Thursday, January 18, 2007

Uhm…Yeah. That’s Just Creepy

This post is off target.

It does not deal with fatherhood, parenting, babies, infants, kids, or twins. Nor does it have anything to do with single births or multiple births, but a blogger’s gotta keep his keywords up.

Deep down, I want to start another blog about pop culture, but I really don’t have the time/inclination to do all the work that is required for a second successful blog (if this one can be seen as successful).

So instead, I’ll just diverge from my normal daddy-related blogging. But only today.

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There is an entire industry built up around dead celebrities (DCs).

The list of DCs selling items is long and we’ve all seen at least one example; Steve McQueen, in all his Bullitt coolness, hitching his casket to Ford’s new version of their pony car. Or the ultimate idealize American cowboy, John Wayne, loading his gun with the silver bullets of Coors Light. And of course Audrey Hepburn, bridging the Gap of death via dance and peg leg jeans.

And who can forget Woody Allen’s ‘Zelig,’ Steve Martin’s ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,’ or ‘Forrest Gump’? While the DCs weren’t selling anything, they were still dead.

The main purveyor of dead celebs isCorbis – a stock photography agency purchased another company to get into the business.

Normally, these dead actors aren’t really acting, at least, not again. Instead, they digitally ‘pull’ the actors out of the scene, digitally blur their lips, insert a new set, and hire some voice-over person to do an imitation of the DC reading the new script.

The latest one is of Orville Redenbacher, back from the dead to continue peddling his popcorn.

Only, it’s different than the usually digital chicanery.

I think what they’ve done is stuck a ‘Orville’ mask on some actor, then hired a voice-over person to imitation Orville’s dialect and diction.

But the problem is that the actor’s eyes look dead and voice seems… off. Or perhaps it’s the movement of the mouth that’s off. Now that I think about it that makes sense. They’ve got so much make up/prosthetics on the actor, he can’t effectively speak the lines, so they digitize it, making it look wrong.

Check it out for yourself - Orville Redenbacher.

You can tell that something isn’t right with it, but it really looks creepy on a TV.

That’s it. It’s Friday, so after the weekend I will again be giving you all things twins.
This weekend I have two day intensive birthing class, so hopefully that will supply lots of fodder for the blog.
Hope your weekend goes well.