Once again, another extremely short piece, and once again it’s from the vault of projects hailing from days gone by. There’s a story behind this one that I haven’t told most people because a) it was going to be a surprise and 2) I forgot about it. Technically speaking, it occupies the “failed projects” file, because I never finished it. But it was exciting enough to me at the time that I cut a teaser trailer for the larger project, and that stands alone, however odd. Unfortunately, it being a teaser, it’s only 20 seconds long. (Yes, in two weeks I will post a “song” which is, in actuality, a single note that lasts for 0.17 seconds.)

A word of warning: there’s one F-bomb. (And one Hindenburg—and, yes, one Buchanan.)

The Puzzle Teaser (2.2mb Quicktime)

“I, too, can flash famous portraits and meaningless codes in front of the viewer’s eyes for frames at a time”

The idea behind this was two-fold. Firstly, at the time this was shot, I really wanted to make a parody of the Da Vinci Code. I had read the incredibly crappy book, and I was dismayed, though not surprised, to see it being turned into an incredibly crappy movie. (Though curiously enough, staring the incredibly not-crappy Tom Hanks.) After seeing the trailer for the movie, I figured that I, too, can flash famous portraits and meaningless codes in front of the viewer’s eyes for frames at a time, so I endeavored to do just that.

The second part came from Graham, who created possibly the most ridiculous puzzle I have ever attempted. In fact, it was a meta-puzzle, consisting of seven or eight fiendishly difficult puzzles, the answers of which became the clues for the answer of the puzzle itself. Shortly after it became obvious that I would never finish this so-called meta-puzzle, I determined that this would nevertheless be the perfect subject for a trailer-parody of the Da Vinci Code. Things went downhill from there.

I got Mike and Julius on board (Mike co-directed the Zombies Short) to help out with some of the basic shots I wanted to get first. We also got permission to shoot in the local Waffle House, which was pretty much the best thing ever. The idea was eventually going to encompass a plot where Graham had disappeared, but left this impossible puzzle of his, and I was trying to solve it to figure out what happened to him. That would have been really cool, and it was intended to be a big surprise joke thing, but it never panned out. Sorry, Graham. You get this instead.

On the other hand, the way it stands now makes it even more ridiculous because there’s nothing there. It’s just random stuff. I threw in a few classic TTT inside jokes—exploding zeppelins and President Buchanan—and I made the dialogue ridiculous, and yet it still has an air of intrigue. Why!? It’s nonsense!

It’s also over much too quickly. I should still finish it.

-Ted