9DCU0302HD_Directors_Cut_Studio_Transcript

 
 Yeah, you did.  You have failed me for the last time.  That's what you said the last time.  I have been too forgiving in the past.  Do not fail me again! 'Cause that'll be the last time.  Yes, no. . .  I don't know.  Continue stocking.  You certainly do not see that every day.  That was a clip from "Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager. " I'm Charles Monroe-Kane.  And this is Director's Cut.  "Day Shift Manager" is short films about Darth Vader's younger brother, Chad, who's a manager of a grocery store called The Empire.  A great name.  We have the brain children behind Chad Vader with us today, Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan.  Guys, first, what the hell? Where in the world did this idea come from? It's got to be the best idea I've ever heard in my life.  Well, you know, I guess you could say it came from "Star Wars. " We watched "Star Wars," and we thought, how can we capitalize on this? No, were you sitting around, the two of you sitting around? I mean, it seems, were you sitting in a bar? Were you sitting in a coffee shop? And one of you is like, okay, I got this idea, let's make it about Darth Vader's younger brother Chad, and then it just went from there? I can't imagine.  Well, it's not one of those ideas that just comes up instantly, you know. 

 It developed a lot over time.  We were definitely sitting around a lot.  Yeah, the sitting around part.  That's accurate.  That's pivotal.  That's good advice for young filmmakers out there.  Sit around.  Exactly.  But it was a friend of ours who came up with part of the idea.  And we sort of took that part and ran with it.  It was the idea of Darth Vader working in a store of some, like fish out of water kind of thing.  And we thought, okay, well, that's great.  Let's twist it a little bit.  Let's make it so it's not Darth Vader, cause Darth Vader would just go around in a store and kill everybody.  And that'd be the end of the show.  So we thought, let's twist it a little bit.  Let's make it Chad Vader.  It's his brother.  He never left the hometown where they grew up together.  And he's just kind of a failed person.  He doesn't have the backbone, or the confidence that Darth does. 

 It was one of those ideas that developed over time.  It had a lot of different incarnations.  Well, I respect you guys sticking with it.  Because it's one of those kind of ideas that you think happen, and then you're like, no.  But you stuck with this.  Absolutely brilliant.  Now, you are the voice, right? I'm the voice.  And you're in the suit.  So how did that come about? Well, when we first wrote the script, and we actually shot the episode, we didn't know who was going to be the voice.  We didn't have a voice.  All we had was a big, long PVC tube that we were like, well, whoever does the voice can speak through this tube and it'll sound like Darth Vader.  And we had a sound engineer who was able to digitally process someone's voice.  But we didn't have someone who knew how to do the impression.  I just said, well, I'll give it a try.  And then I remember, we watched all three movies, but we just watched the Darth Vader scenes.  It's really quick that way.  And I tried the voice and it ended up working out.  Fantastic.  Now, you said the voice is altered.  After you do it, then it's altered by a sound engineer.  Yeah. 

 But my understanding is that Lucas Productions liked the voice so much that you got hired, right? I've done three video games, four video games so far, and an episode of "Deal or No Deal. " Really? That's fantastic.  I love it.  Well, I want to see another clip.  I'm going to make sure people see more clips from your film.  One of you guys can set this up.  This is Clarissa being asked out by Lord Vader.  Can you set it up for us? This is Chad's sort of lame attempt to ask a girl out on a date.  This is Chad Vader, Darth Vader's younger brother, asking Clarissa out on a date.  Let's roll that clip.  ( clears throat ) I noticed your shift ends at 6:00 tonight.  Yeah, Lord Vader.  Please, call me Chad.  Yes, Chad.  I would like you to meet with me at Gino's Pizzeria to. . .  um, discuss some plans I have for a more powerful laser check-out system.  And for dinner.  What? Here, these are for you.  Oh! Um, thank you, Lord, I mean Chad. 

 I will return to this workstation at 6 PM to pick you up.  I have a date.  Chad has a date.  * Hey, Chad.  I just heard you and Clarissa are going out on a date.  It is not a date! It is purely to discuss the laser check-out system! Yeah, I bet you want to check out her laser system, eh, Chad? ( chokes ) That is such a funny clip.  Astute observers will note that at the beginning of that clip, he's actually humming the Cantina theme from "Star Wars. " Not a lot of people catch that.  Thank you for throwing that in there.  I like it.  Now, I have a question.  You're film is made for the Internet.  You thought about that.  How is that different, just the process, than if you were going to do it for the big screen.  Like, you know this is how it's going to be viewed, on this kind of screen, and on the Internet.  How do you do that differently? How do you think about it differently? Well, I think the thing about our work, is that we don't do it differently.  We really pay a lot of attention to production values and how good it looks, and really spending a lot of time on color correction and things like that.  Especially with Chad Vader, like, we really made an extra effort to make it, you know, really as good quality as possible, and pulled it off.  Because I don't think the joke would work if was a lesser quality.  I think a lot of people make that mistake.  They go, oh, it's only for the Internet, well screw it, I won't worry about that. 

 Yeah, let's not get a boom mic, you know, or let's not spend any time on the lighting.  But that stuff is really important to make your work kind of stand out.  There's so much stuff on YouTube.  I mean, you know, you have to pay attention to quality, as well as quantity.  And also, since we put the stuff out on DVDs since then.  That's even more important, because people are going to be watching it on their television.  Speaking of YouTube, you guys are like the bomb on YouTube.  How many times have people seen Chad Vader on YouTube? Just the first season of eight episodes, I think is over 30 million.  Thirty million people around the world have seen it.  You must not have been ready for that.  Were you ready for that? You liked what you did, but you must not have expected 30 million people.  We definitely didn't expect it.  We hoped.  But we had no idea, like that, you know, Chad Vader would be featured in all these newspapers and be in the New York Times, and around the world, too.  We have fans everywhere who write to us, from Brazil and Poland.  It's really great.  We're really lucky.  Well, you guys tapped into the "Star Wars" thing, you know, and that's a thing.  You guys, we're all roughly the same age.  So I remember I was ten when "Star Wars" came out.  That was a big deal, because you couldn't rent it. 

 You had to go.  I think I saw it 27 times.  You know, going to the mall.  My parents would drop me off.  What was your first "Star Wars" experience? From what I remember, I saw "Star Wars" at a drive-in in Milwaukee.  Sweet.  And it was great.  You can't get a bigger screen than that to see it on.  And you know, just having all the toys and the merchandise, I think, made a bigger impact on me than the movie itself.  Sure.  Because it was the first movie to have such a huge merchandising line.  And so, it really sort of drove that story into your consciousness, because you were able to take these little images and make up your own stories and have your own "Star Wars" adventure.  And I think that was a bigger thing for me and my brothers, you know, to extend that movie going experience to every day of our lives, basically.  Till today.  Till today, exactly.  And what was your first "Star Wars" experience? I know I saw "Return of the Jedi" in the theater, but I don't particularly remember where I saw the other ones.  I just remember seeing them a lot, like on VHS tapes.  But I also remember the toys.  I remember getting the Millennium Falcon.  It was this big toy.  And it had this little section that you could play in, right? But I remember in the movie, the ship was a lot bigger than the inside of what they had in the toy, and I was very frustrated with that. 

 So one day I was like, well, there's got to be more.  So I unscrewed the whole thing and just took it all apart.  Completely wrecked it.  And I was, "Oh, there's just a bunch of nothing inside. " So I was very disappointed.  Now, I was curious, you have Darth Vader's brother, Chad, and I was curious that you didn't go, you never went any further.  You don't have, like, Yoda's sister or Princess Leia's aunt.  You just stayed, and no other "Star Wars," I mean, there's probably a few inside jokes, but there's no other Star Wars stuff, you just stuck with that, why? I think that's kind of the obvious place to go and so we didn't want to go there.  We also wanted to create our own world, you know, that's what George Lucas did with "Star Wars. " And we sort of took part of one of his characters, but we wanted to create our own universe where Chad exists without other "Star Wars" characters, and we created a whole bunch of different characters to make it an ensemble series so that we could have sort of our own world and not, there's a lot of fan pressure to bring in Chewbacca and Boba Fett, and have them and have them be hilarious if they come in.  Right, but you don't want to do it.  Well, can you set up another clip for us, this one --, this one is the clip where now Chad gets in trouble during the day and now he's been sent to the night shift.  Why don't you tell us what happens here? This is, I believe, Chad is sort of, when he's forced to go on the night shift, he encounters sort of the weirdness off the night shift.  Weirdness, Chad Vader encounters the night shift.  Let's roll that clip.  Hello, Lionel, I'm Lord Vader, the new night shift manager.  25 cents a can.  What? Tomato sauce.  It's on sale.  That lady bought, like, ten cans.  She saved a lot. 

 Uh, what lady? She was here about an hour ago.  She saved a lot.  Yes.  Well, I must return to my-- Muffins, Swiss cheese, roast beef.  Okay.  Hey, do you like light bulbs? Commander Wickstrom reporting for duty, sir! I have grave news.  Where'd you get that hat? Thank you for transferring to the night shift, Jeremy.  There's-- Your assistance will be instrumental in my plan to regain the day manager position from Clint.  This will be a night long-remembered.  There's a guy sleeping on the meat.  Let's hit it.  * You guys! Who took my meat pillow? You cannot sleep in this establishment.  Clint used to let me.  Clint is no longer the night manager.  I am.  You're a bad night manager.  He's right.  Lord Vader! Now, Jeremy, remember the plan.  There's somebody shoplifting in aisle seven! No! * Kill.  I'm sorry, Lord Vader! ( lightsaber hums ) ( screams ) All too easy.  How could you not like that clip? What's funny is, sitting here with you guys, and we have the camera people here, and people standing around, and you guys have seen this a million times, you're laughing through this whole clip. 

 We actually haven't seen it for a long time, I don't think, so it's kind of, it's like we don't even remember what that is, like, "Who made that?" It's funny, it's so funny! Did you get permission from George Lucas to do this, I mean, this is "Star Wars. " Well, not in any official sense did we get permission, but he, hiring Matt to do the voice of Darth Vader for video games and for TV, that was sort of like permission in a way.  And he also gave us the 2007 George Lucas Fan Film Award.  Wow.  But you don't have, like, written permission.  No, we were a little worried about that in the beginning.  I can see.  Like, "Well, you know, what's gonna happen?" But we figured, like, we can make it or not make it.  We can sit and worry about it and not do anything, or we can do something and at the worst we'll get a cease-and-desist letter.  It's not. . .  That'd be neat to have, a framed cease-and-desist letter from George Lucas.  The thing is, I think, the fact that you did it with high caliber, and took all the effort, I'm sure when they saw it, that must have helped.  Yeah, definitely.  I think they definitely appreciated that, and we actually pitched the idea to a couple places before we made it, and it didn't go anywhere, and I think it was because they were afraid, and so with the Internet and with YouTube, we thought, let's just make it ourselves, we don't have to wait for these people, we can just make it, and so we did.  Ask permission, wait, how does it go? Ask for forgiveness, not permission? Yes.  Okay, so what happened.  When you won the award, tell me about that, did you actually get, did George Lucas actually hand you the award? We weren't at the ceremony.  So we just heard about it.  You just heard about it, you didn't even go? We had, one of our cast members lives in LA and he accepted the award on our behalf. 

 George Lucas wasn't actually at that ceremony.  He did make an announcement.  A press release.  "Congratulations to Matt Sloan and Aaron Yoda for, oh, I'm sorry, Yonda. " Hey, you got that.  George Lucas said my name, that's all I care about.  That's fantastic.  He said my name correctly.  So I'm excited about that.  But in his mind he was spelling it S-L-O-N-E, so, yeah.  He misspelled it in his mind, and mispronounced it there.  Well, let's see another clip, and this one I quite like.  This is, maybe you can set this up.  This is Chad after he quit his manager job.  Can you set it up for us? He's at a bar.  And he's drowning his sorrows in chocolatinis.  Drowning his sorrows in chocolatinis.  Well, let's roll that clip.  Hey, you ready for another chocolatini? Yes, make it a double.  Little early to be drinking so much, eh? I love chocolatinis.  They are my favorite little playmate. 

 They don't betray you.  ( belches ) Sorry, Chad, I have to go.  Guess who's taking out your little sweetie pie tomorrow night? I quit.  That job meant a lot to you, huh? Yes, she did.  She? Clarissa.  My supposed former girlfriend.  She's out on a date with my arch-enemy, Clint.  You know, they're sitting right over there.  ( sighs ) Yes, I know.  You know what's gonna happen next time? Yeah, like that! You like my fist, sweetie pie? All up in your face? He really isn't that bad.  Not that bad? Have you seen my neck? It's all grabbed.  That son of a B grabbed me.  So what's up, you having a good time or what? Get out of my way, chair.  Excuse me.  ( belches ) What a coincidence.  Two little lovebirds are having their little date.  Better not mess with our date, drunkie, you got that? Maybe I should mess with your face a bit, you got that? Stop it, you two! You want some of this? Then come get it.  Oh my God, I would so love to have made this film.  I want to be in one of these.  So, what was your budget for this? Somebody had to buy that suit, that's a nice suit, what did it cost you to make it? The suit was kind of a big expense.  The suit was like $600. 

 It's a great suit.  And yeah, we pay a little bit of money for the grocery store, not a ton, and that's probably one of the big advantages of being here in Wisconsin, not LA or New York, we didn't have to pay $3,000 to rent a grocery store.  Yeah, we're able to get locations.  So what do you do, you just knock on, that's the Willy Street Co-Op, right? Yeah.  Just knock on the door and say, "Hey, I'm making this film, can we use your store?" It was hard to knock on the door because it's one of those automatic sliding doors.  Every time we tried to knock, it would open, so that was like an hour lost right there.  And they probably saw you, and that was embarrassing.  So we just went in the store, and we had actually filmed things there before, so we had sort of a relationship with Willy Street, and they're really laid back, so we kind of told them what we wanted to do, and said we wanted to shoot after hours so we wouldn't interrupt business or anything.  And they were really enthusiastic about it, and they have been to this day.  We're currently shooting season two of the series.  And yeah, we get to go in there, and they're really great.  So, that doesn't cost you any money, and then you have to buy the suit.  And then you have, do you make money off doing this? Can you make, are you making money, or can someone make money off doing this and having this be on YouTube? You said you're doing some DVD sales as well, can you make money off this? Well, we are.  We are involved in YouTube's revenue-sharing program.  Explain that, explain it just lightly to people, how does that work? If you're a partner with them, you post your material and they attach ads to it.  Ad overlays, and they have ads scrolling across the screen, so they give you a very small percentage of that.  Per view, you get. . .  So it serves you that you have 30 million views, you got to have a lot of things.  That's definitely a big part of it, but the other part of it is that we've just sort of used Chad Vader as a jumping off point to get other work. 

 Absolutely.  So we've got lots of different kind of income streams happening.  It's a great calling card.  And do you guys have day jobs? Or are you filmmakers for a living? We are now filmmakers for a living.  We quit our day jobs a few years ago.  Two and a half years ago.  That's fantastic.  Most people still have the day jobs.  Where'd you get the actors, you have some good, really funny moments in there.  Were they all just local theater people, just friends? Most of them are local actors and actresses.  Some of them are our friends, some of them we've met, they've seen our work and they contacted us, like Clarissa, who plays Chad's potential love interest.  She's from Appleton, she saw one of our movies at a film festival, gave us a call, and said, "I'd love to be involved with something. " And we were just at that time looking for someone to play this part in Chad Vader, and we said, "Come on down, we'll give you a try at this. " Can you imagine being the actress, being like, "You want to be Chad, Darth Vader's brother's love interest?" They call and say, "Yes, I do, absolutely!" What advice, I mean, there are a lot of young filmmakers right now, new filmmakers, I guess, watching this.  More than ever.  And they're saying to themselves, there they are, they're successful, 30 million hits, they're doing this for a living.  What's your advice to them? I guess I would say, my advice would be to keep making videos all the time.  Because when we had our day jobs, when we weren't working we were making videos pretty much, 90% of our free time, just trying to make something every month.  And that's how you get better.  You keep doing it and doing it and keep doing it.  Honing our skills, throwing stuff against the wall, taking a million different ideas and just doing them all, and seeing which one's gonna work, and which one's gonna stick with people. 

 And taking risks.  I think a lot of people think that you have to make something that appeals to the masses, you have to make something that appeals to yourself, and that's what's really gonna catch people's attention, because it's gonna be unexpected, and it's gonna be personal, and it's gonna be interesting to watch, it's not gonna be the same crap that everybody has seen a million times.  Nobody wants to see that a million and one times.  So you have to be original and listen to your own instincts.  I want to do another clip, and this one is definitely one of my favorite clips, I laughed so hard watching this, I re-wound it like three or four times.  Can you set this one up for us? Yeah, this is the first big confrontation between Chad and Clint.  Okay, here you go, let's roll that clip.  I've been waiting for this for a long time.  And the dark is not gonna stop me.  You underestimate the power of the dark.  Emergency power, idiot.  Didn't know about that, huh? You are the worst day manager ever.  It's useless to resist your mind.  Oop.  This is so easy.  Hey, check that out over there! ( laughs ) You know, Chad, you are such a loser.  You're a loser because you suck.  You've got your head up your butt! And furthermore, I hate you.  You're a total A-hole.  A total (---).  He's right, I am a failure! Chad, don't listen to him. 

 Lord Vader, I believe in you.  You! What did I tell you about that stupid helmet? No! ( Clint laughs ) No! My helmet! ( laughter continues ) Lord Vader, help me! Chad, everyone here believes in you.  No, they don't.  They all despise me.  Hey, I believe in you.  Chad, we believe in you.  I believe in you, Chad.  I also believe in elves.  I believe in you.  Chad.  ( speaking Spanish ) Chad, I'm the mayor, and I believe in you.  I believe in you.  I found the goat's milk.  I believe in you, Chad, I believe in you.  Actually not the first confrontation between them, that's the final confrontation.  Yeah, more of a final.  So, you got Mayor Dave in there? The mayor of Madison.  Yeah, twice.  So, where is Chad headed next? You're doing an episode, you're doing season two.  Yeah, we're six episodes into season two, those are currently on YouTube, available.  I'll be there this afternoon. 

 Great.  And we've got a lot of other series and videos that we make, other than Chad Vader.  We just did one called "Terrorized by a Bear. " It's about two guys trapped in a house by a bear.  It has weapons.  The bear has weapons? Yes, of course.  And so yeah, we're just, we've got a lot of new ideas that we're working on.  Oh my God, well, they're fantastic, totally unique, I absolutely love it.  We'll come back with more.  Send me stuff, come back with more, we love having you, I think Chad Vader is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.  I love watching it.  Thank you for very much.  Yeah, sure.  And thank all you guys for watching today, it has been a total blast.  For more information on "Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager" please go to our Web site at wpt. org/directorscut While you're there send us an email 'cause we love hearing from you.  I'm your host, Charles Monroe-Kane, and for absolutely everyone here at "Director's Cut," thank you very much for joining us.  Check the gate.  I am the day manager of this facility.  What is the nature of your distress? I bought these chips here, and they're stale.  Yes. 

 I can feel your anger.  It is strong inside you.  Um, I want my money back.  Release your anger.  Only your hatred can destroy me.  Yeah, can I talk to someone else? Strike me down with your hate, and claim your refund.  Did I say these were stale? I think they're great! Weak-minded fool.  Your power is nothing compared to mine.  (Voice on PA): Chad Vader to aisle five for vomit cleanup.  Chad to aisle five for vomit. ECHO is on.