Making
the DVDs. Media
Studio Pro 6.0 was used on a WinXP PC (2.39 GHz, 3400+ Athlon
64, 1 GB RAM) for all assemble editing from the video and audio
sources. Files were rendered to DV and outputted to a Sony
Digital8 camcorder (DCR-TRV280), then recorded in real time, track by track, onto a blank
DVD+R on a stand-alone LiteOn LVW-5005 DVD recorder. A disc
image was then made on the PC using Nero 6, which was then used to create
all the copies. Why not use the computer to make the master
DVD? Mpeg-2 encoding by most video editing software produces mediocre quality files and takes a lot of processing power. The hardware
encoder in the LVW-5005 records high-quality mpeg-2
files in real time, although it produces rather lackluster menus.
Help!
The
DVD doesn't play in my machine. First,
try another machine. Older DVD players can fail to read DVD-Rs
or DVD+Rs properly, or may not recognize the format used
by the LVW-5005. Most computer DVD-ROM or DVD-R/RW drives
should
read the
disc fine. If you know that your player does recognize certain
types of recordable DVDs, use a computer to copy the worm
show DVD to a blank of that type.
More
trivia and technical stuff (last updated August 20, 2007):
- The announcer
at the beginning of both shows was Owen Lewis, one of the Stage Managers
at Royce Hall. We told him only our first names and he made
up the rest, though for the 2007 show we reminded him what
he said two years before.
- 'The Audience is Intoxicated' was the first piece of video made for the 2007 show. As it turned out, no beer/wine were available at the barbecue beforehand, unlike in 2005. This, along with a slightly smaller crowd, make the responses in the 2005 show seem far more lively. (Of course, this could also be because the 2007 show just wasn't as funny.)
- "Willkommen,
bienvenue" near the beginning of the 2007 show
is from the musical Cabaret.
- In the
'Yoda talk' and 'Chewbacca talk' all of the data slides are
from Morris' PhD thesis work as claimed (most images were taken from Genetics 141: 977-988), although he has never
tried
RNAi of unc-119.
- In the
2005 show, the #1 sign your lab is too big ('Chat up postdoc
in hall, ask them what lab they're in, and it's yours') is
based on a true story (or at least, true hearsay).
- In the
2005 show, the 'Veeral Full' fake acknowledgment in charge
of Housing was in recognition of the fact that many late
registrants for the 2005 meeting (including Morris) had to
find off-campus accomodations.
- In the
2007 show, Morris did the voices for the video parodies (including
vocals for the fake music ad), except for Keanu
Reeves in ‘Matrix’ which
was used right from the film soundtrack.
- The spoken
language in the 'Nobel video' is Romanian ("Alo, salut,
sînt
eu, un haiduc") which means "Hello, hi, it’s
me, an outlaw." The 'ma-ya-hee' intro part doesn't mean
anything at all. [entire
song lyrics]
- The 'Worm
Nobel Prize commemorative stamp' carries an image of an LED
'Mooninite'
in reference to the 2007
Boston Mooninite Scare.
- The music
that accompanies the 'Unsolicited Advice' segment is from
a Flash Game, 'Four-Second Fury' [game
link] (Caution: The music is loud !)
- The words
of the Pink Floyd parody mention Craig Mello and transformation
to produce rollers. Mello et
al. (1991) is a frequent
citation for making transgenic worms using the su1006D allele
of rol-6 introduced
via gonadal injection of plasmid pRF4.
- The melody
of the 'Worm Gregorian Chant' is from “O
Filii et Filiae” (O Sons and Daughters...) composed
in the 15th century by Jean Tisserand (d. 1491) [A harmonized
version of this traditional Paschal hymn can be found here.
It remains popular, particularly in France.] Curtis has performed
this chant with Schola
Pacifica, a San Diego men’s chant
and early polyphony group. [While Morris has also sung in choirs
(non-professional ones), he is admittedly not much more than
a 'karaoke nut'.]
- After
the 'Worm Gregorian Chant', we smack our scripts against
our heads in reference to a scene from Monty
Python and the Holy Grail (1975). [Curtis initially forgot
to do this, hence his half-hearted, late attempt...]
- The 'Take
Me Out To The Worm Lab' karaoke accompaniment was pitch-shifted
down several tones from the original. All other karaoke accompaniments
were in the original keys. The idea for doing some kind of
an audience karaoke was originally inspired
by U2's 1997
PopMart Tour, but it was decided that the more familiar
baseball theme converged well with the notion of a '7th Inning
Stretch'.
- In the
'Morat' parody video, responses by the interviewees were
generally unrehearsed and edited later, a style sometimes known as retroscripting.
- In 'Morat',
just after Paul said that proper controls would
be needed
if one was setting
fire
to
rats, both he and Morris burst into laughter. To keep the
video from cutting away too abruptly, the last several frames
(before laughter is evident) were added back in
reverse order.
- The wine
bottle on Ryan Baugh's lab bench (visible in the Morat video)
is from Charles
Shaw winery.
- The 'guitars' we were 'playing' are photographic replicas of Pete Townshend's #5 Gibson Les Paul, with cartoon worm necks, on 1/4" foam board. See the Worm Show 2007 page for more.
- At the
end of the 'Classic Rock Medley' the synchrony of the last
of Pete
Townshend's'
guitar 'windmills' with those of Morris was fortuitous.
The group "The Who" was famous for destroying their equipment
on stage at the end of their shows.
- A real
Toshiba laptop (a relatively outmoded one) was destroyed
at the end of the 2007 show. Some parts were loosened in
advance, and
baby
powder
was added for effect.
- The epilogue
to the 2007 Worm Show, shown at the show itself and also
present on the DVD after the credits, is stolen nearly unchanged
from the 1986 John Hughes film Ferris
Bueller's Day Off.
Movie goers that stayed through the entire credits at the
end of the movie were treated to this final bit in which
Ferris (Matthew
Broderick), in a bathrobe, looks directly
at the audience and says "You're still here?..."
- The 'Worm
Show' got its start when Morris went to UCSD in fall of 2003
to speak at the local Worm Group gathering. Curtis attended,
and they got to talking afterwards about bringing entertainment
back to the worm meetings. A dozen ideas were shared right
away, and eventually the first show was given
to a small audience of a few hundred at the 2004 West Coast
Meeting at UC Santa Barbara. Much of this material was incorporated
into the 2005 show, which is why there is little
point in circulating a video for it. This is one case where
we thought that the two sequels (2005's "Episode II: A Lost
Hope" and 2007's "Episode III: Revenge of the Pithed") were
much better than the original.
- Many alternate
titles were originally conceived,
including "Worm Home Companion" (paying
homage to Garrison Keillor's similarly-named program on NPR).
Other NPR-inspired bits remained, such as the 'fake credits'
which are from the end of 'Car
Talk' (and from which we took 'Statistician - Marge Innovera')
and the fake ending credit 'Sarah Bellum', often cited by Garrison
Keillor in his program. In the 2005 show, the latter was followed
by an ad
lib impersonation of Keillor by Morris (That's
the news from Lake Wobegon...').
- If you
thought some of the jokes pushed the limits on good taste,
or just weren't funny, you should have seen some of the material
we left out.
- Our original
estimate for the timing of the two shows was 33 minutes each.
They actually ran to about 40 and 48 minutes each. Oops.
- The live
shows were run by Microsoft Powerpoint 2000 or 2003 on a
Sony Vaio WinXP laptop (Pentium III, 1.3GHz). The movies
were
mostly
640x480 mpeg-1 files, 30fps rendered from uncompressed AVI
files
using TMPGEnc at a bit rate of 2048 kbps. To facilitate editing
and navigation, each segment was a separate powerpoint file
and these were started via hyperlinks from a 'main' file.
- The 'Star
Wars' text effect was made using Hash software's amazing
program Animation:Master 8.0. This involved creating the
text part
in MS Powerpoint
2000 or Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe Photoshop 7.0, and
mapping the image onto a model in A:M. The camera point-of-view
was
positioned
to
create
the appearance of the text crawling from bottom to top and
receding in the distance. The video, stars and theme were assembled
in a video editor (Ulead's Media Studio Pro 6.0). There
are at least a dozen different ways of achieving the same
text effect, but few give
very high resolution (i.e. where the moving text does not look
'blocky').
- Flickering in the video (rare bright frames at the start of the 2007 show, and during the 'Committee Meeting Within The Matrix' title) seems to have resulted from problems during DV output to the Sony DCR-TRV280. As these bad frames are in the master DVD, all copies have them, but for some reason not all player/TV combinations show them.
- The sound
in the first 5 minutes of the 2005 show and the first 14
minutes of the 2007 show is solely from a camcorder
in the audience. During both shows the stage recording was
started late, so the audio perceptibly changes at the point
where the stage audio track was added to the sound mix.
- The audience
sound in the 2007 show drops to mono in a few places, representing
a shift to audio from the second camcorder. This was
to
eliminate some undesired audience comments captured by the
other camera.
- The 2007
show was recorded with two camcorders plus a video stream
from a camera in Royce Hall. Wendy Hung ran the camera for
the 2005 show and one of the cameras for 2007. Gina Broitman-Maduro
ran the second camera in 2007.
- Older
DVDs from the 2005 show were made one at a time by copying
from
a camcorder
to a standalone machine, which took about 45 min per DVD.
The newer discs (which contain both shows) were made in about 6 minutes each by using
a computer 16x DVD burner - a ratio of 7.5 to 1.
- Odd colors
in the 2007 video result from ‘Super Nightshot’ mode
which was used for most audience shots (and unintentionally for
the occasional stage shot).
- A black
rectangle visible on the video from the right-hand camera
in the 2007 show was used to block out an accidentally-recorded
time stamp.
- In playing
discs made by the LiteOn LVW-5005 recorder, some DVD players
will return to the main menu after playing a Title,
while most
will simply continue
to the
next
Title. Hence, after Worm Show 2007 finishes, the 2005 show
will probably start right away, followed by the excerpted parody videos without audience track.
- The Worm
Show DVD is compatible with Windows Vista.
- The DVDs
can be copied easily. Use a single-layer blank.
- As of August, 2007 Morris has sent out about the same amount of 2005 show DVDs, 2005/2007 show DVDs, and unc-119 mutants with rescuing DNA - about 60 each.
- If you
made it to the end of this list, you should really get back to work.
|
2007
Worm Show 
