Splitsider is thrilled to offer our first digital download, The Exquisite Corpse Project, a fantastic film from the former members of legendary sketch group Olde English. I recently sat down with the guys to look through some of their classic Olde English sketches. Here, the group looked back at a niche favorite made as a part of their monthly Rules Show.
Caleb: I was looking through our YouTube channel about a year ago and realized that this one video that we had made, I think we watched it once had over a million hits out of nowhere. It is Blind Date.
Raphael: Oh, that’s a sketch that came out of our Rules Show. This is a live show where we showed videos, and we showed footage of us giving each other rules and different assignements. And Adam Conover, my good friend, gave me the assignment — you have to make a sketch where it’s a blind date between two mathematical constants, no phyiscal objects can appear in the sketch, and one of the mathematical constants has a dangerous secret. That was it. So I just ended up making a cartoon, because I didn’t know how else…
Ben: You didn’t know how to make a cartoon at the time.
Raphael: Oh right, yes.
Ben: You taught yourself how to animate.
Raphael: Yes. I didn’t use Flash or anything. I used Final Cut Pro, which is not the best tool for making animation.
Adam: Very bad tool.
Raphael: I just illustrated different shapes and dragged them around.
Ben: But you did very well. The whole thing’s key-framed very well, considering.
Adam: It’s very impressively done, yeah.
Raphael: Thank you. I remember being really excited that I can make the characters blink! That’s cool, that’ll make it look like they’re doing shit.
Adam: It’s like you built a skyscraper with tinker toys.
Raphael: Well, it’s not a skyscraper, but yeah. It’s like I built a tinker toy skyscraper. But what’s cool about that is it really caught on in a major way, even for people who did not know the context. And one of the reasons for that, which we were kind of learning at that point is that, if you can appeal to a niche audience, they will embrace it and will pass it around. So for that, math nerds loved it, and they would show it to their friends.
Ben: Dorks.
Raphael: It was all math puns. And so that’s something we started thinking about. How can we make stuff that certain people will love and think we’re making just for them. Because if we get that passionate audience, then it’ll be big. If something is funny in a specific way where you think, I can relate to this, then you like share it with people.
Caleb: Yeah. Alan’s gonna love this one!
Raphael: Yeah, Alan’s gonna love it, because he likes math.
Caleb: And there’s never been anything for Alan before. This is awesome.
The Exquisite Corpse Project is available for download for $5 from Splitsider Presents.
