*audience laughter*
Captain Disillusion: Ahahahaha you guys!
CD: Pranks rule!
CD: You can physically or emotionally insult someone, then say it's a joke and everything is totally fine!
CD: And if you get your victims to sign a waver, you can even put it all in a movie,
CD: make millions of dollars
CD: and be hailed as "a very smart and funny man."
CD: It's harder to prank kids though,
CD: because their wavers have to be signed by guardians who are vigilant about their well-being. Pft.
CD: But children do tend to provoke a strong emotional response in most people, which guarantees views.
CD: Mmm...
CD: Well, there's no law against using kids to prank other adults!
CD: Or the audience.
CD: So for years, we've been dressing girls as unreal ghosts to traumatize people in hotels.
CD: And employing visual effects to stage fatal accidents as bizarre viral ads for...
CD: German dinner theater.
CD: That's what that video was actually promoting. I swear, you can check.
CD: Today, we have Vine stars like "That Happy Family",
CD: Or, as it is bookmarked in my browser: "Zack King Tricks Redone Poorly by White Hipster",
CD: carrying on the tradition.
CD: When he is not terrorizing his wife,
CD: he uses After Effects to depict situations in which his kids come to hilariously close brushes with grave injury.
CD: But ultimately, it's about the loving bond of a quirky, close-net family...somehow.
CD: Here's one of their latest creations.
Girl: Here we go!
[Music]
Kids: WOO! YEAH!
CD: What a remarkable piece of Visual Effects craftsmanship.
CD: You see, in reality, a stationary camera filmed the falling ladder first,
CD: and the subjects after.
CD: Then, adorable faces were used here, here and here,
CD: to distract us from sloppy rotowork, plaque misalignment, doubling shadows and incorrect layer stacking.
CD: For a six-second video, that almost fails at...
CD: one fail per second.
CD: But hey, they're precious and it's hilarious and it's about family.
CD: And we throw trashcans at them, and follow us, on everything. CHECK OUT OUR CHILDREN.
CD: The one incarnation of this genre that doesn't seem cynical, is the YouTube sensation, "Action Movie Kid".
CD: This DreamWorks animation artist, who can't quite decide on his true calling,
CD: uses spare time to turn home videos of his son, into epic VFX shots.
CD: But each video empowers the kid and seems to depict his imagination and curiosity about the world,
CD: through his language of his dad's nerdy love of classic adventure films.
CD: It beams with positivity and wonder.
CD: It's enough to make even me want...
CD: a little tyke of my own.
CD: Ah!
CD: I know!
CD: I hope I saved it.
CD: There it is.
[Music]
[Music] CD: Wait, hold on! Wait, wait!
[Music]
[Music] CD: Aah!
[Music]
[Music] CD: Aaaaaah!
[Music]
CD: Ooow!
CD: Uh...
[Music]
[Music] CD: Wai- Wait a- hey- hey come back here!
[Music]
[Music] CD: Drop, drop, let's go! You didn't see that!
[Music]
CD: Wait, I just noticed something.
CD: The first compilation of Action Movie Kid videos got a staggering 51 million views.
CD: But Action Movie Kid Volume 2, with more complicated effects, got 22 million views.
CD: Volume 3, full of Disney and Star Wars stuff, got a bit over 10 million.
CD: And Volume 4, which starts with a plea for subscribers, barely got pass 3 million.
CD: What's the next one gonna get, one million, like some loser?
CD: Junior.
CD: I hope you know that you're very important to me.
CD: But,
CD: you're just not as lucrative a marketing strategy as I thought you be.
CD: Maybe I should get into makeup tutorials.
CD: I know a couple things.