Off the wire: Tiki TV Toasts Success
Me-TV Caught In The Web, www.computerpoweruser.com
May 2006 • Vol.6 Issue 5, Page(s) 83-85 in print issue
Behind The Vodcasts That Rock
Jeff "Dr. Tiki" Macpherson on the "Tiki Bar TV" set, with his trusty Apple G5 editing deck.
“My neighbors must be getting suspicious,” admits Jeff Macpherson, creator and star of iTunes hit “Tiki Bar TV.” As well they should because Jeff turns his place into a Tiki hut to film a strange sitcom where a bartender, a babe, and Jeff as “Dr. Tiki” weave scenarios around an exotic drink recipe in this tricked-out bachelor pad. “There’s no script of any kind,” says the good doctor. He and his cast start with a basic premise and “we make it up as we go along” and then he pulls it into some kind of sense on the editing deck.
Weird but highly watchable, “Tiki Bar TV” has collected over 260,000 subscribers for the five-minute episode.(ed. note: Leo LaPorte's This Week in Tech also has about 260,000 subscribers) In fact, Steve Jobs used a clip from the show during his fall introduction of the new iPods and the addition of video to iTunes. Macpherson’s show had been available through RSS feeds since early in 2005. When he pitched the program to Apple execs last year, they first realized it was just as easy to hook a video file to RSS as a podcast audio file. Dr Tiki himself is no newcomer to show biz; he started as an indie and commercial filmmaker who moved to script writing in recent years. The emergence of cheap Web video distribution lured him back into film, so “Tiki Bar TV” is unusually well-edited and polished.
Like a lot of vodcasts, some of what is best about “Tiki Bar TV” is a necessary consequence of haphazard production and catch-as-catch-can, low-end technology. Macpherson uses an old consumer-grade minicam, a newer three-chip Sony DSR-200, and a borrowed microphone. He has a two-cam setup in his apartment but no one’s left to operate the cameras when he’s in the scene, so you only see panning and zooming when Dr. Tiki himself is off camera. His two stage lights, discarded by a production house, have a habit of shorting out in midscene. And that unique soft-focus and vibrant coloring of “Tiki Bar TV” is a necessary accommodation to working with high-end and low-end input devices.
May 2006 • Vol.6 Issue 5, Page(s) 83-85 in print issue
Behind The Vodcasts That Rock
Jeff "Dr. Tiki" Macpherson on the "Tiki Bar TV" set, with his trusty Apple G5 editing deck.
“My neighbors must be getting suspicious,” admits Jeff Macpherson, creator and star of iTunes hit “Tiki Bar TV.” As well they should because Jeff turns his place into a Tiki hut to film a strange sitcom where a bartender, a babe, and Jeff as “Dr. Tiki” weave scenarios around an exotic drink recipe in this tricked-out bachelor pad. “There’s no script of any kind,” says the good doctor. He and his cast start with a basic premise and “we make it up as we go along” and then he pulls it into some kind of sense on the editing deck.
Weird but highly watchable, “Tiki Bar TV” has collected over 260,000 subscribers for the five-minute episode.(ed. note: Leo LaPorte's This Week in Tech also has about 260,000 subscribers) In fact, Steve Jobs used a clip from the show during his fall introduction of the new iPods and the addition of video to iTunes. Macpherson’s show had been available through RSS feeds since early in 2005. When he pitched the program to Apple execs last year, they first realized it was just as easy to hook a video file to RSS as a podcast audio file. Dr Tiki himself is no newcomer to show biz; he started as an indie and commercial filmmaker who moved to script writing in recent years. The emergence of cheap Web video distribution lured him back into film, so “Tiki Bar TV” is unusually well-edited and polished.
Like a lot of vodcasts, some of what is best about “Tiki Bar TV” is a necessary consequence of haphazard production and catch-as-catch-can, low-end technology. Macpherson uses an old consumer-grade minicam, a newer three-chip Sony DSR-200, and a borrowed microphone. He has a two-cam setup in his apartment but no one’s left to operate the cameras when he’s in the scene, so you only see panning and zooming when Dr. Tiki himself is off camera. His two stage lights, discarded by a production house, have a habit of shorting out in midscene. And that unique soft-focus and vibrant coloring of “Tiki Bar TV” is a necessary accommodation to working with high-end and low-end input devices.
posted by Robert Martens at Tuesday, May 02, 2006
2 Comments:
Look at you, rubbing elbows with the big dogs.
As Seamus can certainly point out, if you don't agree to the blood test, how are they going to prove you are the father. No worrys from where I'm standing.
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