The final 2 chapters for Forbes' story, "The Demented Department: House for Sale" are now available for your reading pleasure!  You now have the option of picking up where you left off or starting from the beginning and giving it the full marathon treatment.

We'll be taking a break from putting stories online until the next one is ready to be added to the website.  Until that day, we'll be working more on the "Comic Wit" video than anything at this point.  We still need certain equipment for recording our other projects we've been writing.

Will keep you posted on those areas.  Until then, enjoy the conclusion to the story.  As always, make your selection from the link buttons below.

Hello everyone!  Just informing you that there is a new addition to our Videos page called "Pilgrim".  This is a documentary-style feature-length film that I made in 2011, only 10 months after that fatal earthquake that hit Christchurch on February 22nd.  It follows South City Christian Centre (now known as South City C3) as they hold their church services (which were mostly made up of music performances) in the great outdoors over the space of 3 Sundays.

This film mostly covers the final 2 weeks of the 3, but you can catch a glimpse of the first week in the intro.  The quality of the intro isn't that great as I only had my mobile phone on me at the time.  But the rest of the film was done using the camcorder, so that's fine.

There are quite a few music performances, as I said before, and websites for each should be in our Links page so you can check out their recordings they've released.  A few of which actually appear in the film (but only snippets).

I hope you enjoy this film.  It is actually my first movie-length release.  I had it on Blip.tv for a while, but I'm sure you know what happened with me and that website (if not, you're welcome to ask).  This film is now on YouTube, marking its return to the Internet after a bit of an absence.

Please note that the website mentioned in the end credits is no longer valid.  There is a YouTube annotation placed over it with a link to this site, however.

To view the film, please go to our Videos page and click on "Pilgrim".  Alternatively, you can click on the button at the bottom of this blog entry.

Enjoy!

Hello everyone!  Just an update on how things are going with the post-production editing of "Comic Wit".  So far so good, actually!

I've just finished the first draft.  In fact, it's rendering into a saved movie file as I type this!  But before any form of the film (except the trailer) makes it online, this video file will be passed on to Forbes at the next best opportunity so he can have a look at what I've done with it.  If he approves of it, this so-called draft will then become the final version and then a release date will need to be decided upon.  However, if he feels as though it needs a little something else added to it, it will remain a draft and an updated version will be worked on.  Seeing as most of it is done now anyway, this process shouldn't take very long.

In the meantime though, here's a few things about "Comic Wit" that you should probably keep in mind when you get to see it...

1. There have been some title cards and credits added.  Obviously, this technology was unavailable to us in high school, so it seems appropriate to give it this sort of treatment.  There are also the occasional subtitles here and there, but not for every bit of dialogue.  That would take too long, and besides, we can't tell what's being said in every part of the film.  Remember, the original film is amateur.

2. Like I said before, this film is amateur.  Don't expect a Hollywood-grade production when you watch this film.  The quality of sound and the occasional imagery is not crystal clear at times...and that's without the level of acting we had back then...

3. Acting.  We weren't professionals in 1998.

4. Soundtrack.  We have added some music to the intro and credits sequence to give it a little more character.  This is the only place you'll hear music, except for one particular scene near the end.

5. There is an outtake from this film.  It has been mentioned a few times in past recordings we've done (e.g. the "Comic Wit" album's commentary tracks).  This will be an outtake video to be released at a later date as it doesn't really fit into the final production very well.  However, there is one part of the video that was considered to be an outtake, but we've included it...

6. There is a post-credits scene...

7. Commentaries - I plan on making a version of the film using our commentary that we recorded back in 2008, marking the project's 10th anniversary.  This commentary is included on the album already, but putting it on top of the video will finally give you an image of what we're talking about.  In saying that, this version will be based on the raw, unedited video as that is what we were watching at the time.  A second commentary version recorded this year is a possibility.  Will keep you posted about that one...

So, there you have it.  Here's hoping we'll have a release date for the film very soon.

The next chapter of the Forbes King penned story, "The Demented Department: House for Sale" is now available to read!  Click on the buttons below to make your choice of starting point.

Next week we will be revealing the final 2 chapters simultaneously, just like we did at the end of "Investigations: The Lightning Man" a month ago.  After this has taken place, we may or may not have another story lined up at this point.  We will let you know closer to the time what the month of June will have in store for you all!

Want a sneak peek at the upcoming "Comic Wit" video?
Need some proof that it actually exists (as if the album wasn't enough)?
Of course you do...BOOM! TRAILER!

P.S. Jared apologises for the hair...

Ladies & gentlemen, boys & girls and anything in between, we have a special announcement for you all!  But first, a little bit of context...

In 1998, Forbes and I started writing some ideas and the occasional script for what would be our first ever comedy video project, "Comic Wit".  We were still in high school (only just) when we finally got around to doing a spot of filming.  It was the final week of school for us both, which is why we got away with doing what we did.

The end result wasn't exactly what we had originally planned.  Instead, it was an attempt at performing a newsroom sketch (which would later become a trademark of ours in our "Ducksel FM" series), followed by random acts of randomness with our good friend, Warren Constable-Brown, leading to a short and incomplete tour of the school.  Also, due to some of the shenanigans while filming, we had the camera confiscated at the end, bringing production to a stand-still.  The end result was a roughly 45-minute momento of our last week of high school.

Fast forward to around 2006-07.  By this time we had quite a few episodes of "Ducksel FM" under our belts.  I had discovered that MySpace (remember that?) had the ability to create comedy profiles for celebrities and lesser-known wannabes (such as ourselves) to promote their work.  It was around this time that we tried putting ourselves out there with our comedy for the first time, as we had no real way of doing so until then.  It was around this time that we made it known that we had a comedy video to share.  However, we lacked the funding and the technology to get it online, let alone a computer.

In 2008, the time of the 10th anniversary of the existence of "Comic Wit" was approaching, and we wanted to celebrate this, because it also meant a decade of our comedy in general.  Still lacking the technology at this time, the best option we could go with was making a soundtrack album of the video by recording the audio using the methods I know best.  Obviously, only certain parts could be used due to some physical humour being present in the video.  We then recorded an intro for the album along with a commentary.  This album finally came out in December 2008.  The commentary and intro pieces were recorded around September marking an approximate anniversary date of when the writing phase began.

For a few years now, I've been trying so hard to get this video online for you all to see.  I once bought a DVD recorder from online.  The machine worked well, but for some reason the remote control didn't work at all (and I needed it in order to make it do what it's supposed to).  So I found myself waiting longer, missing the 15th anniversary mark for the video (in 2013).

But there has since been a breakthrough...

In the past week, I was able to grab a sweet deal for a new DVD recorder - with a working remote - but held back from announcing this, just in case that fell through as well.  It's taken a while for me to get used to the functions - and to get past the frustration that I have to use a video converter just to rip the videos onto the computer - but I can now safely say that we now have the capabilities to transfer from VHS to PC/Mac!

Which is where the special announcement comes in.  As of a few hours ago, I recorded "Comic Wit" onto a blank DVD and have successfully ripped it onto the hard drive.  Therefore, it is with great pleasure for me to announce that your wait to see "Comic Wit" is nearly over!

There will be a few touch-up editing processes to go through first, along with a few extra bits here and there, but you can expect this video to be online sometime soon!  Exciting times, yes?  You're actually gonna get some new and/or unreleased material from us!

In addition to "Comic Wit", having a DVD recorder also means that we can finally go through "The Gosney Tapes" - a collection of VHS recordings by Forbes containing his Playstation 2 music compositions that haven't been released yet.  This will commence a series of new releases for his Gosney project.

I love being the bearer of good news!

Will keep you posted on the progess we're making in both "Comic Wit" and Go

Part 2 of Forbes' latest story is now available for your reading pleasure!  Head on over to the Stories section, or simply click on the link button below.

From all of us here at Stuffed Duck Productions, to all the mothers out there (even the solo fathers), we hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day today.  If you have to go into your workplace today, shame on your employers!  Have fun spending time with your family!

Hello everyone.

This is just to inform you all that our current YouTube channel (Ducksel) will no longer be updated.  The reason for this is because we've created a new channel to replace it.  There are some reasons for this, but will not be much of a problem for you as the viewers.

Over time (which may be a while, mind you), we will be re-uploading our video catalog to the new channel.  As we do this, each video that is added to the new channel will be removed from our original one to avoid double-ups (and we know how much you must be sick of seeing those on YouTube - one of each video on the entire website would be so much better!).  So far we've re-uploaded 2 videos and removed them from the old channel, and we've also re-embedded them here on our website.  If you didn't notice this, that is why I say that it won't be a problem for all of you.

However, there will be some changes to certain videos though.  Particularly the ones that have website links at the end of them.  Since editing these videos, the website links have become dated (unless they were made after our website was launched).  In order to fix this, these videos will be going through a re-editing process to patch things up.

One major video series that will be getting an overhaul will be "Trying Stuff".  As you will have noticed, most of Season 1 was made using Windows Movie Maker (the amateur filmmaker's video editing tool).  After Aliesha and I got married, we used some of the leftover money to buy a new computer, which used iMovie - a much more advanced tool for our trade.  When this happened, the older episodes started to look a little 'cheap'.  These episodes will be having a bit of a makeover (but mainly the intros and outros).  Also, a few episodes we've done are very long, so I'll be cutting bits out - but don't worry!  These leftover pieces will become outtakes that will be used as bonus extras on the website.  Because, let's face it...a movie-length episode (I'm looking at you, "UK vs. NZ"!) of people tasting various foods and drinks is rather time-consuming (pun intended).

There is also an opportunity for us while we do this.  A few videos of ours have (and we admit) contained some copyright material (e.g. Macho Man tribute, the "Trying Stuff" episode with TV commercials in it, "Titanic in 5 Seconds"...).  Unless the content is needed, I will be trying to filter out as much of the copyright material as possible.  Shouldn't be too difficult, but we just don't want YouTube to have a hissy fit at us like they have done to so many other producers out there.

On top of all this comes the issue of making money from these videos.  Lately I've had a problem with the old account.  It's a long, difficult-to-explain situation, but I felt that creating a new channel from scratch is the easier way to solve it.  Also, it's a good way of making sure everything in the settings, etc, is correct.  This is kinda the main issue behind the channel shuffling.  I saved this bit to the end of the message because it's more boring than the rest of it...

We will share a link to the new channel as it gets bigger during the move.  All new videos we release will go straight there though, but at the moment it may be a while before that takes place (a whole different story right there).  Once the old account - Ducksel - has no videos, the announcement of the new channel will happen, and the old will be deleted within a week of that.  So, if you've subscribed to our channel directly, you will need to re-subscribe to us at the new location.  The only thing we ask of you, besides visit our website regularly.

Ciao!

-Jared-

Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to present to you the next of Forbes' stories, freely available to you exclusively on this website.  We give you "The Demented Department: House for Sale".

In this story, we follow a small group of unpopular, outcast teenage boys trying to make their lives in high school a little more tolerable.  "House for Sale" sees the group plotting a prank against their mathematics teacher involving computer hacking and a bit of old-fashioned theft and vandalism.

What will happen to them?  Do they get caught?  Find out over the next 4 weeks as we present all 5 parts of the story to you each week (the final 2 parts will be made available simultaneously).

Head on over to the Stories section in the site's toolbar, or click on the button below to be taken there.

Happy reading!

Part 1 - Available now!
Part 2 - May 12th.
Part 3 - May 19th.
Parts 4 & 5 - May 26th.

First week of June will have no stories/chapters.