Boardlords-Straight To (Online) Video

Since I just discovered that you can post video straight to Blogger, I figured I would throw up the two Boardlords videos that I have done in 2008. No links, no YouTube, just click and watch.

If you are in a band and want a video produced along these lines, contact me via my website scottfrosch.com







Now, part two of this entry: I'm excited to announce that we're going back to shoot a video for the third single from the Boardlords new album "Wax Museum". You'll have to wait to see what song it is. The shoot date is Monday, September 8th in Yonkers, NY. I'm looking for production assistance, since the shoot is going to be a bit involved. So if you are a friend of mine, or some random stranger who surfed onto this site, contact me if you are interested in helping out.

If I said it was a paying gig, I'd be flat-out lying, but I'm sure there will be food & beverages provided. And ladies, it's your chance to hang out with the world-famous Mr. Furious and the rest of the band.

Burning Sensations

So I guess you can upload video straight onto the blog page? Well, I'm giving it a shot today. This a video from Sunday, 8.24.08 at Scalzi Park. The skating itself is nothing impressive (with a few obvious exceptions), but I'm quite interested in the background music I used, "Belly of a Whale" by Burning Sensations.

If you told me this band was English Beat or Ranking Roger or General Public, I would have believed you, until I investigated further. See the video here. The video was light years ahead of it's time. Some of the effects & transitions must have been fairly difficult to achieve (and time consuming) with early 80's technology.

Plus they were parodying other videos, (Jacko, The Motels) which is a concept that got popular much later. And while a horrible, horrible fashion faux pas, the band members had goatees (just goatees, no mustaches) a trend that picked up steam in the horrible 90's (especially with that contemporary swing movement. Ugghhhh)
The icing on the cake was the final shot/album cover which just screams 80's Americana.
Greatest. Generation. Ever.

The "Brews Times"-Narragansett Beer Pt. 2

One might think that I have abandoned my flourishing video production enterprise for a career in beer reviewery. Well, since the feedback for Chinese Takeout was so poor, I may have to do just that.

Anyways, I'd like to report that Colonial Wine & Spirits on Scribner Avenue now carries Narragansett Beer in 12 pack bottles. And the best part is that it's under 10 bucks before tax & deposit. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I brought two six packs to the counter and was enthusiastically informed that 12 packs were now available.

This information is only pertinent to the random Norwalk beer afficionado on the west side of town who somehow surfed onto this site. But for the rest of my friends in distant places, demand that your local liquor store or distributor get this beer in stock. Now.

Speaking of beer & commerce, I found this bit of good news for some local business owners. "Stress buster" indeed. On that note, kiss my ass, tourism. We just built a nice stone patio in my backyard. The number of gallons of gas it takes to get to it: Zero.

The "Brews Times"-Golden Anniversary

Occasionally I get feedback and queries from my loyal readers. Old drinking buddy John Scott asks, "Whatever happened to Golden Anniversary Beer?" Good question.

Marist alumni will remember the six packs in the gold cans, readily available for less than two dollars each. A cheap alternative to the oh-so-popular King Cobra 40 ouncers. This beer was bordering on flavorless, but what little flavor it had was not good.

A quick trip to the internet archives reveals that Koch's Golden Anniversary is a product of the High Falls Brewing Company in Rochester, New York.

The print on the "GA" can claimed that this premium beer was the winner of some obscure competition (No doubt sponsored by the brewers themselves). In all seriousness, Golden Anniversary actually won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival. Of course, this was when the contest was in it's infancy, and not too many breweries entered American-style lagers.

John Scott asked if I had recently drank a can of Golden Anniversary, to which I replied, "Not since Marist." But then I thought about it: I had a can on the set of "Wee", courtesty of Rob M. Where did he get it? We may never know.

So the next time you and the gang want to unwind with a frosty cold one, make it a Koch's Golden Anniversary. On second thought, don't. This really was NOT a good beer.

Please share your GAB stories in the comments section.

Chinese Takeout: The Reviews Are Coming In....

....but not from you! I must have sent this link out to over 40 of my closest friends. And only one reply? (Kris, you have some good Karma headed your way.) What's the matter, too busy forwarding some har-larious internet joke around the office?

Well, here's what some of the industry insiders are saying:

-"I think I was the most impressed with the quality of the key you were able to get using Keylight... Great job..."

-"...sharp azz (ass) key"

-"That... funkin'... rocked!"

-"...that was some of the cleanest indie greenscreen usage i've seen in quite some time!"



They say be nice to the little people on the way up, because you'll meet them on the way down. But I'm never coming down, so who cares!

The "Brews Times"-Narragansett Beer: A Review

Attention! A notice for all Norwalk beer enthusiasts: The Famous Narragansett Beer has made a splash on the scene. Forget that Pabst Blue Ribbon popular with all the hipsters. This is the real deal, straight from the home of one of the best surf breaks in the North East. It's a refreshing no-nonsense lager, perfect for summertime imbibing. Great after a day of pulling backside grinds at the local skatepark or pulling weeds in your backyard.

Hell, it was good enough for Quint, the curmudgeonly old sea captain in Jaws. And you know he didn't take crap from anyone.

Narraganset is available at Colonial Wine & Spirits off Connecticut Avenue for $5.91 a six pack. At these prices, you'll be sticking it to the man, what with gas over four dollars a gallon. And at less than six bucks a sixer, it's a much safer bet than my fiasco earlier this year with the Heineken Beertender. The only drawback is that they are not available in twelve packs. Yet.

BTW, Frosch's "Brews Times" is in no way affiliated with JB's "News & Pints". Any similarities are completely coincidental.

Chinese Takeout-The World Premiere

Alright, I've been talking this thing up for some time now. Now, with no further Apu, here is the debut of "Chinese Takeout", the latest music video from the Boardlord's new album, "Wax Museum". Directed and edited by Scott Frosch.

I want to take this time to thank the guys in the band for giving me creative control on this one. Working in the video production industry, quite often I'm stifled by clients & agencies who want to play everything straight and narrow. But the Boardlords give me the opportunity to go all out with my ideas. So again, thanks. And thanks to all the people who helped out behind the scenes, namely PDA and Rob Koch. Alright, enough with the sentimental crap, let's get ready to watch the video.

I'm giving you a few options for your viewing pleasure:

1. The hi-res version straight from my website. (takes some time to load up, but it looks the best.)

2. Vimeo (Good, not great)

3. The YouTube version (A last resort for the computer illiterate)



So leave me some feedback on whether or not you liked the video. And BTW, if the first fifteen seconds of the video makes any sense to you, consider yourself "totally cool". Thanks for watching.

Elvis Has Returned...To the Dollar Store

WARNING: Extreme "Who Gives a Sh*t?" Content:

Anyone who hung out with me last summer will remember my brief fascination with the "Elvis" Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Combining the goodness of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with banana flavoring, in no doubt, an homage to the King's love of fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches.

Well, the other day my wife and I were in the $5 Store* on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk and found a box of them. (photo courtesty of my cell phone)


Keep in mind these things were in a limited run last summer and haven't been available since. We bought a few of them on Tuesday. Do you think they're still good? I'm willing to bet they are fine. In fact, if I don't get sick, I'm also willing to bet that I'll go back and buy what's left. I went thru two boxes of them last summer.

Wait a minute, closer inspection of the photo above...Cinnabon makes a snack available in the grocery store? I wonder if it's any good?

*What's up with the $5 store anyways? (I can't remember the official name, it's next to Rio Mexican Restaurant. Let's call it "$5 and a Dream") Is the $5 Store the flagship of the dollar stores?

BTW, they've got an actual grocery store in there. With a frozen isle and everything. You can get economy bacon & TV dinners. Why go to Hallmark for $3 greeting cards when you can pay fifty cents? They also have EVERY jumbo size candy that you would pay four bucks for at the movie theatre. Go there & stock up before you get gouged at The Dark Knight.

Chinese Takeout-Part 3

My eyes are bleary. I've been working in After Effects for the last 4 hours or so. It's all over but the rendering.

So before I get ahead of myself too much, let me set the stage.....the Crystal Theatre that is. We convened last night for the second and final night of shooting for the new Boardlord's video, "Chinese Takeout". And if the original footage wasn't funny enough, wait till you see the final cut. I busted out the green screen for Monday night's shoot, as you can see in some of the shots.



Is this a break...or part of the video itself?



Nice lens flare courtesy of the separation light.



And what theatre would be complete w/o a Hammond organ and drum set so we could play some old-time gospel music?



So I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I should have the premiere of the video up on this site in the next week or so. Stay tuned....

Big thanks to PDA & Koch for lending a much-needed hand. Also thanks to the staff of the Crystal Theatre for letting us shoot.

Not much activity on this blog lately. I've had a real busy summer. Hopefully more posts & pics will be forthcoming. Blah blah, who cares, right?

Shut Up and Skate

So much whining and moaning on StamfordSkatepark.com Enough already. Just shred!


New skate video up on my Vimeo site. Peep it here. Plenty of boarding this July 4th weekend, including a visit from the great one, Murph. (As seen in the above photo, courtesy of PDA)

The video was literally slapped together so that my fellow Scalzi brethren could have a look, ASAP. Shot with the Canon XH-A1 and edited quickly in Final Cut Pro. Hey, check out the cool "glass bug" title feature that I just learned.

Excellent holiday weekend. I don't want to go back to work.

Seriously Stamford, Get It Together.

Enough with the weekend festivals, parades, marathons and such and such. Alright, I'm not against raising money for charity, but someone has to formulate a better game plan. Traffic this morning (6/29) was a complete cluster f*ck in the areas of Summer, Washington and God knows where else due to some kind of 10K or fun run or whatever. There were more cops and traffic cones downtown than Lindsey Lohan has Page Six mentions.

With our stagnant economy and outrageous gas prices, shouldn't we be making area restaurants and businesses readily available to the consumer? Or is the answer, 'block off every available road and create unnecessary traffic jams?' If you're going to have these events, there has to be a more logical way to accommodate traffic. You can't just block off streets North, South, East and West, forcing people to drive all over creation to get to a simple destination.

And BTW, who are these kooks that are running around in 90 degree weather? What are you, insane??? "Hello, I have dehydration on line one, shall I tell them you're in a meeting with heat stroke?"

Well, we all know the only reason I care about Stamford traffic on a Sunday morning is that I'm trying to make my way to Scalzi Park from Norwalk. So let's take a look at some pictures from this morning's session. Due to this whole traffic conundrum, I abandoned my car at the corner of Bridge and Summer and skated to the park. Which kind of sucked, but it's no big whoop. As you can see, the theme for today was "shirtless". It was REALLY hot out.

First up: Adam is really taking those frontside ollies out of the park.



Here I am having some fun in the shallow end of things.



Oh no he didn't! Ben "The French Assassin" Plomion, absolutely killing it with a clean kickflip over the barrel.



Skate photos by PDA.

On a different note, check out these Jeff Grosso Vans that are coming out real soon. (I'm told in a couple of weeks by Old School Skaters Online.) I'll believe it when I see it.

Scalzi Barbeque-Photo Roundup

Time for another barbeque at Scalzi Skatepark, this one taking place on Saturday, June 21st, which is (believe it or not) National Go Skate Day. While I'm sure groms descended en masse on the streets of Manhattan, we kept it local.

I forgot my camera, so there's not a lot of documentation of the actual barbeque. But PDA got the shot below: Myself queued up in line for Billy Bonebrake's famous hamburgers hot off the grille.


I kept the local groms hopped up on sugar with a seemingly endless supply of Cherry Pepsi. Parents, you're welcome.

Shades of the great Chris Miller. Gene busting out a tuck-knee frontside in the deep end.



Billy Bonebrake, the man can carve it up and make a mean potato salad.



PDA, full coping contact in the deep end. By his account, he got pretty worked by the end of the day. Sometimes those knee & elbow pads slip off, rendering them 100% useless.



Jim Murphy stopped up from Queens. (Wounded Knee Skateboards) He pretty much killed it with Madonnas, big frontside airs and tweaked inverts. Did anybody get that guy a hot dog?



I think I was at the park from about 10:30 till 4. A full day of skating, and I even went back for some more the next morning.

Good barbeque. See you at the next one.

Chinese Takeout-Behind the Scenes

OK, back to business. No more posts about sub-par beer dispensing devices. In today's installment we will look at the hotness that is After Effect's Keylight 1.2.

Now of course, I don't want to give too much away of the new Boardlord's video, "Chinese Takeout", but here's a taste with a few production stills. Believe me, the best is under lock and key until the video is done.



Exhibit A kinda has a "Blade Runner" feel, doesn't it? But I assure you, it's the skyline of Shanghai, not Los Angeles circa 2019. Maybe I need to add more random explosions and spinner cars in the background.

Exhibit B shows you how nicely Keylight works.



Look how wrinkly my green screen was. (Not to mention the Pug) I gotta steam that thing or something. But with just a few tweaks in After Effects, I managed to produce a nice key. And I'm sure someone more competent could rock this way better.

Hi, I'm a Mac.
I'm a PC.
I'm a dog in a Chinese takeout container.

Yup, you gotta love the white infinity screen.




So the biggest stumbling block I've run into lately is the transition to High Def. (If you consider HDV High Def) I mean, it looks great, but it brings post production to a crashing halt. Trying to render sixty seconds worth of motion graphics on my old G5. (I've got one of the last PowerPCs before they made the Intel transition) Forget it, I had to tweak the settings big time, and even then, it takes a looongggg time. It's worth it though. I want to get as far away from SD as allowable. Well, like I said, thank God the song is only sixty seconds long. That's it: From here on out, no music videos longer than a minute.

Alright, break is over. Time to keep working on this project. When the video is done you'll hear about it (and see it!) here first.

The Beertender: Complete Junk.

I had an overwhelming feeling of nausea Saturday night. At first I attributed the urge to vomit to the Lindsey Lohan movie I had just watched. But sadly, it wasn't that simple. Yup, I had fallen victim to some kind of barf bug that's going around.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Before any of this unpleasantness occurred, I bought the Beertender. And in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "I think I made a big mistake." Not that there's anything terribly wrong with Heineken, but I realized after setting this mini bar up and having a few pints, I was locked into drinking Heineken for the unforeseeable future. And that scared the hell out of me!

Other problem areas:
1. The beer came out too foamy
2. It gave off an odor reminesent of the Nite Cap's floor
3. It's noisy (runs on a fan)
4. It takes up a lot of counter space

Fortunately, the place I bought it from was good enough to take it back, so I won't even bring them into this story. So thank you for the "no questions asked" return! BTW, when I "untapped" the keg, it shot beer all over our kitchen floor....so that was fun.

Two days later and I'm still not 100% up to par. The thought of drinking beer is making me want to puke right now. Moral of the story? Buyer's remorse. (Is that a moral? I don't know, I'm still sick, gimme a break)

The Beertender: Gotta Have It, Or Complete Junk?

Boy, is it hot out. Let's jump the gun and say that summer is officially here. And as noted by this bit of rebellious grafitti, the price of gas isn't coming down anytime soon. On that note, in the words of Boston greats Gang Green, "Let's Drink Some Beer!" But I'm all about keeping things as cheap as possible when imbibing. Or am I?

Last night I saw a commercial for the Heineken Beertender. (Manufactured by coffee giants Krups, who may or may not have had involvement in some WWII conspiranoia, according to some sources) Anyways as mentioned, I am one of the biggest cheapskates around. But when I saw the spot for the Beertender, I said to myself, "I gotta get this!" The long and short of the spot was "turn your house into a bar". I have seen the results firsthand, and I must say, it's a fantastic idea. Well, I couldn't find said commercial on YouTube, but this gives a pretty good visual of how the system works.

So, these bad boys go for about $300. Ten bucks cheaper if you get the version that doesn't let you adjust the temperature. But if I can't have my beer at a chilly 36 degrees, than the terrorists have won. You also have use a disposable line every time you tap one of those kegs. And what does a Heineken mini keg cost these days, 20 bucks? I'm hoping these things take off here in the U.S. and other companies like Amstel get on board. And could Guinness successfully manufacture a mini-keg? I mean, we did put a man on the moon, right?

So what do you think, is the Beertender worth it? Or a complete ripoff? I say to hell with the recession....it's Miller time! (Or as the case may be, Heineken time)

Return to the Boardlords

What is going on here? Well, I'll tell you. Last week we shot principal footage for the Boardlord's next video, "Chinese Takeout". In true 21st Century fashion, I just filmed singer Steve on green screen. Compositing to follow, and this one should be pretty good.


If you're wondering about the pictures below, they are a couple of production stills from Paul David Anthony's film, "Friendship", which I helped him out with on 5/26. Looking forward to seeing the release.

California-Part Two

Back to the pictures and commentary. Where was I? Oh yeah, remember this guy? Conroy, alive and well. I hadn't seen him since the crazy Denver days of 97-98.


We all ate breakfast at this place:



The Hash House specializes in novelty-size portions of food. For example, this was my pancake. Now who's gonna be able to finish that?
(Hand in picture for scale)
Regardless, it was delicious. But as Matt put it, "This is ridiculous."

Not to be outdone, you should have seen the gigantic Eggs Benedict/chicken fried steak that a woman was eating at the table next to us. I would have taken a picture of it, but, you know.

We headed up to Los Angles on Wednesday, May 14th. First stop was Venice Beach, stemming from my facination with the film "Dogtown and Z-Boyz". Didn't get a lot of pictures, but here's the Santa Monica Pier:


Look! Check it out! We were in an actual LA traffic jam. I-95 has got nothing on the 405!


Next stop: Meeting up with Cousin Curt, AKA the Mayor of Studio City. He gave us a tour of Hollywood, including a trip up to the famous sign...


...which moved on to happy hour on the Sunset Strip.


The LA tour ended with our obligatory visit to the sushi place near CBS studios.
See that octopus in the background? I ate that!
See the Korean beer? I drank it.
I love-a Sushi! I love Lucy!


Parting shot: Solana Beach. That's all I got.


This concludes the "vacation photos" segment for the foreseeable future, cuz I'm broke.

Thanks for looking.

California-Part One

I wanted to get some of these pictures and stories up, but I don't think I can do it in one shot. Therefore, I'm going to break it down into a few installments. So here we go:

Friday, May 9th, AKA, Day one: We left around 6 AM East Coast Time. Even with a layover in Chicago, we still managed to get into San Diego at 10:30 AM! Awesome. We had the whole day ahead of us. Leading us to our first destination, In-N-Out Burger, which begs the question: Do I travel 3,000 miles for the skateboarding, or the niche fast food restaurant that can't be found on the East Coast?



Our hotel was near the San Diego Harbor and had a stunning view....of this bank to wall and killer transitioned curb thingy! Yes, occasionally I would bust out the board and attempt a few wall rides before security took notice. Evidentally, I was not the first one to give it a try.

I also managed to take a quick trip to the Coronado Skatepark at Tidelands Park on Friday the 9th. It's pretty small, but really fun to ride and super-smooth. I didn't get any pictures of it, but I'm just trying to fill the text space to the right of this picture of our lovely Holiday Inn parking lot.

Bloopity bloopity bloopity-doo. Hey-hey-hey! Isn't skateboarding fun? In-N-Out Double Double Combo Meal!

Moving on (before we get to some skating pictures and content), I'd like to mention this great breakfast cafe, Perry's. It's very close to Old Town on the Pacific Highway.
Excellent in both the food and the decor, which is fantastically right out of the 70's, and there's no reason to change a damn thing.
"Any of you pigs move and I'll execute every last f-ing one of ya!"
Right?

After convening with Leach at his house on Saturday, I requested his services guiding us to the new skatepark in Pala. The journey would take us northeast of the city past avocado stands, lemon trees and tweakers. On that note, here we have the Pala Pipes.




Very skateable, but I was more concerned about getting to the skatepark which was just a few minutes down the road. We also stopped off to check out the legendary Pala Pool, which has sadly been filled in with dirt, but it was praised highly. I didn't get any pictures of the remains, just some video.



So here we are at the new Pala Skatepark, right down the road from the casino. If skating isn't your thing, you could enjoy the sounds of Ringo Starr or UB40 or check out the gaming tables.

First shot is just kind of an overview. There's a ton of nice stuff to ride, a combi pool, a great little kidney, a snake run and a street course.


From what I gather, it gets really hot in Pala, so hitting the park in mid-May was a great idea.


I wish I could have come back for a "day two". Easily my favorite park of the trip, but a little out of the way from everything.


Backside grind....woohoo!


"Yeah, um, see that spot right there? I WON'T be doing anything interesting there."


So yeah, after we skated we headed back to Ocean Beach and at went to Ortega's which is one of my favorites. Then Leach threw a party for us and all the OB regulars.

Bored yet? OK. This concludes installment #1 of the California saga.