Charles Apple

Yesterday, we told you about some of the cool things the Victoria Advocate — a 33,549-circulation daily in Victoria, Texas –  does for Halloween.

In addition to the uber-cool themed entertainment tabs design director Ryan Huddle and his folks produce from time to time — see here and here — the Advocate goes all-out each Halloween with an elaborately produced video in which entertainment reporter Aprill Brandon searches for the legendary chupacabra.

This year’s effort is a musical. And it runs about 18 minutes, I’m told, about twice the length of last year’s video.

Find it here.

For those of you who can’t watch it just now, here are a few screen caps from the first few minutes, to tide you over until you’re off-duty:

Naturally, something this elaborate must be promoted. Here’s the movie poster the Advocate’s visuals team published to key to this year’s video:

As we quoted Ryan yesterday:

Adriana Zavala is the one working on the poster. She used to work for studios doing retouching photos for magazines and movie studios and she now works here. She is awesome and the best person I have ever seen work in Photoshop.

Adriana was kind enough to walk us through the process of creating the poster. She writes:

Had a meeting with Robert and Aprill to discuss overall look of poster.

• Agreed on font for title
• Came up with tagline ideas (Aprill and the Chupacabra face to face for the first time)
• Went over color scheme
• Cover ideas, something with guns, Aprill standing on rocks…

Drew up some ideas and brainstormed what elements I wanted to use.

Went on Shutterstock and found different images of rocks, landscapes, skies and guns.

Set up a photo shoot for Aprill and Ryan. Had Aprill stand up on a chair and Ryan lower by her leg. Got inspiration from evil dead (army of darkness) poster.

The Army of Darkness poster (left) was Adriana’s inspiration
for the Chupa art. This type of art has been lampooned for
years, beginning, perhaps, with National Lampoon’s Vacation
movie poster from 1983 (right).
—

Thought it would be funny to switch the characters and make Aprill the manly figure and Ryan the woman. Took a variety of photos with different poses and expressions.

Started composite in Photoshop. Went through all the photos and picked the best one and masked it out.

First, I loosely laid out all the text (Heading, tagline and credits). Then I dropped in the masked photo of Aprill and Ryan.

I looked through all the rocks pictures I had found and picked the one I felt worked best. I masked it out and dropped it in.  Looked pretty good.

Next, I found a sky I liked, masked it out and dropped it in too.  Looked pretty good but I definitely felt it still needed something extra. I found another sky with more clouds with more of a gloomy feel. Dropped that in and made a composite of the two. Then I added different hues going from yellow/red to a deep blue with a bit of purple and green here and there to give it a more dramatic look.

Then, I went back and added more rocks to the right behind Ryan to give more depth to the background. I liked that, so I decided to add a third background to get the full effect of depth into it.  It was definitely starting to come together.

Now that I got the overall look going it’s time for all the fun detailed work.  Thinking of giving Aprill a cape and Ryan a heart tattoo with the word “mom” in it.  Haha.

I start with overall retouching.  Cleaning up skin, adjusting make-up on Aprill and a little liquefying here and there.  Then I adjusted the overall color to match with the background.

Once I have all the elements working well together it’s time to add all the fun stuff.  Like Aprill’s cape, guns and bullets.  I find the images on shutterstock and work them up. Someone gives me the idea of adding a superhero logo on her shirt so I give her a superman like symbol with the letters AB on it.  I created this in illustrator first and then brought it into photoshop to work it up some more.

Once everything was in place and the color was were I wanted it I went back to fine tune the details.

Left: Adriana’s original version. Right: The final version.
—

Ryan and I decided to take the color in a different direction and make it even more extreme. Our inspiration was Sin City. We went dark and very high on our contrast. We desaturated the overall color on them leaving only the reds bright and completely drained the color from the background. I also added new lighting, especially around Aprill to make her pop.

Definitely gave it a more Halloween look.

Adriana’s poster was used as the cover for today’s M3 entertainment tab.

And, not surprisingly, Ryan and his entire crew carried the theme through the entire 12-page section.

Ryan writes:

Adriana and I came up with the theme when we were just talking about what we wanted it to look like. The M3 pages are really just about the look.

We wanted to try something new by just using three colors on the page, black, red and white. And just to give it that comic book feel, we took quotes from the movie and put them in caption blocks so the M3 also tells a story. It starts off with Drew ["Drew the Intern, a character from the video] in an asylum and goes from there, telling his thoughts on what is going on and what you will see and hear in the movie.

Even though the look is different than what you will see in the movie, we think it still captures the video.

Click on any page for a larger look. Here are pages two and three, which include the local entertainment calendar and concert news:

Pages four and five, which mix theme-oriented content in with weekly furniture items like best-seller and Top-10 lists:

The centerpiece doubletruck — pages six and seven — are devoted to the Chupacabra project. All cast members are represented, along with amusing quotes.

Page eight — my favorite of the lot, below left — contains a Q&A between the entertainment reporter, Aprill, and the star of the Chupacabra movie. Which is, uh, Aprill.

Unabashedly, Aprill interviews herself. A brief excerpt:

Aprill: So, how did you come up with the idea of “Chupacabra the Musical?”

Aprill: That’s actually a really interesting story. One day, my friend, Manuel, said, “Hey, you should make “Chupacabra the Musical.” And I said, “Yeah, I should.”

Aprill: You’re so brilliant.

Aprill: I know.

Pages 10 and 11 get back to business with coverage of other movies:

Ryan writes:

I really can’t remember doing something that brought more departments together than this. Not only was it fun but a lot of us did this on our own time and worked insane hours to pull this off. Now that is love for what you do and the people you work with.

I can’t even say enough about this team, they did so much work and put in countless hours of writing the script, rewriting the script, lyrics, Writing the music, Singing, Dancing, going to video shoots, Editing. Each one deserves an Oscar for what they did on this project. I really hope everyone really enjoys it and laughs maybe even cry a little.

Now, about the video itself…

Reporter-actor-lyricist-singer Aprill Brandon — who, we’ve pointed out, is engaged to Ryan — has been at the center of all three videos and is especially “out there” on this one.

Aprill writes:

Writing this script was definitely harder than the other two. I mean, there are only so many ways you can make a chupacabra funny, you know? So to spice it up, I decided it was about time to actually let the chupacabra make an appearance, rather than just being talked about (which I’m sure the prop people just loved me for).

I also learned I am apparently disinclined toward music, which with this being a musical, made my job even harder. The lyrics weren’t too hard to write, considering they’re pretty bad lyrics. But the music. Ah, the music.

Funny story. When I first sat down with Bob Zavala, who was one of the musicians working on this with me, to hammer out some rudimentary melodies, he asked me if I had some melodies in mind already for the lyrics I wrote. And I did. In my head, I heard each song very distinctly. However, once I started singing the melodies to Bob, turns out they were all the exact same melody, just some were faster and some were slower, which he kindly informed me of through clinched teeth.

Luckily, being a nice guy, he didn’t strangle me.

In the 2008 Chupa video, the villain turns out to be the
Advocate’s editor in a gorilla costume, trying to make
news and sell papers. He’d have gotten away with it, too,
he says. If not for those meddling kids.
—

Ever since we started this project three years ago, the goal has been to just have some light-hearted fun and poke a little fun at ourselves. I’ve tried to keep that in mind throughout. Some people ask what the whole point of the chupacabra videos are. My response is that why wouldn’t you want to see the editor-in-chief of your hometown newspaper in a gorilla suit and the multimedia editor getting tackled by a reporter in high heels?

Remember Adriana, the movie poster artist? Her father-in-law is Robert Zavala, listed in the movie credits for music, video graphics, singing and — Hmm… — tackling dummy?

Ryan tells us:

Robert did the animation of the minstrel singing at the beginning. His son Bob is the one singing. It is so funny.

Robert writes about the music he and his family created for the show:

Back in August we began planning for the music since we knew that the it had to be finished before the filming could start. Aprill brought in the first draft of the script and the lyrics for seven songs about a week later.

The core music team of my son, Bob Zavala, my wife, Julie Zavala, and myself sat down with the lyrics and divided up songwriting duties.

Robert’s son, Bob — at left — is married to Adriana.
Julie — at right — is Bob’s mom and Robert’s wife.
Both are listed in the credits as musicians and
singers. Julie is also listed as a “puppet creator.”
—

My son Bob is the Web designer at the Advocate and plays guitar and sings. My wife Julie is a graphic artist at the Advocate. She plays keyboards and sings. I am multimedia editor at the Advocate and I play guitar and sing. I have three other kids who work elsewhere and also are musical.

We also enlisted other Advocate employees to work on the tracks:

• Nick Rogers, head copy editor, is a well-versed guitar player and singer. We asked Nick to write and sing the song “I’m not a bad guy” which, in the video, would be sung by the main chupacabra. Nick wrote a punk rock song, sang lead and played rhythm guitar.
• Dan Easton, vice-president of the Advocate publishing company supplied bass and Bob got to debut on drums. Julie came in last and added background harmonies.
• Lauren Hightower, a copy editor, added important background vocals to “Photographer’s Lament” a song sung by the poor, underpaid photographer who has to follow Aprill around on her wild goose chase.
• Tim Delaney, our editorial page editor, came out of musical retirement to add some great bass guitar work on this track and “Chupacabra Waltz”, an instrumental. Tim was a seven-night a week regular in the bar-band circuit back in the Seventies and this was his first time to pick up the Bass since the early 80’s.
• Aprill, the star of the movie, was brought in to sing lead on two of the songs, her first time to record original music as far as I know.

The rest of the music was composed and performed Bob, Julie and me. We recorded the tracks in Garageband on a Mac at my house. The music was a lot of fun to do and was a bit of a challenge to finish but in the end we got it done.

Drew Stewart was director and editor of the video.

We have unconfirmed reports that the poor guy was up very late the past few nights, putting finishing touches on the movie. Either that or he was, y’know, eaten by a chupacabra and then simply not missed.

Either way, Drew tells us:

I’m a writer and director from St. Louis, Missouri. I have a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri. I’ve directed and edited commercials, music videos, and short films. I’m currently working on my first full-length screenplay.

As silly as it sounds, Chupacabra the Musical may be the most comprehensive thing I’ve ever directed. If you think about it, it incorporates music videos, comedic dialogue, puppets, CGI explosions, and a whole lot of editing. At nearly 20 minutes, Chupacabra the Musical has more Chupy action than both of the previous installments combined!

By taking the helm of directing The Musical, I was offered a unique opportunity. The previous two installment were directed by folks at the Advocate with more of a background in journalism than film. Because I have a lot of experience with directing and editing for film, I was offered the opportunity to really surprise people with the quality of the final product. I hope my skills and experience help to make this installment of the Advocate’s Chupacabra series the best one yet.

And finally, this is TC Backer, the man who shot the previous two installments and who produced this movie.

What started out as a bit of satire in a spinoff from a local story, the Victoria Advocate’s The Hunt for the Elusive Chupacabra has grown nearly into a franchise of its own. Of course it isn’t nearly the franchise as the t-shirt business pulled off by the original story subject. (Phylis B. Canion has sold over 38,000 chupacabra T-shirts since finding the supposed chupacabra in Cuero, Texas.)

It has been a treat to work on something as creative as the chupie series. It has been a chore, but also been a welcomed break from the normal duties of my job as senior staff photographer.

In the first two installments, I have performed as cameraman, photographer, composer, conductor, director, producer, best boy, key grip.

OK, so the last two I don’t really know what they are, but I am sure I did it.

What really came as a surprise was on a regular assignment nearly a year after the first video had been released. I was shooting photos at a local school and a student said, “Hey, I remember you. You were in that chupacabra movie.”

I had to correct the teacher when she tried to dismiss the student as being silly. I explained, that yes, I had been in a movie that was on the Victoria Advocate’s web site.

Unfortunately, he didn’t ask for my autograph.

By the way, you can find the Advocate’s first chupacabra movie on YouTube:

Last year’s movie can only be found on the Advocate’s Web site. Be sure to check out the outtakes.

As an added bonus for our blog readers, Ryan offered us an online exclusive: Two raw mp3 tracks of songs from the movie.

One is called “Deadline” and the other is “Oh Schnookum Bear.” Both feature vocals by Aprill Brandon. Find them here, zipped into one file.

Enjoy. And have a great Halloween.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 9:50 am and is filed under Innovative ideas, News design, Victoria Advocate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.