Tag: bowling

Bowling 2: The Phantom Pins

Created: 15 Jan 2017

Similar to the story of the first Bowling video, my friends and I had been separated for a long time. Evan and Zach, for instance, had been away in the U.S. for college. However, at the time of recording, everyone was back together again for Christmas break, so this set of games was our way of hanging out.

This time however, things were a bit crazier. The sitcom intro was requested at the time, on camera, but I left it out to maintain the comedic contrast between the horror angle. We really did have problems getting the pins to set in our lane. The slav squat protests went on for 5 or so minutes before we got the assistant to fix it for us, but it just kept happening. Unfortunately, there was a lot I couldn’t catch on camera because my phone had so little battery.

While I was recording, I genuinely thought that I wasn’t going to make anything out of it, because I expected it would just be a rehash of Ultimate Bowling. It was only when someone pointed out that I could take it in a horror direction that I felt the inspiration to follow through.

Interesting note: The intended release date was February 1st, but a copyright issue demanded I pull it down and do a re-edit. I think the video might be stronger for it in the end. It’s hard to say.

Ultimate Bowling

Created: 11 June 2016

The story is right there in the first two seconds, albeit cut short a bit.

At the time of filming everyone was just getting into Summer vacation. We’d all been talking on our Discord daily, but hadn’t seen each other in person for a while, so I knew that this explosion of memes had to be caught on film. Every second I wasn’t taking my turn to bowl I was recording, and I was so happy with what I was getting.

For the record, Overwatch had been out for a week or two and that’s why no one shuts up about it the whole time. Plus I was the only one who didn’t have the game, so I’m definitely not salty about that! Also for the record, I effortlessly obliterated everyone and won that game super hard, despite rarely bowling. SO there.

I’m still not sure if it was a good decision to include the jazz music. I wanted to make sure there was something to give coherence to this destructured mess, but I still worry that it might conflict with the terrible bowling alley audio, because the bowling alley was playing music, and at points my friends were playing their own music too (vaporwave of course because of course).

About the intro. As soon as I saw Luis (that’s the vape nation guy) pull that ridiculous gutter ball, I knew it was the highlight of the evening. I really have to thank him for perfectly pacing out his movements to deliver the punchline. It’s beautiful. But I deliberated about how to incorporate it into the video. The “To Be Continued” meme was still around at the time, but cooling off for sure. So I decided to double down, and use an actual dead meme, “MLG Parodies”. So then I decided to triple down, and use the hottest, freshest meme on the block, “Play of the Game”, which had only been around for a week or two (guess why). Overall, a magical trifecta of now-dead memes, connected perfectly by a timeless dab.

Interesting notes:

I had the video 100% done and rendered 2 weeks before I uploaded it on 27 July, because I finished editing it while on my month-long Summer trip to the U.S., and I wanted to post it as soon as I got back to Belgium.