quit. So there are a lot of early rifts or one-off rifts that are just hard to listen to, and I include our own early efforts on that list. (I hope we have improved since then.)

But tech issues, while they can make a riff very difficult to sit through, are still forgivable. Provided the issues improve, I'm willing to give groups another chance, and sometimes I'll just deal with the imperfect sound quality if the riff is funny enough.

The jokes are the important part. If they're not funny, that's it. I think you can definitely improve with practice, but up to a point; either you have a style that I'll laugh at or you don't. Humor is subjective, and I think you can be proud if you make even one person laugh at your riff, but no amount of grinding is going to make me like your jokes if I didn't like them already.

One thing that does bother me, and I don't mean to offend if this is anyone's style (I don't think it is), its the people who do a riff by just hitting record and going off the top of their head. The jokes are rarely great because they were just immediate, not much thought was put into them, which I think leads to jokes that are funny to YOU but not to total strangers. Plus, doing it that way doesn't account for any tech issues that might pop up, so usually those riffs also suffer from inconsistent audio, drift, and a whole mess of other problems.

[Darth Geek]

Yeah, the early Cinester Theater riffs doe have some of those technical issues. Background nooise and volume issues in particular on the Charlie Brown shorts. But they are still very funny, and well worth it. The sync lines on the first Back to the Future drift after a while, even though the riffs themselves are in the right spots. But otherwise, they seem to be fine.
I don't mind improved riffs on principle. They can be good. But in practice they tend to be not as good, and very very inconsistent. Both in joke quality and density. So while I wouldn't avoid one if I knew it was like that, I would keep my expectations down.

[mr.b.natural]

The final winner of the Rifftrax iRiff contest was chosen by MKB and not fans.  Votes got you in the top ten or something like that but I remember clearly that the final winner was chosen by the big guys themselves. 

I think they would like to do more contests and iRiff things but just keeping the site running is a full-time job and they only have one guy to do it.  This is on top of separating from Legend, moving at least once into a new building, marketing and implication of events like live shows and Kickstarter projects, and so on and so forth.  Even after seven years they are still going through the growing pains of a new company and they simply can't focus on a sector of their business that represents a miniscule amount of their profit margin. 

Now this is going to sound a little pathetic but if anyone has seen my latest joint iRiff with Atomic Treatment "Unknown Island" please write a review.  It's classic monster/land of the lost B-movie fodder and sure to be a hoot and a half*.  There's dinosaurs and even a giant sloth!

*Only one "Hoot" can be guaranteed.         

[k1]

Return of Chandu part12 by One Man Band and OneWallCinema - Good riffing. I've liked riffs by each of them in the past, and it's no different here. The only issue with their teamup I see here is that the two voices are very similar, it's difficult to tell them apart. Aside from that minor nitpick, a nice way to end this series.


How much Chan can a Chandu do?

Hey, the Lumerian whiffleball team.

LOVED the 'Let the ceremonial music commence' bit!

Bluhline?

Keep up with the tiny sticks. We're nearly through.

I LOOOOVED the "next week on Chandu" joke at the very end!

I was cracking up that you think SJP & I sound alike & it was hard to tell us apart.  I know that people (in real life anyway) say that about K2, me, & my dad.  In fact

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

some of our 2 part jokes where K2 & I go back & forth were redone with just one of us doing both parts rather than driving an hour just to record one or two lines.

I loved the "next week" bit too. 

Hopefully our Conan riff will be finished up soon.  (It is finished, but we're trying to come up with a "bonus track" like on our Burn-E riff.)  Then you'll have all 3 of us sounding alike and 3 differing versions of Arnold. 


Related note, we've loved having SJP write on some of our riffs & I've had tons of fun colaboriffing with him on Chandu & Conan.  I'd do it again without hesitating. 

[SJP]

Related note, we've loved having SJP write on some of our riffs & I've had tons of fun colaboriffing with him on Chandu & Conan.  I'd do it again without hesitating. 

Careful what you wish for.  I'm trying to remember if I DID redo my Dragonball: Evolution script or not to eliminate the second riffer.  But thanks for the kind words.

Again, to get things back on topic, I should be watch the Chandu Chapters soon and give mini-reviews of them all.

[MPF]

This is my placeholder comment until Team Swizzlebeef sits down and finally finishes the rest of the Recap Of The Drudgery Of the Previous Week's Recap Of The Return Of The Guy Who Was The Bad Guy In The Original Chandu But Returns As Chandu THE MAGICIAN! In This Fetid Pile Of Guano (or whatever it's called)

So I'll just state that OWC/OMB/One Wan Band? One Man Cinema? One Wand Manima? is the single best iRiff that I haven't seen yet.

[Rabbit Ears]

Have you seen "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Drawback Productions?  It's the best we've seen. (not a paid advertisement for Drawback Productions).  Happy 4th of July everyone!

[wherethefishlives]

While I did NOT pay cash moneys for the above endorsement, I will gladly reward such kindness with free riffs.
Why not waste some time with this sermon on toxic waste from the King of Crying, the Wizard of Weeping, the Sultan of Sniveling, the Boss of Blubbering, the Okay I'll Stop Now, Michael Landon!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/w5mrxASP-Gw?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/w5mrxASP-Gw?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US</a>

Thanks again, Rabbit Ears!

[latenet]

Minutes between riff.  Well thank goodness that's definitely not one of mine  .  There are definitely some people who've done iRiffs who just don't have the knack for it.

Timing is important. With our first riff we had a loose guideline of no more than 30 seconds between jokes (usually far less). In subsequent riffs we've cut it back to 15 seconds, unless there is an extended bit on the film's soundtrack that has to be heard.

[latenet]

1. While in the midst of recording Terminator: Salvation, Rifftrax released theirs.  I worked very hard to make sure there were no similar jokes, plus released a total of six mp3s, depending on what region and whether you were watching the Theatrical or Unrated cut of the film, and whether you watched the "Stupend-O!" version where I put in additional sketches in the riff itself.  I have since decided the monstrosity of editing that unfolded on this project would ensure I would never combine Rated/Unrated with Stupend-O ever again.  My sales of that one agree with me.

In another forum which shall remain nameless, many of the posters, who tend not to appreciate iRiffs much anyway, act like there has been a crime committed if anyone does a riff of something that has already come out from the official RiffTrax team. I don't think those people have ANY idea how much time can go into the writing of these things. I don't blame anyone at ALL for going ahead and releasing their version of something that has already been covered, most especially if they it was in the works when RiffTrax (who, after all, have a full staff writing for them and can churn the things out on a bi-weekly basis) came out with theirs.

Right now my team is desperately trying to wrap up a VOD iRiff of a film that we strongly suspect that RiffTrax will get to sooner or later... and we're terrified that it will be sooner, making ours look like a copycat. Must... work... faster!

[NosferatusCoffin]

Yeah, we were seriously thinking of doing "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Vampire's Neice" (the recent vampire one that RT came out with) a year or two ago.

We may still do them down the line. Especially since Coach was not too happy with how RT did Spiders. To be honest, RT themselves have gone down in quality quite a lot in the last few years. Endless Nolte and fapping jokes and what seems like no rythum to their riffing a lot of the time. ICWXP has them beat as well as some of the other riffers here, IMO.

[fireyf]

Yeah, we were seriously thinking of doing "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Vampire's Neice" (the recent vampire one that RT came out with) a year or two ago.

We may still do them down the line. Especially since Coach was not too happy with how RT did Spiders. To be honest, RT themselves have gone down in quality quite a lot in the last few years. Endless Nolte and fapping jokes and what seems like no rythum to their riffing a lot of the time. ICWXP has them beat as well as some of the other riffers here, IMO.

I can deal with the Nolte jokes, although they are getting a bit dated.  The fapping jokes are totally unnecessary though.  I've noticed too that they haven't been as good as they were.  I think part of it is they are pumping out new riffs too quickly and therefore not taking the time to really polish them.
I also miss them doing more recent movies. They've done very few lately. VOD's are alright and those old movies make things very reminiscent of MST3K but there are several newer movies I was hoping they'd do but haven't.  What about The Amazing Spiderman?  Comic book movies are always riffing gold whether good or bad.  I'm going to be doing a submission track of that one soon... if I ever finish with Terminator 2 that is.

[Sugar Ray Dodge]

Just finished watching One Wall Cinema: The Cheney Vase. I thought it was pretty clever, I especially liked the faux commercials, wasn't really expecting those. Good job, guys.

[k1]

Just finished watching One Wall Cinema: The Cheney Vase. I thought it was pretty clever, I especially liked the faux commercials, wasn't really expecting those. Good job, guys.

Glad you liked them! We had them kicking around for quite a while and figured we'd throw them in there! We are hoping to continue doing stuff like that with future VODs.