No-Lyfe Productions
No-Lyfe Productions is a collection of four people (Alex Whitlock, Adam Taylor, Brian Schutz, and Jason Paris) dedicated to poking fun at poorly made animated features while entertaining audiences at the same time. What NLP does is take an existing animated feature and do a parody of it, using the original footage with our own voice-overs. This is an arduous, if rewarding, task.
A Shocking Scene from Panzer Dragoon
First, the NLP group watches an animated feature, taking notes on what
might be done with it creatively. This requires looking at existing material
in a new way. In Panzer Dragoon: When Meets LSD, we decided to poke fun
at the very poorly integrated computer graphics. Instead of being a hero
on a quest, we made him an actor trying to get as far away from the studio
as possible. The villain, of course, was the Director of the awful film.
In the case of Lodoss: The Accursed Festival, we took the dungeons and
dragons setting and decided to make it a bunch of goofy young men at a
renaissance festival, utilizing the backgrounds, melodramatic poses, and
exaggerated characterization.
Once the idea is derived, as a team we select which scenes we plan to use and write a script using the ideas generated while watching the animation initially. This requires a lot of patience and persistence. Not to mention teamwork. Certain jokes would be popular with a couple members, but others might be dead-set against it. We worked by consensus, so imaginative alternatives often had to be developed. Getting four people to agree on anything can be difficult, but that only made us more determined to have quality material.
A Riveting Scene from Record of Lodoss Wars
Once the script is written, the technical work begins. We must capture
the original footage and sequence it using Adobe Premiere or similar application.
Using a microphone and Premier, we recorded the lines and synchronized
them with the animated lip flaps. Additionally, we had to gather sounds
from the Internet (and a few home made ones). Once that work is done,
the file is exported back onto video tape and it can be shown to all of
our friends. Our with with Panzer was so impressive, several people at
ADVision, the group that originally translated the original feature, were
very fond of it and given some of the original copies of the animation.
Creating a fan dub parody is hard work. It also requires strong people and technical skills. However, it is also incredibly rewarding. So much so that we are now finishing up our second feature (Lodoss: Accursed Festival) and planning a third (The Adjusters, based on ADVision's Blue Seed series).
Welcome to our wonderfully twisted little world.
