Your own live show

[Corny Commentaries]

Hey folks-

I think I posted something along these lines in one of the other forums (maybe the iRiffs one...) but we're working on doing a live show relatively soon. It's more of a logistical question, but for anyone out there who has ever done a live show: how do you deal with the timecode? Whenever we're recording, we rely heavily on watching the timecode, as our script completely follows that. We're trying to figure out a way to show the movie on a larg scale for the audience, but have another smaller screen in front of us that has the timecode running but aren't too sure of how to do that.

Any ideas? You RiffTrax people are pretty brilliant, so I'm hoping for some amazing help. Thanks in advance :-D

[Darth Geek]

Sounds interesting. Where were you thinking of having it?

I'd love to go see a live riff by some of the iRiff groups. Particularly Quiptracks or Cinester Theater.

[Corny Commentaries]

I'd love to go see a live riff by some of the iRiff groups. Particularly Quiptracks or Cinester Theater.

Or Corny Commentaries...haha

I'm planning a live RiffTrax night at my college in Monterey, CA. We're actually showing the RiffTrax for Twilight, but having Corny Commentaries open up with a short (kinda like the live Plan 9 event). Don't know if you're anywhere near Monterey, but it's Friday March 12th and we'd love to have you there :-D

[Darth Geek]

I'd love to go see a live riff by some of the iRiff groups. Particularly Quiptracks or Cinester Theater.

Or Corny Commentaries...haha

I'm planning a live RiffTrax night at my college in Monterey, CA. We're actually showing the RiffTrax for Twilight, but having Corny Commentaries open up with a short (kinda like the live Plan 9 event). Don't know if you're anywhere near Monterey, but it's Friday March 12th and we'd love to have you there :-D

Other side of the country I'm afraid. So you got the rights to Twilight Rifftrax? Or is it just a free event?

[RoninFox]

Hmm, not sure how to figure out the timecode thing.  Maybe if you can just have a computer running with some kind of stopwatch window that you start in time with the movie.  Might be tricky, but if you're talking about a short it might be enough.  Otherwise I don't know the best program to set up a teleprompter or something.  I used to use Sub Station Alpha, which gave me a teleprompter with a prominant timecode but it never ran at the same speed as the movie and was generally a pain.

[Scott_Zee]

Live I-Riffing ..wonderful concept. This visual represents a bumper segment I might concoct too add to the 'magic time' of the evening's festivities. I can't speak for anyone really, but I'd trust my blithering blabberings during a riffing segment to amuse a packed house about as far as I could throw the portly fella on the right there. And he's a svelter, younger Deluise in that pic.

[stansimpson]

My guess is to have the DVD player right next to you, set the display to the timecode, and then work from that (and use the movie's aural cues as a crutch).  If you need visual cues, you could try splitting the video on the dvd player.  Just get a Y adapter to split the video out on the player and have one connection going to the projector and the other wire going out to your own personal tv (like a little 13" one).  That's pretty tricky tho.  You might lose info by splitting the image to two separate sources like that.  But it's possible for it to work perfectly, depending on the equipment you're using.  That'd hafta be a trial-and-error thing to find out what equipment works best, but it's worth at least a shot if you don't wanna go the DVD timecode/aural cue route.

One other idea is to have a dvd player/computer outputting to a projector/tv and then using your own personal dvd player/computer with a timecode on stage with you.  Then all you'd hafta do is sync the dvds together.  And if you've seen enough RiffTrax, it should be old hat for ya.

Somewhat unrelated, are there any iRiffers in South Carolina (I just moved to Columbia).  If you're in-state and doing a live show, I'd love to go.

[Corny Commentaries]

Other side of the country I'm afraid. So you got the rights to Twilight Rifftrax? Or is it just a free event?

Yeah, my school has a deal with a distribution company, so we show movies on-campus all the time. This is the first time we're doing a RiffTrax, though, so if it goes over well I'm hoping we can do more in the future (I'm kinda hoping they release one for New Moon, then we can try to get another RiffTrax night before the semester is over :-D

My guess is to have the DVD player right next to you, set the display to the timecode, and then work from that (and use the movie's aural cues as a crutch).  If you need visual cues, you could try splitting the video on the dvd player.  Just get a Y adapter to split the video out on the player and have one connection going to the projector and the other wire going out to your own personal tv (like a little 13" one).  That's pretty tricky tho.  You might lose info by splitting the image to two separate sources like that.  But it's possible for it to work perfectly, depending on the equipment you're using.  That'd hafta be a trial-and-error thing to find out what equipment works best, but it's worth at least a shot if you don't wanna go the DVD timecode/aural cue route.

One other idea is to have a dvd player/computer outputting to a projector/tv and then using your own personal dvd player/computer with a timecode on stage with you.  Then all you'd hafta do is sync the dvds together.  And if you've seen enough RiffTrax, it should be old hat for ya.

Hrm...not bad ideas...I'll toy around with this sometime soon and let you know how it works out. Thanks for the ideas!

[Corny Commentaries]

So we ended up doing our live performance of "How Quiet Helps at School", and it went pretty darn well (sorry for the delayed update, but I'm sure nobody here lost any sleep wondering how it went...). Good turnout - granted, it was all for the Twilight RiffTrax showing - good audience, overall seemed to be pretty well received. We set up a camera next to us to film the performance, and I'd love to be able to post it somewhere for y'all to see, but it's just barely over the 10 minute mark for Youtube and I'm not sure where to post it...Any ideas? I guess, before I do that, would anyone even want to see it? My feelings won't be hurt if I get a resounding "no"...

Anyway, just wanted to share with anyone who has considered doing their own live riffing performance that it's definitely possible and not as hard as we thought it would be. If anyone ever does one, feel free to hit me up and I can share a few tips with ya on what we did

[RoninFox]

I'd suggest checking out blip.tv. Same video service the Nostalgia Critic and Spoony and all those guys use. That's where I'm planning to put up my new short riffs when I can finish them.

[Hor-RIFF-ic Productions]

I'd suggest checking out blip.tv. Same video service the Nostalgia Critic and Spoony and all those guys use. That's where I'm planning to put up my new short riffs when I can finish them.

We'll have to look into that, not really familiar.  Someone actually approached us asking if we'd like to riff live at a outdoor festival they're thinking of throwing in here in DSM.  Nothing's been agreed to yet but it was surpising to be asked none the less.

[torgosPizza]

Did you ever email us about the public RiffTrax exhibition? I think we generally charge a fee but I'm not sure if it's really that big of a deal. Just thought I'd ask.

[Corny Commentaries]

Did you ever email us about the public RiffTrax exhibition? I think we generally charge a fee but I'm not sure if it's really that big of a deal. Just thought I'd ask.

Yeah, I was working pretty closely with Josh on it. He and I practically became BFFs through it...and by "became BFFs", I mean, "I probably became a total nuisance to him".