http://www.futureunicorn.com/index.php en fu@futureunicorn.com Copyright 2010 2010-04-13T00:29:25+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/im_in_the_o.c._comedy_competition/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/im_in_the_o.c._comedy_competition/#When:23:29:25Z I have been excepted into "The Orange County Comedy Competition" that is starting tomorrow and will conclude with the best comedian taking home the "winner takes all cash prize" on May 25th! The competition takes place at the world famous Irvine Improve so I am stoked and honored to be performing on that stage as a lot of great comedians have performed there. I am pretty excited and a little nervous... Well, 77% excited and 23% nervous to be exact... And those percentages are exact! I had a really reputable brain surgeon hook me up to electrodes and had him shock me with electricity to find out what the percentage of nervous to excited was. It's a really intense scientific approach. These guys know what they are doing. I don't think they would shock people with electricity just for the fun of it.   2010-04-12T23:29:25+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/robot_unicorn_attack/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/robot_unicorn_attack/#When:22:28:16Z A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this free online flash game on the Adult Swim GAMES website. If it wasn't so frickin' awesome I would be really pissed that they hacked my Future Unicorn branding. Ha ha ha. Of course I have no proof that they ripped off my brand but once again; The similarities are uncanny! Anyways, it is somewhat flattering if the good people at Adult Swim games did in fact rip me off. I like the humor on Adult Swim shows and I am sure I have been inspired by some of the shows they have produced so I guess it's kind of cool that they bite on something I created too. If you haven't seen or played this game yet. Check it out HERE. I will warn you though. This game is addictive so only start playing it when you have a bunch of free time! 2010-04-08T22:28:16+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/priorities/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/priorities/#When:18:10:19Z I just thought this demotivational poster was too funny not to post. You can find more demotivating posters, mugs and tees at www.despair.com I dare you to read all of the posters on the site and not laugh out loud at least 5 of them. 2009-11-05T18:10:19+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/getting_back_to_my_roots/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/getting_back_to_my_roots/#When:15:24:33Z So Jeremy and I have taken a little break lately. Both of us took some vacation time, and Jeremy has been taking some time to have his son and start that adventure. So while we have been away from shooting and editing new sketches I thought I would get back to some of my roots by writing and performing some stand-up. It has been a lot of fun. I am enjoying the process of writing and performing live a lot more now then when I was in my early twenties. My passion is still to write and perform for the screen but the unique challenge and immediate feedback of stage is really appealing too. Included in this blog entry below is a video of me performing at a gig I did a few weeks ago in Pasadena. It was shot on a digital camera so the quality is pretty low but I thought it was worth sharing.       2009-10-24T15:24:33+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/tropic_thunder_review/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/tropic_thunder_review/#When:20:28:12Z   I am finally catching up with some of last year’s summer blockbusters that recently made it to DVD.  One film that I was super excited about seeing was Tropic Thunder.  I have always been a fan of spoof movies and war movies, so what more could I ask for?  It turns out, I should have asked for more. Don’t get me wrong; this film had quite a few memorable moments.  It made intelligent jabs at the film industry and was very well shot.  It was also clever to bring the story full circle by paralleling the beginning and ending scenes.  But there were quite a few flaws that kept me hoping things would get better as the movie progressed.  It was really hard to identify with any of the characters since they were more of a one-dimensional caricature than a real person.  It was also hard to get on board with the plot line.  I remember thinking, whom am I supposed to be cheering for?  The best payoff in the film comes from a minor character played by Tom Cruise.  He depicts a loud, plump, and hairy film producer who is only concerned by profit and somehow always wins in the end. This caught me way off guard. I never thought Tom Cruise would go there with a character, and perhaps that is why it works.  It is totally unexpected, and totally hilarious.  Watch this movie just for him.  He is genius.  (For the record, I never thought I’d say that about Tom Cruise.) The film ended, and I thought “eh, pretty good.”  Watchable but not a classic. 2009-09-17T20:28:12+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/the_power_of_love/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/the_power_of_love/#When:23:24:47Z So last night I had the distinct pleasure of heading to the O.C. Super Fair and watching Huey Lewis and The News live. Now the show was kind of funny in that Huey and the band are pretty old and their sound is quintessentially 80’s. But there is an undeniable charm to the simple, cliché ridden, poppy new wave tinged doo wop.  And as with many pieces of 80’s culture, everything old is new again. The bottom line is that Huey Lewis and The News is just plain fun music and the concert was a total blast! If you are someone that hasn’t discovered or in some cases rediscovered Huey Lewis I encourage you to check this band out in iTunes. Their Greatest Hits is a good place to start. Misc 2009-07-31T23:24:47+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/uncanny_similarities/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/uncanny_similarities/#When:04:52:35Z From time to time I will come across something in mainstream media that bares an uncanny resembelance to something I have created and posted somewhere. I look at this as a good sign, but it can also be somewhat disconcerting too. Anyways, I found this movie website this week that looks almost exactly like the promotional graphic I created for the Garreth McHalliburton (Nutrasweat video) on the home page animation of Future Unicorn. Now I’m not saying that the designers of The Informant! branding found my website and ripped off the pose of Garreth and the graphic I designed. I just think it is funny that these two graphics created by two different people look so much alike. Just bizarre. Anyways, by the trailer The Informant! looks like it is going to be a really funny movie. I like it when a director takes chances on stories that straddle the line between nerdy and hip. It is a very tricky thing to balance but again, by the trailer it looks like Steven Soderbergh got the tone right. And putting Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale  and Tony Hale in the same movie I think is genius. Looking forward to this one. If you haven’t seen the trailer for this movie you can check it out here. Misc 2009-07-07T04:52:35+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/movie_review_the_hangover/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/movie_review_the_hangover/#When:16:30:47Z Okay so this movie could have easily gone wrong. There were many opportunities for it to suck. The premise of the movie is a group of friends drive to Vegas to celebrate a bachelor party, wake up the morning after with no memory of what transpired the night before. The temptation for the movie to derail and to turn into a predictable vegas, low brow movie with no heart and uninspired characters, is high. But from the writing to the directing to the acting this story is very well executed! Don’t get me wrong, there is a fair share of  “dumb humor” in the movie but you can tell there are intelligent creative people making smart choices guiding the movie. It is a very tight story where every scene is valuable to the story and is funny in it’s own right. Very few gags for the sake of just adding a funny moment… If any of those moments at all. It does what a good comedy should. It gives you lots of great moments to viscerally respond to but it is underpinned by a rewarding build of dramatic events that lead to the characters in the story having a believable arch. One warning, there are some fairly raunchy moments in the movie so if you aren’t able to overlook that type of humor I would pass on this one. But if you are able to over look a few raunchy jokes and you are a fan of good comedy with well developped story and characters this is a rewarding experience. Reviews 2009-06-30T16:30:47+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/behind_the_scenes_-_the_unicorn_express/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/behind_the_scenes_-_the_unicorn_express/#When:19:08:17Z Okay so like we said before we want the future Unicorn BLOG too not only give you a look into what we are doing but also how we do it. So in this BLOG entry we are going to share our process for how we wrote, shot and edited “The Unicorn Express” video.Step 1.) Vision, script and storyboard. Originally I just thought it would be funny to have a really fast skit where I sing and dance like Dick Van Dick in an old Disney film. So from that idea I started thinking about what type of costume I might need as well as what the skit would ultimately be about. I just knew that I wanted to make it as absurd as possible. So we landed on this mayor/mc style character that appealed to us most. From there I wrote the song and Jeremy and I brainstormed the rough story outline while I scribbled out a storyboard.Step 2.) After I spent some time writing the lyrics for our disney style song we figured out what we were going to need as far as props and costumes and briefly discussed the dance number I would perform. At this point we set up the blue screen and started shooting. The interesting thing about our process is that it is planned thoroughly before hand in a storyboard so things are timed right and we know generally how to shoot for our edit; but when the camera rolls we improvise within the guidelines we set for ourselves. Here is a clip of me singing and dancing in front of the blue screen. Singing over blue screen: Step 3.) After reviewing the footage we do a rough edit of the blue screen footage in order to find out which of the shots we need to knock the blue screens out of. From here I create the backgrounds that Jeremy will us to composite with the video footage. Here is an example of one of the backgrounds I created in process. This step is fairly tedious but rewarding… Step 4.) Now it’s time to ad the finishing touches like sound effects, light sabers, sparkles and magical beans. This too can take considerable time but really makes a big difference.So the video is now finished but there are always a few things we wish we could have used but for some reason or another we can’t. For this video we had a few takes of the ending of the dance scene we really liked that were just unusable. Here is a clip we liked but couldn’t use. Blue Screen Disaster:   Behind The Scenes 2009-06-19T19:08:17+00:00 http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/shortsweareworkingon/ http://www.futureunicorn.com/site/shortsweareworkingon/#When:03:49:29Z So currently we are in the process of adding more videos to exist in the world of Garreth McHalliburton. The sketch we are editing now is of a new character Amber plays called Crystal. At the same time we are editing those vids we are starting to edit a few other skits we have already shot. Can't say alot about those now so I'll talk about them more later. As far as new projects go; all we can say for the time being is that we have a bunch of ideas and have several things written or in process of being written. We are now deciding what we like best and are making decisions about what we want to shoot next. Talk to ya soon!   News/Updates 2009-06-09T03:49:29+00:00