Tuesday, November 17, 2009

300 Abs of Steel

OUR IDEA

Word of the United States obesity problem has spread not only across the ocean but also back in time- to Sparta. The Spartans, who pride themselves on physical fitness, were appalled to see how fat Americans are. So they quit their day jobs of kicking ass and taking names and decided to make a workout DVD. With the help of fitness guru Richard Simmons, they’re going to whip America back into shape.

In their first DVD they will focus on their proven fitness triangle. The fitness triangle focuses on three important body parts; arms, legs, and abs. They will show us how to work out the legs by kicking people into holes; how to work out your abs by stabbing them several times; and how to work out your arms by throwing spears at your enemies. We will hear from some of the many satisfied customers who have seen results in just three weeks! We will see some of the before and after shots that will make any skeptic into a believer. We will also see some examples of fun and easy workouts that anyone who doesn’t have a heart condition or a bun in the oven can do.

The Spartan’s fitness triangle, on top of the constant support of Richard Simmons is guaranteed to make you sweat and make you shed those lbs. This video is just the first of a series of videos from Sparta. Each DVD will have its own focus. The pilot is the fitness triangle. Next will be healthy eating habits (such as dining in hell). After that will be family fun activities that kids can even take part of. Then there will be a Battling 101 DVD, which will give the basics in dueling, spear throwing, and shield work. Every single workout is paired with the musical styling of Whitney Houston (circa 1987) and the soothing voice of Mr. Simmons for optimal results.

If you do not start to see results in the first few weeks… you don’t get your money back, you’re probably just not trying hard enough.

300 abs of steel

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Creatve Process

At our first meeting, we discussed different ideas on what we could do. We looked at the remix of the “Slap Chop Remix” and “The Shining Trailer spoof” on YouTube just so we could see some examples on how other people mashed up content and to see if we could get any ideas from them. We threw around ideas of maybe turning the movie “Orphan” into a comedy instead of it being a horror flick. We kept throwing around ideas and then we came up with the idea of doing something with “300”
We watched the trailer of “300” and then after we came up with the idea of possibly making it into a workout video since they’re all ripped. We thought it’d be funny if somehow we incorporated Richard Simmons since he’s crazy and does ridiculous things. We finally decided on doing some sort of workout video to get the bodies that the Spartans had.
Our storyline was that the Spartans noticed how fat Americans are so they retire from fighting people and made a workout video to explain how they got so fit. We decided that we definitely wanted to incorporate Richard Simmons in there, him saying crazy things like “You can do it!” and “and 1 and 2 and you can do it!” and also some cheesy workout music. We planned on finding and downloading clips off of YouTube that we could edit to make it look like they were doing reps of certain things like spear throwing and kicking people.
At our second meeting, we had a bunch of YouTube clips that everyone in the group had found and thought would be good to get clips from. We ended up using music from “300” as the opening credit and we found some outtakes from a Richard Simmons interview that we could use or rip the audio from and place it over the Spartans talking. We were able to find enough workout videos on YouTube that we could use well with the clips of the Spartans fighting. We wanted to find music to go along in the background so we brainstormed to think of cheesy 80s music that was upbeat and fun. We decided on Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”.
While we were editing the clips together at our second meeting, we thought it would be funny if we had people giving real testimonies of how doing these exercises have actually worked and given them real results. We found two really great clips on YouTube of a bunch of different people telling their stories of how they worked out at this gym and the results are great. One of the gym members that was interviewed was still kind of heavy so we thought that was really ironic and funny. Also, some of the things that these people said we thought were really funny, especially when we cut and edited it into the video.
We ended up having to use some voiceovers for some parts of the video. We have some of us saying things in a deep voice that you would think was a movie guy voiceover voice. We have an introduction basically setting the scene for what’s going on. Also, we have voiceovers for when there is text clips throughout the video, like when we say “Order Now” or “It’s only $29.99”. For the rest of the video, we used the audio from “300” or the various Richard Simmons workout videos that we found.