Producer's Commentary: Dicks Season 9
The season starts off with an episode that was originally part of Season 8: "Good Times." Getting bumped was a good thing: it created room for me to get the soap opera between Dot and Ping out of the way, and it started this season on a lighter note, much better than "You Were Right," as originally planned.
The most notable aspect of Season 9 is the fact that the Dicks, having been run through the wringer for the last few seasons, get to enjoy a big win for a change. Although heavy drama is, well, dramatic, it needs to be leavened with lightness somewhere along the way in order to avoid things from being overtaken by an oppressively darkness.
This season also brings us my so-far all-time favorite episode, Dive! Dive! Dive! While I will be pursuing more ideas along similar lines, if I should ever produce something better, I'll be thrilled. Then again, I never thought I could top "The Harder They Vaporize", so who knows?
"Good Times" was actually produced for the previous season. But as I developed the main story arc
for Season 8, I felt as if it was out of place. Pushing it to the beginning of Season 9
created a setup for the events to come. Nothing much is going on here; it's simply a gag about dealing with a
lot of noise.
Given its super-simple premise, I allowed myself to get more creative with some shots. For the first time, I have characters speak while they're moving. These are quite complex for me to produce: I start with a static shot of the character lip-synced to the dialog. I render this shot, then manipulate the rendered video. Because I'm down a generation, the image becomes a little soft. But I find it's hardly noticeable, especially when viewed on a cellphone, as I imagine most are seen these days.
Like "Good Times," "No Longer My Planet"
was made for the prior season, and was bumped into this one to make room for a more intimate look
at Dot and Ping's relationship.
This rare off-site episode was a little indulgence of mine to get a bit preachy about how mankind's predilection for constant development is out of control and ruining the planet. It also provides a peek at Paul and Sam's relationship, and how each sees things a little differently. Paul's remark about taking the train to work reflects a facet of my life, although the railroad I rode is still active.
Technically this was a fun challenge to produce. Some of the effects are among the most complex I've made so far (save for "The Harder They Vaporize"). In particular, the view of Paul and Sam in the car has many layers, including animated translucent windshield reflections. I chose to keep the view of the passing scene extremely simplistic: it is, after all, just a cartoon, and I only needed to sell aspects of the environment to make my point. The terrain is actually a static background image, with the buildings moving along stripes representing roads, etcetera. What looks like graffiti on the foreground buildings was actually intended to be store signs. But looking like graf actually worked in favor of the story, and given the complexity of the shots, I wasn't going to re-render them.
Incidentally, the tune playing at the beginning is "Killing Time" from my album Just Getting Started.
Now we get to the meat of the season, which admittedly starts off with three episodes of talking heads spouting
exposition. But the stakes are getting higher, so I wanted to build up the story in a measured, detailed fashion. It is
of course an extension of the highway widening threat introduced in the prior season.
The concept of "Highway Killers" is based on fact. Decades ago here in New Jersey, a fellow decided he didn't like the idea of an interstate getting built right past his back yard (in spite of the fact that he was told this would happen when he bought the property). He went to court and presented such a compelling argument that the highway project was permanently abandoned. He was so successful that other people and communities hired him to kill the highways in their neighborhoods. He went on to become the primary reason there is only one interstate that makes it through New Jersey in one piece. He's also the primary reason there is so much traffic on our secondary roads, and his selfishness has cost the state dearly in terms of congestion and accidents. We build these highways for a reason, and it's not to annoy residents who live near them; quite the opposite.
The sharp eye might notice Paul's "Spock eyebrow" at the end of the episode. He first did this in "The Fugitive," and I suspect he'll be doing it more in the future.
"A Third Course" should be quite self-explanatory: the Dicks hatch a plan to solve
everyone's problems. Well, everyone but Walfart. I had considerable fun poking that franchise
in the eye. Indeed, I'd like to do it more, but I don't want to overdo it.
The notion of moving the store occurred to me as I wrote the script; I did not plan all of this out in advance. There, my secret is out: I make all of this stuff up as I go along. It was simultaneously fun and challenging to develop the argument between Sam and Paul. I had great difficulty deciding who would be on which side of the argument, and what their points would be; scriptwriting slowed to a crawl as I spent the better part of a day just nailing down this dialog.
I decided to make Paul self-contradictory: he hates humanity for what we're doing to the planet, and yet he sees the necessity of the highway, whereas Sam is much more concerned about the Dicks' collective quality of life. Sam essentially assumes the role of the original highway killer, whereas Paul maintains a more balanced, rational view. I'm not entirely certain, but it all seems to work.
"The Game Is Afoot" is essentially part three of the setup for the primary plot of this season.
I'll come clean about Carl's joke at the end: it was really, really stupid. It's also dedicated to one of
my regular dinner guests who happens to love awful jokes and puns. He quite enjoyed it. I also added it
because I was glad to finally be done with all of the exposition, and felt the need to try and keep it from
being boring. Increasingly I'm finding Carl to be a comic goldmine, as you'll see in coming episodes.
The genesis of this episode was a single image: a cassette tape self-destructing. Knowing in advance it would
be montage from end to end with no dialog, I just started assembling gags as they came to me. I wound up devising
way more gags than I had time for, which was fine: I was then able to pick the best of the bunch. Some
gags sprouted into existence spontaneously, such as my favorite: Carl watching the photocopier run. Originally
he was just going to be doing a static Kilroy shot, but when I made him glance from side to side, I started laughing
out loud, and doubled the length of the shot so we could enjoy more of the gag.
Loads of new art and effects went into this one, as one might be able to tell. The only thing I recycled was the driving sequence, from "No Longer My Planet." One particular gag was an accident. When the crew is synchronizing their watches, I'd intended them to all show a different time. But the fact that Carl's watch seemed to be broken was unintentional: I had mistakenly included a frame showing a different time from the rest. Again, I started laughing, and took the gag just a bit further.
Yes, I swiped the title "Mission: Totally Improbable" from an old Avengers episode. Well, sort of; it was originally "Mission: Highly Improbable." Oh, and once again I used one of my own tunes for the soundtrack: "Way Too Late" from Wasn't Me.
"Dive! Dive! Dive!" came into existence because of one very silly notion I got into my head for reasons
totally unknown: I wanted to hear Glen yell "Dive! Dive! Dive!" True. What emerged from that tiny seed stands
(as of this writing) as my all-time favorite episode. It's got it all: a refreshingly different visual style; humor,
drama and excitement; great sound design and a generous supply of visual effects. I poured my heart and soul into it,
and it was worth every minute.
I actually did a fair amount of research into submarines and crew uniforms just so things wouldn't look too stupid, even though, yes, it's a stupid cartoon. However, I admit I did cheat a little so I could get away with doing crude, simplistic backgrounds. The old film style suggested a shallow depth of field, with everything but the actors thrown out of focus.
Almost every shot involved effects work, from changing focus between characters to throwing dramatic light across their eyes, from new visuals like the periscope shot to heavy-duty "camera shake." I took the moving-lip-sync effect I'd done for "Good Times" a step further, and had Glen walk and talk at the same time. That one was tough.
I'd originally planned to include a music track, but by the time I had the rest of the sound design done, the music just became so much useless noise on top of it all. So, I decided to build tension by slowly increasing the volume of the sonar pings. I also gradually brought the emitted and reflected pings closer and closer, just as they would in real life as the target approached.
My immense satisfaction with "Dive! Dive! Dive!" has inspired me to pursue many similar concepts. And as an aside, I'll add that I think Ping looks totally hot in that uniform...
As a consequence of creating this epic episode, I assembled (over the course of only one hour) a new "making of" video, cut from the same cloth as the cast interviews and outtakes extras. In this case, barring the conceit that it's being presented as if it was all real, this making of doc is all based on actual fact: I created it exactly as Ron describes, right down to where I got the bits and pieces for the periscope shot. I did in fact "shoot" it in color, as I'd originally conceived this as portraying "real" events, as opposed to an old movie. Halfway through production, I decided that switching to old monochrome film would make it more interesting, thus all of the new art yet to be created was all done in grayscale.
After having put the Dicks through the wringer for the last few seasons, I decided it was time for them to
have a big win, so "A Thousand Words" is a simple thing with minimal dialog and a healthy chunk
of time spent simply enjoying a big fireworks show. I've wanted to do fireworks effects for a long time, so
I pulled out all of the stops and let 'er rip. The most fun bit was the "Go Dicks" display, which
took several times to nail. Note that in the final shot, showing the fireworks reflected in Ping's eyes,
the synchronized images actually curve around her eyeballs. Spent a lot of time getting that right, but
again it was all worth it.
"Three Dicks In a Tub" was completed right after The Game
Is Afoot, so I had the beginning and end done before working on the middle. This approach often helps
shape the important stuff, because I know where I've come from and where I'm going to. The little fart gag
at the end relies on one having seen "In Hot Water" from way back
in Season 5.
Although the episode may come across as a bit "woke" for some, or maybe even kinda kinky to others, such attributes are strictly in the eyes of the beholders. My intent is to present them as an inseparable trio, the emotional bedrock of the show. Notice how they stand solidly together near the end of "Dive! Dive! Dive!" As Rita puts it in "There's No Place Like Home," Dot is strong and smart; Glen is the glue that holds them together; and Dot is their heart and soul. Together they make an awesome force. That they all love one another deeply just makes them stronger.
This standalone piece of pure lunacy came about by strange means. It all started when my dinner guests
brought some awesome cheese. We finished it off quickly, and during the following week I texted them
to suggest bringing more. The response I received was "We will bring now. More." (He later
explained it was a typo that resulted in the odd auto-correction.) At the time, I was sitting on the
sofa watching a movie, and I paused the video and re-read the text a half dozen times. Each time it
got funnier, sounding for all the world like a line from some cheesy Kung Fu movie.
I then jumped up from the sofa, ran into my computer room, sat down and immediately went to work on "Awesome Total Power." It is of course based on the fact that Carl loves Kung Fu movies, a point I'd not returned to since Season 1. But it also presented a golden opportunity to exploit Carl's awesome comic quality, and even let me include a great "Semper Fi" gag.
Technically it was all-new art from end to end. A lot of work, but all worth it. Then, in my sound effects library I discovered a collection of classic "old school" Kung Fu sound effects, so the sound design was a no-brainer. I had so much fun making it that I fully intend to pursue similar ideas in the future.
I added the subtitles late in production, as I wanted to make sure the movie dialog could be understood. The first two lines are verbatim from the texts that inspired the episode. By the way, I'd actually produced it while I was working on the prior season. I had no idea where it should go, so I hung onto it waiting to find an appropriate home for it. I think having it wrap up an uplifting season is just right.