Producer's Commentary: Dicks Season 5
I don't pull any punches as I delve straight into Rita's fate. In what's no doubt my hardest-hitting episode so far, "Frustration," I explore the reaction of two characters to Rita's plight: Ping and Carl. Ping utterly demolishes nearly every breakable object in her kitchen, while Carl totally loses it as he unloads his hand cannon on targets both planned and unplanned. This episode actually grew out of the one that follows, "Caregiver's Lament, which is based (somewhat) on personal experience. Rita and Carl's lines were meant to be amusing, but instead they conjured images of actually doing what they say, and thus came about what stands (to date) as my favorite episode. Unfortunately it's also the most difficult one for me to watch, the emotional potency delivering me a sucker punch almost every time.
Naturally I had to go down the road of Rita's death, and that inspired some huge changes in style, in particular doing away with the title and end credit sequences. This not only changed the tone of the episodes, but afforded me a few precious extra seconds of time for the story.
This then created an enormous challenge for me: to pivot back from the deeply affecting drama of Rita's passing to something at least vaguely comedic. A character from a prior episode, Sam from "What's for Dinner," seemed like the perfect vehicle for that transition, and I think I pulled it off.
Sam also provided the means to go down other, new story idea roads. In particular, I thought it might be fun to explore romance, and this led to the idea of Sam's hot tub. And it also allowed me to end the season on a lighter note; "In Hot Water" is all about the love and humor found in real life, and it carries the season out with laughter.
Technically, "In Hot Water" offers us a peek at things to come: I have remastered all of the artwork for all of the characters and sets, and revised my animation techniques, all because I needed to have much more control over character expressions to sell the feelings Dot and Glen experience.
I was going to save Rita's death until the end of this batch, but later decided to get it right up front
and take a good hard look at the events surrounding it. "Frustration" actually came about after
having finished the following one, "Caregiver's Lament." Some of the lines of dialog, while meant
to be mildly humorous, gave rise to ideas I thought might be interesting to visualize, and thus this episode
came into being on the fly, produced after the one it precedes. This unusual twist then immediately followed
Rita's big reveal, hopefully giving it more power and poignancy.
I knew from the get-go this one required a very different style from the rest. I thought it would be a stimulating challenge to render Ping's and Carl's sequences; in particular, I wanted to see if Carl's violent reaction could be given a serious, visceral quality. And it was interesting to really push their emotions.
The technical challenges were many, including new character poses, actions and expressions, and many new props. I made more new, unique visual elements for this episode than any other, most of which will never be used again, and spent several days trying to keep things as tight as possible in order to give the action enough room to breathe. Visual edits were often a matter of pushing things back and forth one frame at a time, and sound design alone took almost two days.
Some of the tiny touches took a great deal of experimentation, such as the transition between Ping and Carl's montages, and the precise timing of Carl's gunshots. Running Glen and Dot's dialog underneath Ping's sequence gave me the time compression I needed to pack as much as I could into the episode, and provided a refreshing change in style. Both of the primal screams came by way of modifying a pair of stock martial arts fighter sounds, and Carl's final pose was a fortuitous accident, because nothing else was working.
Oh, and I deliberately left Carl's profanity unbleeped as a personal statement against a terrible disease that took both of my mothers-in-law, threatened the life of a significant other, and is in the process of killing a dear friend. Of all the dramatic episodes, this is the hardest one for me to watch. I even put it on repeat for a half-hour in an attempt to "desensitize" myself. Didn't work. Still teared up.
Trivia: for anyone who might be curious, Carl fires 27 rounds.
"Caregiver's Lament" is built on personal experience. I was caregiver to a woman with
breast cancer, and in the process learned that oftentimes caregivers have a tougher time of it than
the patient. This is because we are helpless to "fix" them; all we can do is be supportive.
This inability to correct the problem creates a terrible strain, and I wanted to see if I could
portray that in an amusing way. I don't know if I succeeded; the viewer has to decide.
Originally I was going to have Glerp's eyes explode, but I felt that would be too gross. So, I switched to having his arms fly off. I missed an opportunity for a "disarming" joke, but that might be for the better.
I had to render a number of unique new visual effects to pull this off, and consequently the master file was so complex that the program kept crashing when doing the final render. I had to track down the precise point where it was choking, and dial back the visual effects it had to process.
Stylistically, I felt that a return to something vaguely humorous provided a chance to catch your breath before delving into the really dark stuff to come.
Immediately after producing "Deamtime" I dove straight into Rita's death scene. I knew in
advance that my normal simplistic animation style would not do; I had to render Rita's expressions
much more smoothly. And so, for the first time in Dicks, I animated a character's eyes, eyebrows and
mouth independently from their face, with individual elements often rendered one frame at a time.
Each element had up to nine shapes, all combined using green screen overlays. Bear in mind, I do not
use software such as Flash to animate things; I physically draw them out in an illustration program and
assemble them manually. Thus what I do is actually a little closer to traditional cell animation.
It was the most intense challenge I'd attempted to date, both technically and emotionally. I found it so very strange how, once rendered, a scene that I wrote, illustrated and animated was still tough for me to watch. Even stranger is that it's a stupid cartoon, yet it still made me cry, especially when Dot utters her plaintive "no" at the end; I took great pains getting just the right tone of voice, having Voicemaker utter dozens of no's using dozens of vocal settings.
Stylistically I took some big departures from the rest of the series, in particular eliminating the animated intro and credits; they simply would not do accompanying such a dark story. Rendering new ones the way I did also provided me with a few more precious seconds with which to tell the story. Also, I felt that a stormy setting helped reinforce the mood. It was a great deal of fun creating and animating all of those visuals.
As a little aside here, one might notice that I did not synchronize the lightning flashes and the thunder, as is normally done in 99% of movies and TV shows. I also didn't render any cartoonish lightning bolts, even though this is... wait for it... a cartoon. Instead, I attempted to create a low-key rainstorm as realistically as possible, complete with rain running down windows as seen from inside. Why? Because it was a fun challenge.
What about the title, "Voyager 1"? While I'm not a spiritual person, I've nevertheless always appreciated popular sentiments regarding one's soul, and imagined Rita's being set free to roam the Universe. The name also conjures the spacecraft launched over fifty years ago, which is also doing the same thing. Naturally, there's a "Voyager 2," which is Glerp, who will set off on a personal walkabout of sorts following the loss of his dear sweet Rita. And those who have been keeping careful track of the series ought to recognize the ice cream payoff, which I'd set up several episodes ago. Plus, there was Glerp's "heart light" glow, which had previously been used as a joke; here, he's using it to soothe all of the troubled souls present at Rita's passing.
All in all I spent five days carefully crafting this episode, when a typical one might only take a day at most, and I feel it was more than worth the effort. Actually, you may think I need help, but I've been a little depressed since Rita's passing, almost as if she was a real person.
I debated long and hard about removing Glerp from the cast; in the end I felt it offered
a strong emotional beat. It also meant not having to deal with his post-traumatic state when
I really wanted to return to humor. I had a great many plans to mine him for laughs, but they
would not make sense in the context of Rita's death. So I let them all go in order to deliver
what I felt was an appropriate swan song. It was both easy and difficult to write; the dialog
came effortlessly, albeit with depressing consequences. I made no changes to the original script.
"Voyager 2" benefitted greatly from having produced "Voyager 1," given that most of the hard technical work was already done, so it came together quite quickly. I spent most of my time trying to get Glerp's ship to look and behave right. While it's a silly cartoonish element, I wanted as much as possible to avoid it coming across as silly, so I treated the scene no differently than one might a person driving off in their car for the last time, with Dot once again providing the final plaintive farewell.
What followed then was the immense challenge of transitioning back to humor, and a one-shot character from a previous episode provided the means.
There had to be a reaction to all of the previous events, so I worked on getting that out
of the way, choosing to make it short if not sweet in order to create room for the introduction
of not one but two new characters to replace Rita and Glerp: Sam Fullbrush, the MESS salesman,
and his wife Valerie, who have decided to move to Dicks. Sam sort of crashes our cast's
makeshift memorial in a hopefully amusing manner. I chose Sam as a new cast member because
I really enjoyed creating him for "What's for Dinner?" Being a salesman, he's got
attitude to spare: brash and boldly stupid; his tendency for foot-in-mouth disease is in full
display here.
Note that Sam is the only married member of the cast. When I created
the original cast for Dicks, I realized after I went into production that they were all single,
and I had no idea why, although it did leave open some romantic opportunities, which I've naturally
exploited. Now, with Sam, I've "fixed" that imbalance.
With Sam already in the can, so to speak, I had to develop his wife, who was actually inspired by a real person who sat next to me at a bar not long ago. A friend of mine had taken me to lunch, and it turned out to be most fortuitous for Dicks; I even jotted down a few notes about things she was carrying on about with her friend for future reference. I also noticed across the bar was a man who looked so much like a real-life version of Glen that, had I been making a live-action Dicks show, I'd have cast him in the role immediately. What an interesting lunch that was! Once I introduced Sam and Val, the idea floodgates opened, and in a matter of an hour, five new stories materialized, with ideas for several more drifting around.
Incidentally, how did I come up with Sam's name? I pulled Sam out of thin air; Fullbrush, however, is a reference to his mustache, the only facial hair of any Dicks resident. As for Valerie, I just like how it sounds with a really thick New York accent: nails on a chalkboard. My only regret is that Voicemaker didn't have one that sounded like that. Rats.
More trivia: Val is the only resident with glasses, and I chose for her that gross cat's eye style from the fifties or sixties. I envisioned her right at home on a cruise ship sharing gross mixed drinks with countless clones of her. Imagine her on the Costa Concordia, whining about how inconvenient it was for her that the ship was sinking...
I couldn't resist digging into Valerie's character. My only problem was that I couldn't seem to
write enough dialog; I kept having to go back and write more. Again, I regretted Voicemaker's lack
of accents, so I attempted to compensate by tweaking the delivery: I cranked up the speed, laid in
a lot of emphasized words and phrases, and then processed the sound afterwards a bit to make it
more harsh-sounding. I also discovered it was fun to profusely over-use a phrase, in this case
"goddam." One may notice her audience keeps changing, and at the end most of the
characters are hiding on the other side of the trailer.
Incidentally, continuing Valerie's non-stop jabber over the closing credits was an accident. As I was editing her dialog, I pushed a short clip aside, and it wound up right at the end. When I played it back, I realized that it totally worked; it was even exactly the right length. Sometimes the best little moments were never planned.
Oh, and lest anyone think that Valerie is a flat, one-dimensional character with no other purpose to exist, I've already devised all manner of interesting facets to her nature, to be explored in due time.
Although I'd intended to end this batch with "For Rita," I decided to move it up to
follow "No Off Button" so that I could highlight the dichotomy in Valerie's nature.
I also wanted to end the batch on a lighter note, using the blossoming romance between Dot and
Glen as the means.
I began work on "For Rita" before I had an ending; I had a vision of the group gathered around Rita's headstone, but had no clear idea of where to take it from there. Then I had this idea of having Sam sort of sneak up on the group, and that introduced the possibility of Valerie's appearance. I'd devised all manner of her interacting with the other residents, and then it dawned on me: turn her character on her head, and have her standing in respectful silence, to the surprise of the others. I'm not sure of Dot's reaction "reads"; her initial response is shock, until she realizes that Valerie is totally silent, at which point she relaxes. I'm not too concerned if it all works; it's just got a nice vibe to it.
Sam is by far the wealthiest resident at Dicks, but he's not selfish; he genuinely likes to
share his good fortune, and he starts by adding the community's first hot tub, which I chose
as a means to explore Dot and Glen's romance. Clearly Glen is totally incompetent when it comes
to romance, which has multiple reasons, one of which is reserved for a future time.
I confess the closing phrase, which is Sam inserting foot into mouth again, was stolen from the movie Deadpool. I don't care; I doubt very much I'll get sued over it. It's also the most adult I've gotten in the show, and it's about as adult as I'll ever get. Maybe...
Wow, I've made fifty of these stupid videos! Who'd have thought I'd produce that many? Actually,
I hope to create many more, perhaps even another fifty, assuming I live long enough.
Anyway, this episode exploits an age-old fart joke, although I've not treated it in the stupid, in-your-face Blazing Saddles style; I was after something more real, more believable. Poor Glen suffers from a nervous reaction, and what does Dot do? Laugh it off. He's all upset; she thinks it's hysterical. This then helps Glen get over it, and we end this batch on a happy note.
Technically, this episode is a "sneak peek" at the show's next generation of production. Except for Sam, who appears so briefly it wasn't worth waiting for him to catch up, all of the artwork is brand new, and the animation process is new as well: instead of rendering entire bodies with different mouth and eye shapes, I separated the heads from the bodies, and the eyes from the heads, so that I'd have complete control of both. Previously, it was a mini-nightmare to, for example, have someone blink while they spoke. Now I have independent control of eye and mouth shapes, with opportunities for many more of each.
In this case, Dot and Glen are both all-new art, and in the process of re-rendering them, I made some subtle changes: Dot's hair is a little longer, her features are a little softer, and she's far more expressive than she's ever been. Meanwhile, Glen's hair is shorter, and his mouth is a little more crooked for added character. And now they can both laugh!
All of the set art is new as well, and for this particular episode, I went all out and created a highly-detailed nighttime environment. I more or less had to, since I needed to visualize all of the things Dot was carrying on about, such as the stars, fireflies, and falling star. Meanwhile, the laughter involved hours of modifying and editing stock laughing effects, getting the timing and amount just right. What helped was spreading the laughter out through the closing credits, essentially extending the scene to build up the effect without stealing from any of the precious 47 seconds of episode time.
One last bit of trivia: the sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that, starting with "Remember Me," the clip of residents waving in the title sequence was changed to the group gathered around Rita's grave. This is the last time it will be seen; starting with the next batch, the waving group will return, with Rita replaced by Sam and Val.