The Prat Pack Return

''Don't panic, I've brought beers!" was the first thing I heard as I entered the front door of Martin's house. Mark, Chris and JP were standing in the lounge around a Microphone, as Mike handed out bottles of lager. Martin was hunched over the computer trying to set some levels for the audio we would try to capture, in-between the lulls of anarchy.

Scripts and Creating juice

The new scripts had been emailed out before hand, but only Mike had read them through; also he'd prepared and brought his own props! Now the band had lived with the results of our first few efforts, they had all brought their 'A' Game with them for the new episodes. There was definitely a competitive edge in their eyes, they all wanted to be the best actor.

After many a run through, we got it nailed. The scripts came alive and I could see in my head their respective puppets delivering these lines; it was going to be alright. These definitely had the potential to be better than the first three we had made. The acting was improving, or the writing was proving easier to act! With a few gaffs, coughs and crack ups re-recorded it was all in the can. (unlike the a fore mentioned beers). The only person missing was saxophonist John, he had been unable to make it on the night, but we weren't worried about him. He had been a stand out performer last time, so we knew he could deliver his performance at a later date. We had other plans for him anyway….

Over acting & over drinking. Oscar performances all round.

It had been a while since we had uploaded any new content to our Youtube Channel. It would take a while to film and edit these new three episodes and get them online. We thought it would be great to film some smaller videos that added to the puppet universe, perhaps fill out the characters with their own small sections. Making content to self circulate around the web is really difficult. For a potential scene that takes place in John's Shed, I had to build a new set I wanted to get cracking on it.

If you can tap into something that is already trending, it becomes an easier climb to get your name out there. The moustache growing for Men's Health awareness - Movember - seemed like a nice thing to do. I decided to record a video that explained the rules as stipulated by movember.com and put it out for people to reference to make sure they were doing it properly.

Spiffing 'stash - shame I can't grown one for real!

I cut out a black card moustache, stuck it to my puppet and just read the rules in front of the tongue-and-groove in my lounge. With a vignette filter laid over in the edit, it looked rather old school! I up loaded it to the puppet channel and went to bed. In the morning it had got more over night hits than any of the other videos in such a short space of time! The great thing about it is that I can use it year on year, re-trending it as it comes around. In the same way, Christmas videos come back and become popular every year.