Featured Commentaries
         
4.1.10  Brett / Mark / Joe - DARK CITY  (unfinished)

Blorkk Science Theater utilizes Blorkk's skit-prose medium to achieve Mystery Science Theater 3000 -style movie commentaries in readable prose.  They're generally written for someone who's seen the movie or is watching it along with the commentary (such as printing one out and skimming it as you're watching the original movie; something you especially might want to do if you're forced to watch something with your friends you've already seen a billion times), and assume a bit of familiarity with the skit-prose medium it's written in (though it's not necessarily necessary to know anything about it, as it's somewhat self-explanatory the more you read).  In brief, each line of text (wrapped if longer than a displayed line) is a single person speaking a line or two of dialogue spoken in a room with others watching the movie, where the people speaking are particular Blorkk or Frangles characters (although any external references to them are very minimal and hence they require no background) and the movie flows from the top to the bottom of the page. 

The dialogue attempts to make what's happening on screen (what's being commented on) as clear as possible, even if you haven't seen the movie, so in fact a supplemental use for the commentaries is actually to get a good skim of the movie.  Blorkk's skit-prose medium intrinsically utilizes an enormous deal of implication rather than direct statements to clue the reader in to what's going on, so if it seems difficult to "watch" a movie by figuring out what's happening solely via the context of people commenting on it, know that this is a totally normal function of skit-prose.  It simply takes a little getting into, as well as some keen concentration on your memory and deduction skills (for instance, in skit-prose a character might make a comment that reveals more about what's been going on that sheds more light on the story, such as, "Hey, think it's time to ask this slimy alien in the room for an opinion?").  Think of it as elusive "encoded" poetry in fusion with Monty Python skits in which the audio is all we have to deduce what's going on in the scene.  In fact skit-prose requires even more deduction than an audio skit because there are no noises or different vocal intonations.  Sometimes the lines are not even labeled or colored to see who's talking, which is done for a very specific and crafted effect.  For instance a line could be written to serve multiple purposes depending on the external knowledge or Freudian id of the reader!  ("Why's there no beer in the fridge?" could be spoken by a male or female depending on the biases of the reader, or even a talking robot alcoholic dog if it was explained in another skit that one is there in the living room the commentary is being spoken in.)

An important thing to note: sometimes the commentaries may seem out-of-synch with the movie time-wise, i.e. there may be more discussion about a scene than there would be time for if the movie is playing as the speakers talk (as in your usual real time film commentary), or visa versa.  This is a bit lazy but it's also another designed medium mechanism that, again, can be awkward until you've absorbed it and have learned to read it.  There are two two major ways to interpret this apparent desynchronization.  (Though note the careful difference (i.e. isomorphism) between grasping for explanations/excuses for something that happens to be awkward--and consciously creating dynamic versatility when writing so that the material can be put to different or multiple uses.)  Firstly, quite simply, the characters might be pausing (or fast-forwarding, or changing the speed of) the movie a lot to make jokes or discuss the scenes.  Hence the awkwardness you feel of things not lining up quite right reflects the interrupted stop-and-go play of the movie that could easily be pissing you off if you were in the room.  (Sucks to be you, but at least you have company, as often the commenters get annoyed at their friends talking throughout the whole !@#intg film).  Secondly, the film and the commentary can each be seen as flowing through time in a different, relative temporal manner or speed than the other.  This doesn't have to be some obscure ungraspable concept; it could be quite mundane: perhaps the speakers are aliens with telepathic abilities and are thinking to each other faster than they might talk aloud!

There is one admittedly confusing thing that skit-prose needs to eventually address, and that's that the longer lines wrap around to create multiple visible lines when it can be confusing whether a line is a continued line or a new line of dialogue.  (It's not too hard to figure out because each new speaker's line will almost always start with a capital letter, and that someone new is speaking should be clear from context anyway).  This is a little bit laziness, but more it's for the purpose of format consistency throughout all written skit-prose.  (Standardization is very important for the software we're writing to manipulate all the skits.

Currently there's only one film posted, and only the first few opening scenes at that!  But the whole point of posting so little is that just the medium itself is something that's taken great time and work to evolve.  Hence this (currently) lone example could be akin to a trailer released to demonstrate what a movie company has been--and is--working on.  Or you could even see it as a complete demonstration of the techniques, as those techniques are pretty clear from the example here.  After that, it's just a matter of adapting the humor style for any given potential movie.  Something we're more likely to do in the future now that we have the style down.  It's actually one of the top types of styles we find extra easy to output.

But, we can assure you that finishing the above Dark City / 24 skit above in particular is on our main to-do list.  It's actually extra high right now because as this is being written 24 season 8--which may be 24's last season--is already over half way over, and there may never be another chance to publish 24 commentary material in "real time" over the weeks as things air.  In fact, we might even post a commentary or two of an actual season 8 episode--or a condensed version of the season so far (or a water bubbler conversation the season)... and all so on for all the Earth films, shows, etc that we know and love or loathe.

So, check back occasionally, as always.  Please remember that most areas around Xangles, Frangles, and Blorkk go unupdated for long periods because there's such an infinite seas of projects to return to.  (Like a huge construction project on which one area is always being worked on.)  So at least check back once a year anywhere you'd like to see more of something.  You can keep up to date with whatever is going on at Frangles.com/updates.