SF Classiques - SFPPN

Well, I'm sure I have more SF ephemera to go over, but frankly, I'm running out of decent audio clips to play. So, this will be the last entry for this blog.

Let's go over some of the groups our team gravitated to in high school. When we last met electronically, I mentioned the word "Semanon". While it sounds like a cult of some kind, it was just the backstage crew for the high school theater.

On previous blogs, I promised I would return to extraneous points, so here we are... In Episode 5, I mentioned that SF wasn't the only production company in town. Must have been something in the water. I'm sure I'll get some of this material wrong, as I was a bystander. If the parties involved read this, let me know what I screwed up.

OK, let's wrap things up. The SF team began to break up in the late 80's, and it became harder and harder to "get the band back together". It's natural for this to happen--people have lives after all. I had found a creative outlet in public access cable TV in Columbus, OH. I was involved in two comedy shows, one of which resulted in an arrest (more on that soon), then began ten years of the "Vast Wasteland" TV show, the ancestor of one of our current podcasts.

We now move into the late 80's, and a bit of a hiatus for SF as people went off into the world to get actual jobs, get married, get more degrees (I'm looking at you, Beth), etc. In 1988, Mike and I created a 10th anniversary set (just a set of clips, kind of like what I'm doing here) and the "Is It Love" dance remix played in episode one. This took quite a lot of work since Eric was unavailable, so we sampled his voice track line by line to match the new tempo. Eric was quite surprised to later hear his voice on something he wasn't directly involved in.

During college breaks, I would try to visit SF members at their schools. Bill was attending University of Cincinnati, and I went to see him a few times. He was hanging around with a girl named Janet, and they were becoming quite the couple. One night, Bill and I were driving around, and he said "how do you feel about an SF wedding?". After discussing logistics of such an event, I gave him my "blessing" as SF President. Thus the SF weddings began. Janet and Bill have been together since then, moving around the country for work, and have ended back up in Ohio, so we can see them often.

We now move into 1984. This was the year of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, so I decided our major goal for the year was a video parody of the games. Mike was involved in electronic music classes in college, so we used that as an excuse to create a new theme for the games. We spent a concentrated period of a few days in the summer (remember, we still had to rent video equipment) and shot all over town.

1983, the "Summer of SF", rolls on... There was a local theater in town--I use the term loosely, as it was housed in a former pet store, with an audience of 40. If you sat in the front row, you were in danger of getting trampled by actors downstage. Anyway, I had been involved with the theater for a few years, and decided it was time for me to direct. My musical review idea was shot down, so I found an obscure (cheap) one act play called "Sociability". When I went to cast it, of course I asked SF members. Sharon, Beth, Mike, and Steve didn't say no quickly enough, and we were off. Another "director" did a second one-act play, and we added a musical number from Lynda (with kibitzing from Eric) to make the whole thing long enough to make a handful of people come to see it.

SF finished 1982 with another political special (Confusion '82), and by this point we apparently decided that Reagan had won the 1980 race, since we spent some time either praising or bashing him. There were some small pre-written bits, which became painfully obvious as the production went on. We ended up spending half the tape doing commercial parodies--Eric, Bill, Steve, Lynda, Mike, Beth, and new member Brenda Bader (Badger) joined in the fun. Brenda lived just two blocks away from me, so I had known her since elementary school. She eventually became the SF Historian--in fact, for this blog, I have been referencing a book she put together for my wedding documenting SF's history. She was involved with SF for several years, but I haven't heard from her for awhile (if you read this Brenda, please e-mail me through the site or find me via FaceBook!).

1982 was a tumultuous year for SF--we graduated from high school, several members joined the team, and we all moved toward our college years. The last point was a particular concern for me. Sure, it would it be difficult to get the team together to do more tapes, but the main issue was Eric's move to Annapolis and the military.

There's a lot to cover here, so take a seat.

As a palate cleanser post-BOTR, we went back to the old Fall TV preview bit for the next tape--the less said about this the better. Moving on...

Well, we got into episode 5 of Bored of the Rings, and it was clear we were getting burned out--we had been slogging away at this for 9 months. So, we wanted to wrap things up with a double episode, but would have ended up with a very short episode 6. What to do in order to stretch things out?

Background music was always helpful when we made the SF tapes--it helped us get into whatever silliness was required, and it covered up dead spots when we couldn't think of something to say.

Let's talk about Bored of the Rings. Anyone who's read Tolkien's work or sat through the films knows this is a huge concept to take on. However, Eric and I foolishly felt it could be done, and he turned the books into a set of talking points he used as the narrator. It took eight months and six tapes at 45 minutes apiece--that's 4.5 hours of silliness.

I've always been fascinated by the hoopla surrounding Presidential election coverage at the news networks. All the unnecessary gadgetry--it's like the IT dept got a blank check. So, when SF covered the 1980 election, we introduced the "NBS Election Computer", aka various handheld electronic games of the era blooping and bleeping.

Moving from 1979 into 1980--Eric and I both enjoyed Star Trek, and so the first movie was a big event. Our parody (Star Trip) included special effects--like holding down extra buttons on the recorder so we sounded like we were on helium.

We're now in 1979, as the history of SF Productions rolls on. I was a voracious TV watcher--listen to the "Vast Wasteland" podcast for evidence of this. So, the announcement of the Fall TV schedule was a big event to me--I was always on the lookout for the TV Guide Fall Preview issue at the checkout. (I still have a collection of TV Guide Fall Previews going back to this time).

When I last blogged, it was 1978 (not when I last blogged, but that's when we are in the story), and I was just about to see if Eric Fenton was the right person to make strange noises with me into my tape recorder. I had received an Atari 2600 as a Christmas present, and something told me that it would be great audio to record us playing it while doing bad impersonations--hence the first SF Productions tape, "Celebrity Video Games", on June 20, 1978 (now known as SF Anniversary Day).

For most of my life, I've been involved with a semi-real production company known as SF Productions--I even used it to name my website. I figured it was time to document as much as I can remember about it before dementia kicks in. I'm sure I will have items out of order, and some thoughts might be completely made up, based on my fantasies of what really happened.