#i used to make videos for fun they were like edits from footage I'd shot on my phone

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VoicePlay Visuals - what I got wrong (and other cool BTS stuff) (part 1/3)

So for those of you who still are unaware, I'm currently a member of VoicePlay's Patreon (and Geoff's too) (just for a few months), and I've been having an absolutely great time so far, especially in now having access to Behind-The-Scenes (BTS) content of each of VoicePlay's videos!

However, as I was whizzing through the BTS stuff, I was thinking about my VoicePlay Visuals posts, and about some things I said that weren't entirely true - whether I said something I believed to be correct that wasn't, or whether I simply made a wrong guess. I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with all of you (which is fine btw, people share this sorta stuff in the comments section of reaction videos all the time), but I didn't want to go back and edit a bunch of posts or reblog a bunch of them to add addendums, so I thought I'd do a sort of "addendum compilation" instead! (In three parts, just to keep these not too long). I'll also share some stuff where my guess was right, and additional interesting things I didn't originally know/notice. And you don't have to read a bunch of my previous VoicePlay Visuals posts before reading this (and I won't be mentioning every single post/video anyway), but if you wanna find the original posts I refer to, they're linked in each title.

Part 1 below the cut!

This Is Halloween: "I don't really have anything to say about J's full transformation, but it would be unfair of me to not include him as well, and it's definitely a very impressive costume. Almost like one of those rubbery fully-covering-the-head costume mask things, but like it's his actual face?" - I was pretty close! For the "full Wolfman" look, J was wearing a special prostethic face/mask thing, specially sculpted to fit his face, with just his mouth/chin area left uncovered! - Additionally, Eli's fake chin prostethic thing actually also goes up and over his cheeks, making them look puffier and making them look puffier and "blending" it all together more effectively. - And bonus fun fact: It was apparently Earl who carved all those pumpkins, except for like one that was done by Geoff 😁

Bang!: - Found out what leopard-print article of clothing Layne was wearing! His belt is leopard-print, apparently! (Okay, I can't actually take credit for this one, someone in the comments of the BTS pointed it out and I took their word for it as I forgot to look myself, lol) - The place they filmed the video really did have all those cool backdrops, and so many more, split between two large rooms! - J was the one who got to throw the giant rubber duck at Layne 😝

Butter: "Geoff is looking at his phone, Layne is taking selfies on his phone!" - Not quite! They were both filming! (At one point in the video anyway). The footage they took got included in the BTS video, it's great 👌 - Also the reason the height difference between Layne and Eli in the group shots doesn't look quite as stark as in something like the Wicked Medley is because here Eli was standing on a short wooden box or something like that, not even kidding 😂

Halo Theme: "Those shoes are definitely cool. Who was wearing them, I wonder?" - It was Scott! - Also when that blue pulsating light thing landed on Scott's shoulder in the video (the "red team! blue team!" bit), there was actually a blue light being shone on him from the side to get the proper lighting effect. - (Also did you know that Rek Dunn (whom the video is dedicated to) used to help film some of the BTS content? I realised when I was watching the BTS for the Panic Medley that he was the one holding the camera and talking to the guys for some of the clips)

Wicked Medley: "Love the giant clock backdrop, very cool" - Yeah, turns out the whole background is one giant flat backdrop, and it took like 4 hours to full set up! Man!

"I adore Emoni and Rachel's makeup looks in this one." - The makeup looks even better in natural light! - All VoicePlay videos are filmed after the audio of the covers has been fully recorded/completed, obviously, duh. Often the vocallists will be properly singing at least some of their parts during videoshoots, but the audio all gets dubbed over for the final product. Rachel was purely lip-syncing in this video, because she had lost her voice! Thankfully/obviously it happened after she had finished recording her vocals, but she still did a great job of making it look "realistic" in the actual video.

The Dragonborn Comes: "Apparently what Cesar is wearing is like legit chainmail or something and was fairly heavy. Go big or go home I guess?" - Yep, it weighed 20 pounds apparently (approximately 9 kilograms). In between takes, Cesar would often just lie down on the floor on his back to try and rest/not have to feel so much of the weight, rip - The metal-looking gloves were real as well - they came coated in some sort of anti-rust oil that had to be wiped off prior to filming - And yeah Layne's hair really was a vibrant blue - I'm guessing Rick did it with coloured hairspray or something.

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3

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Movie Review | True Game of Death (Chen, 1978)

True Game of Death is considered possibly the worst example of the Bruceploitation genre, so of course I decided to check it out. To give a bit more context, I'm currently going through These Fists Break Bricks by Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali, about the martial arts movie craze in America, which is proving to be a fascinating and highly entertaining read. (Having followed Hendrix's Kaiju Shakedown column when it was still going and enjoyed his featurettes for the Criterion Collection, this was no surprise.) The book includes a fairly in-depth look at Bruceploitation, a genre defined by its shamelessness. Having enjoyed a few examples of the genre in the past (Game of Death II, The Dragon Lives Again, Challenge of the Tiger, The Chinese Stuntman), I immediately perked up when I saw this movie described as "a real freakshow". If a movie where Bruce Lee fights Dracula, the Godfather, James Bond and others in the afterlife wasn't considered shameless enough, what would a real absence of artistic ambition look like? Every once in a while, I like a challenge.

From my understanding, the most notable scene in this movie is a reenactment of Lee's death, wherein the hero screams and writhes around in pain while in the throes of passion with his girlfriend while "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" blares on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, the copy I watched on Youtube (less than pristine and in the wrong aspect ratio, but not unwatchable in the grand scheme of things) was truncated and seemed to have excised the bulk of this sequence. We do get some "Bruce Lee" screaming and writhing to dramatic music, but the effect is like watching the TV edit of Scarface. You can still have some fun, but it's not the same. (I actually suspect this was a TV edit as well, as the movie would cut to black at regular intervals, as if it were stopping for commercial breaks.)

The book points out that the plots and dialogue of many of these movies would be vague and underdeveloped, and this is no exception. The hero here is actually not meant to be Bruce Lee, but another character, although the movie equates the two with liberal use of actual Lee footage, including a press conference, the funeral footage that seems to be a genre trope, and fight and training scenes from The Way of the Dragon. (A scene where "Lee" begins to make love to his girlfriend cuts to the scenes from the Chuck Norris fight in Way, with Lee repeatedly punching and kicking in the direction of the viewer. What this implies about their lovemaking I'd rather not speculate.) The movie implies that the real Lee was poisoned by some evil gang who intends to do the same to the Lee analogue here. This is roughly the plot of Game of Death, but if you tore out half the pages of the script and threw any concept of narrative coherence to the wind.

Of course, as a Game of Death ripoff, this restages some of the action scenes from that movie. These are arguably provide the highlights of this one, although that might erroneously imply that they're actually good. We get a lower rent, entirely boring remake of the motorcycle warehouse fight, although the movie does get a chuckle from a shot of children's toys which fell out of one of the boxes knocked over during the carnage. The climax restages the three-step pagoda scene from the original, one of the few sequences of actual Lee footage in that one (and easily the best part as a result). I'm a sucker for the video game boss battle concept of this sequence that I found even a bargain basement take on it mildly diverting. Most novel about this movie's take is that it actually gets less exciting as it goes along, starting with a stick-wielding Dan Inosanto knock-off, then moving to a pair of slow moving sumo wrestlers, and finally landing on a guy with a cape who does limp-looking boxing moves but briefly throws his cape over the hero. Folks, I laughed.

So yes, this is very, very bad, but if you think you're sufficiently desensitized to the moral and artistic bankruptcy of this genre, it might be of some interest. Not recommended unless your brain has been sufficiently fried to a crisp.