Trailer Trash

Last Thursday, as I was driving to Orem to "teach" my HR class at "UVU" (ironic quotes intentional and sort of rude), I had an idea.  It was an idea that came as a response to something I had heard the week before.  The something that I had heard the week before was from an internet radio podcast that I listen to occasionally.  The podcast is called Movie BS with Bayer and Snider and is broadcast from Cascadia.fm, a Portland, Oregon-based internet radio station.  Snider is a guy that was at BYU when I was there.  He founded the Garrens and wrote for the school paper.  Now he is a fairly well-known internet movie critic and 'blogger. 

Anyway, on the podcast they mentioned that they would like a new theme song.  The one they have now is  an indi-rock sort of thing with clever rhyming schemes.  They still like it, they said, but they wanted a new song.  I thought at the time that if  for some reason a good idea for a theme song happened upon me that I might try my hand at penning a song for them.  I knew when the thought came that I had no intention of allowing any ideas, good or bad, to happen upon me.

But, on the following Thursday, while "driving," I had an idea.  Movie BS with Bayer and Snider is a movie show...what if the theme song were a faux movie trailer?  Oh, snap.  A good idea for a theme song.

The next morning I went to work.  I quickly composed about four measures of creepy, exciting-ie music, and then I pushed a couple of buttons to create a dance-beat rhythm with accompaniment (all in the key of D, well, b minor and D).  I recorded it.  It was about a minute and ten seconds long.  Now, I just needed words.  I thought about the typical movie trailer.  I knew that I would definitely need to start with "in a world where...", but which world?  
It occurred to me that the world could be the podcast itself.  I compiled a mental list of what I knew of the show.  That list included the following items:

1.  Bayer's Scorecard Review website had experienced some run ins with Twilight fans, so called Twi-hards.
2.  Snider had famously written a piece entitled "I Was a Junket Whore"  that had gotten him in trouble with a movie studio.
3.  Snider wears glasses.
4.  Bayer is very tall.
5.  They talk about movies.
6.  The show's name has the initials BS in it.
7.  Snider is occasionally chided for talking about film festivals he's attended.
8.  Bayer gets chided for talking about the celebrities he's interviewed.

That was the extent of my knowledge, but it was enough.  I quickly scrawled a script on the back of a grocery list.  I didn't have much time.  My voice is deep in the morning, but as the day passes it becomes higher pitched.  If I wanted a convincing trailer, I would need to act quickly.  I recorded the make-shift script.

Next, my plan was to improvise scenes from the show over the top of the music track the way a trailer would depict scenes from a movie, but as I listened to the track a melody suggested itself to me.   I liked the melody.  So I scrawled some lyrics on the back of the grocery list, just below the script I had written earlier.  I sang the lyrics with the track.  They fit nicely, but my voice would have to be affected in some way, to make it more real.  I tried sounding like a black woman.  It didn't work.  I left it anyway. 

I mixed and mastered the track, turned it into an mP3 and sent it off to the podcast.  All of this without ever really thinking it through.  All of it had taken maybe an hour, at the most.

I must admit, I'm a little embarrassed now.  Oh well.

Here is the track.



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