This was our third ‘Intermission Feature’ and was part of our second big, Norwich Playhouse show: The Coalition Empire Of The Pun, on the 11th and 12th of January 2008.
*This film won the Special Effects award in the 2009 FX Home Awards! *
“I refuse to wear a skirt ever again until the next Coalition film.” – Tom
November 2007 – After receiving a lot of positive feedback for the intermission feature parody, Get Lost, the AoE boys realised that they were on to a good thing with the TV Spoof idea, so long as they chose the right thing to spoof. The fabulous new series Heroes was a massive TV phenomenon at the time, with seemingly a similar fan base to Lost (although better regarded in that there seemed to be a point to it all). But with cheerleaders, cheesy voice over and a moody, mono-browed bad guy – plus an even greater opportunity to parody some of the special effects – it was the perfect new target for a Coalition spoof.
Time pressures on this project were intense, as rehearsal and production pressure from the stage show impacted heavily and meant that filming was crammed into any available hour of the day – eagle eyed observers may spot the difference in hair lengths of Tom, Andy and the Yank at the end of the scene in Norwich Town Centre.
After several weeks of filming what we could when we could, the real ‘Hero’s’ of this film were once again our post-production chums, who all worked up to the wire (even by our standards).
Probably the biggest improvement of this film compared to Get Lost was the sound quality, thanks to Bennet Maples and 2 stoic days of sound recording and mixing (every vocal in this film was recorded and put on after shooting, something not done by AoE before or since!) which give the film some much needed polish. Simon ‘Tarn’ Jones of FX Home pushed the visuals boat out ever further to create the all important (Award Winning! – T) effects, which turned out to be the strongest punch lines of the piece.
The real hero though was Mike Stiff once again, who shot most of the footage and somehow edited it into a coherent film under ridiculous time pressure. Mike was living with Andy and Tom at the time (which was of course helpful) who can both attest that Mike barely left his room for 2 days while editing this piece and put his life on hold to get it done on time.
Big thanks to our friend of a friend, Tae Horie for the Japanese translations (and apologies to all Japanese speakers for making a mess of your language in this film!) Thanks also Amy, Jo ‘Slowbear’ O’Callaghan and Chris Butcher for their cameos and to Abi Williams for the Cheerleader costume.
AoE – 23/06/09
Tags: axis of evil, coalition axis evil video norwich, comedy