6. Raiders Of The Lost Clark w/ Jeff Clark

Episode 6 of the podcast is live and under the new umbrella title of Ruddle Me This! It's the same general formula, me talking with a guest that I find interesting, except we're not limiting ourselves entirely to poster based discussions, although I have found the format of asking the guests about posters meaningful to them to be a great conversation topic so we will invariably see more episodes about posters, I just wanted to change it up so that it's not the only thing I can talk about with my guests.

In this episode Jeff Clark, Christchurch based musical improviser talks me through his 20 year career in improv, as well as his stints working as the marketing manager for a couple of theatre companies and an arts festival. We get into the nuts and bolts of marketing for a theatre, and then move into the poster Jeff brought with him, Raiders of the lost ark. We chat about Multiverse stuff a bit, and whether Star Wars has entered it's own Multiverse phase much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe has. Taylor even learns that Rhian Johnson directed one of the Star Wars movies he hasn't seen. As you can imagine when you get a couple of nerds in a room, many geeky tangents ensue!

You can follow Jeff online at:
https://www.facebook.com/garystarlightsings
https://www.facebook.com/JeffClarkPerformer
https://www.instagram.com/comikazejeff/
https://www.twitter.com/comikazejeff/

0:00 Intro to Jeff
8:19 Raiders of The Lost Ark
22:26 Star Wars Original Poster
23:46 Back to Indy
36:13 Present

Intro Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3tXX2XgjY

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Intro Music:
Funky Retro Funk by MokkaMusic

Transcript

hello and welcome to the first episode of ruddle me this well that's technically episode six it's the sixth podcast I've done but I've decided to do a whole Rebrand change the name make it a bit more General we'll get more into that later but for now here is part one of my interview with local Christchurch improviser Jeff Clark

welcome everybody to the podcast I am Taylor ruddle and I love posters I've got my second guest on today this is episode six I believe and welcome to the show Jeff Clark welcome hello I was trying to think of how to sum you up Jeff but you are a multi-disciplined performer I suppose the the easiest one to describe you would be that you're an improviser was that correct would you say yeah I mean that would be the best description of me I am a performer with both feet very firmly in The Improv camp and then I sort of stretch and put my fingers and all the different sort of Pies but I was going to say that you've got your fingers at mini pies yeah but but generally with that comedy made up sort of off-the-cuff sort of style yeah more often than not and you've been gigging for 20 years was that around oh longer than that now than 20 years long long time like professionally um yeah let's say 20 just for the just for my own sense of mortality yeah exactly that sounds good but yeah a long time and you're a christchurch-based performer have you ever lived uh abroad or in a different city whilst pursuing the comedic no not for any print not for any prolonged period of time the closest outcome would be when I was 10 years old my family lived in Canada for six months but otherwise it's pretty much been exclusively um New Zealand and Christchurch is that where you learn to become such a nice uh gentleman over in Canada ah yeah maybe I mean I loved Canada I thought it was great it was the birthplace of improv I think I was there just as um it was sent from Canada to New Zealand the whole field of sports birth are you like um nosferato getting shipped over in a crate in a coffin um to start yeah your improv Revolution over here I think they just took one look at me and said hey this guy's gonna need something when he gets back to New Zealand so yeah you can't send them alone like sending link with the master sword I suppose that's another thing to talk about you you are quite into the same sort of Pop Culture stuff I'm into yeah there's no degree your creation of a podcast no that's Brendan Bennett's Brendan Bennett is the um he's the one who successfully monetized slash conceptualized slash came up with some great shows that actually did it in a way that would earn some money for them as opposed to just me who was quite content playing DMD with my friends in a living room or uh staying up late with too many beers talking about nerdy pop culture things so yeah yeah Brendan is the brains behind that stuff oh that's great I love Brendan I've not really properly met him but I've seen him we've said hello a bunch of times so that's really cool and I was gonna say as well do you you know a lot of nerds tend to skew One Direction like some people are more sci-fi something more fancy some people more comic books would you say you have a particular leaning when it comes to this oh sci-fi comic books absolutely but you know if that was my that was my whole introduction to the whole world um was um comic books initially Spider-Man superhero comic books graphic novels didn't happen for quite a long time um it was all just the monthly comic books that I collected and Sci-Fi movies always been a massive sci-fi movie fan even since a kid um I don't recall the first time I saw Star Wars but I've seen it so many times um sometimes we might yeah those are my main ones I was gonna say what has the comic book scene in Christchurch been like historically because the only one I can really remember is Comics compulsion which used about Manchester Street but now is in papanui uh not even there anymore oh they moved from there oh yes it's not there yeah Comics compulsion is now online only there is a shop at Northlands called pop weasel yep but there is no there is there is uh and again I'm kind of out of the scene as well in regards to that but as far as I know there isn't a dedicated um I think pop weasel is the only dedicated comic book shop and that is much more on the sort of Collectibles and trade paperback side of things yes I think a lot of comic book stores and kind of geeky geek Merchants have had to Pivot into like if you go into an EB games nowadays it is 90 Funko pops and then a little corner with games in them and uh but I suppose that's just the nature of it's probably a lot easier to get introverted Geeks to order things online than to actually come into a store where they have to interact with people right absolutely and and to be honest I like the fact that EB Games has become more of a nerd culture yeah just gaming sort of stuff like the t-shirts that you can get there are great and the thing with uh Like Comics compulsion is they were comics and board games and gaming stuff the guy who created it was very much a comic fan and then the people who took over were very much tabletop Gamers and so it did shift and focus before us bias kind of thing isn't it yeah absolutely I was gonna say the interestingly enough board games have almost gone through a Renaissance again compared to comic books like you see a lot of um you know board gaming and bar type places popping up so I suppose that's encouraging it'd be really interesting to see if Comics have went through a proper Renaissance yeah I mean I think it's going to be a wee while for that because Comics have gone to becoming mainstream pop culture now like with the Marvel movies source and the complete saturation that we've hit now where it's I think starting to starting to sort of ebb in terms of there's just so many and so much that people are just like they can't keep up and so you're seeing the movies coming out to theater middling reviews as opposed to the rave reviews they got and you know some movies are now not doing very well at all which is a real shame yeah it's been interesting to see because we've been alive to see the movie Revolution change like I think I was re-watching X-Men the I forget is it yes yes yes yes yeah amazing and um what I found really interesting was at times it almost felt like I was watching an episode of The X-Files or some kind of detective show because they the one scene in particular stuck out to me was when they found Nightcrawler in his um church that he was like living in and just the way it was all shot they were like these leather kind of trench coats and it just felt like I was watching a like a Noir almost a detective thing but now the movies has got their own visual kind of language they all look a part of a set if that makes sense to you yeah yeah they've had a whole heap of different things with that um it has become like there's we could have a whole talk about the yes very quickly the superhero comic book movie thing um in terms of visual style and all of that which I've always found really interesting as well as as well as my sort of nerd bonafides um I I have worked in arts marketing so that's been where I got a real like I loved graphic design as a kid I did want to be a comic book artist when I grew up and unfortunately had had a bad year with a art teacher who didn't get what I was into so that kind of stopped me there yeah yeah so I've just been recreationally an artist of drawer and things like that so so um I suppose we could this Segways quite nicely into your posters you've brought with us uh yeah let's let's go with the the uh Raiders because that is the sort of tangential to what we're talking about so the first poster GF has brought in is the the Raiders of the Lost Ark the first in the Indiana Jones what are they up to tonight at five four or five months yeah yeah they're up to five how old were you when you first saw Raiders well I first saw Raiders I would say I was probably about seven or eight I wasn't I wasn't very old but it was just such an epic thing and like some of them were Star Wars you know those sort of formative early years it was just so amazing and as a child of the 80s as well they they um Drew strusen is the guy who did all those Illustrated slash they're so good artistically designed ones and so I just remember seeing that artwork I think it was I think my family probably got it on VHS tape and seeing the cover on that it just tells you everything you need to know it really does doesn't it about the movie about the show you know about what you're gonna see it's a guy with a hat and a whip and a few faces of the background some of them look like friendly faces some of them look like creepy faces yeah there's a very Sinister guy with a fedora sort of sitting behind him is he one of the Nazis I think he I think yeah almost certainly yeah what I find quite interesting about the poster as well is the Raiders of the Lost Ark logo has aged quite well that oh that's amazing and the gradient doesn't look cheesy now what is this 40 years later were talking about this now 30 40. and I was watching a little documentary about the behind the scenes of the Indiana Jones I think it was the first one specifically yeah and they didn't have the Indiana Jones logo itself really when they were making it but they all had like what is it embroidered um not uniforms but yeah and most films would have had hats yes and so it was interesting to see that they'd they'd come up with well they kind of knew it was going to be a thing when they were making it and it was very cool to see all that gear like I just remember seeing on the on the breast of a vest or something like that yeah and I think the logo has it could just be my Nostalgia talking but I think it still looks quite cool oh absolutely no it's it's it's um it's lived up to that it stood the test of time like it is already a Timeless film you know it was made in the 80s it was set in the 30s or yes and just I mean the first one was just Raiders of the Lost Ark it was later on that it became Indiana Jones and uh yeah so originally it was writers and then the font that they used for Raiders became Indiana Jones which is much bigger yes a much longer word and so I don't necessarily think the font is as effective if we're going to go into full you know artwork or design yeah yeah like even if you look at the more recent um you know when they reject it animated Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark it just doesn't have that same pop to it you know um that is a struggle I've run into a lot is something looks great in a short word format and then you try to tweak it and it doesn't look as nice oh yeah your your title is gonna be a massive challenge for any poster and so you know there are people that you know it's a two if you could do a two-word show title you're fine because it can be nice and big and bold or most of the time you know once you've established as a name it's your name yes and the writers of the Lost Ark which is what they do now for Indiana Jones yes you know that's the thing that people they want people to look at but um I've been involved in some very long named shows when I was working for a professional Theater Company obviously we had play titles that were written by people who were writers and so they loved words and so they put as many as they could and admittedly when I wrote a full-length play it was over 12 words long for the show title there you go so when you're just as a slight tangent but this could add some context you worked for a professional theater company as the marketing manager how old how long did you do that for I did it for uh I was at the theater for about six years then I took a couple of years off for Burnout and then I worked for another another um theater I I worked for an Arts Festival after that and then I went back to the theater and got burnt out even quicker so all in all I've been involved in arts marketing and show marketing and like specifically helping design posters for around about eight or nine years or almost 10 years on and off yeah um this could that could be a future episode as maybe Jeff's top 10 tips of uh what to do and what not to do on a poster oh yeah the I was gonna say though the marketing side of it feels a little I've never worked in specifically a marketing role but that feels like it will be quite hectic it feels like you would be constantly you would feel like you're putting out fires constantly does that does that feel like what your experience was it hits me getting burnt out twice and I actually really enjoyed the festival because the festival had a very clear start and ends like that you could kind of you can kind of make it a marathon and get through it whereas if it's just endurance running and there's no Finish Line and they keep moving the thing back and back and they keep saying hey what this this doesn't quite work the same but um the process of design is good sorry no I'm sorry I was going to say when you're marketing for because I've heard this about thespian theaters yep is that you have a two-play cycle the first play will be something like Peter Pan or a lower low or something to get people to just stuff people have heard of that to come in and watch it and then if that does well enough you can do your artsy at one the second play and you can you can do something that you really want to put on and play around was that accurate at all to your experience are we working on more than that at once oh yeah yeah the theater I was working at was making um around about seven or eight main stage shows a year four or five four kids shows a year and then they opened a second venue and had another six or seven plays on top of that so at its peak I was just I was helping them design or create a visual language for almost uh just shy of 20 shows different different Productions different shows yeah and more realistically it was around about 15 because a couple of them were like under a specific under umbrella yes and so you just sort of established visual language for one thread which is the main stage you established a second visual language for the um the more Arty venue and then you establish one for the kids shows yeah so it was all cartoony stuff um yeah I found that quite difficult to design for children because the people say they want it colorful but I I can't make there's a way to make it look nice and then there's a way to make it look like just a big vomit of colors at once and that tends to be how mine comes out the second one yeah what they what they mean with colorful is they want strong color it's if you put too many colors on a poster it doesn't work at all um some of the most even if you look at the Indiana Jones poster it's very much in a sort of sepia Browns and oranges and yellow it's basically a brown orange and yellow poster yes and there are is hardly Ed deviation from that in the design the biggest thing you'd say is this white shirt is probably the most visually striking you know the unbuttoned white shirt which is of course in the middle third um which gets the attention and then you look at the the title the title is the red white and yellow sort of gradient effect gradient but they've deliberately made it on a gray background so it pops right out they've also got so a very cartony drop shadow on the title which I always liked I like absolutely yeah I love me a good drop shadow like or or outline glow that you just sit really narrow and really really light yeah yeah and it's like um so what I mean is with the use of color you only need a couple of colors and that makes it feel colorful yes I'd say choose like white and maybe two primary colors and those are the that's all you need for a colorful poster instead using ear quotes there you go we're learning already this is great this is one thing I've learned from talking to you and Steven Lyons is that I really do not know what I'm talking about when it comes to design so it's going good to get to absorb some knowledge from people that have been around the block and done it one thing I've just noticed while looking at the Indiana Jones one now is they've done a really cool thing where the I don't know exactly if it's called but the tablet the stone block that everything is on you have little bits and pieces that poke out of it like the snake off to the left and then some Vines at the top and then a little piece of the block and that's quite interesting because it's uh you're making it all feel like a diorama almost or like a like a pinball machine here you have little pieces that kind of come up off it absolutely the rest of it is actually quite boring text it's just like a return of the Great Adventure at the top and then all of the studio information at the bottom yeah that's what you call uh not that's what you call a not a full bleed poster so bleed is like whether or not the image goes right over the edges of the poster yes um which generally is when you've got a professionally printed poster you know if you've got a professionally printed poster you need to have it going further than the edges of what's going to get cut down to so there's some redundant imagery whereas the Raiders poster is there's the image and the image is on the white and then the white is where they've got all the compulsory marketing you know contractually obliged information it often does feel like it does it feels like they don't want to include it on the poster so they just checked and we were talking about some Fast and the Furious ones and some of that you couldn't even read with that's how small oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's the same thing with um when you're in theater that there are contractually obligators to have and in theater it's a lot more tricky because you know the author's name has to be at least 50 percent most of the time of the title they play yeah absolutely and if it's a really long play then yeah that's going to be really hard but also if it's like something like cats you can make cats massive but then you've also like you could make cats in like a hundred Point fonts yeah but then you'd have to make Andrew Lloyd Webber in 50 point font that would be a nightmare because it's way more letters Cancer's only four letters yeah it's like an exactly massive the perfect amount absolutely

foreign's a good number for a title I think yeah Raiders you know is I was gonna say as well I've noticed this with authors when they become more notorious notorious might be a weird word there when they become more famous eventually the title becomes the tiny thing on the cover would you ever have that with a play um would have would an author either be bigger than the play as it were like I guess would people be coming out because they would see maybe Shakespeare I think you could do that with but I don't know uh New Zealand it's Roger Hall yeah Roger Hall if you put Roger Hall on a New Zealand theater poster you've basically guaranteed uh two or three RT plays for That season you know um and sort of to answer your earlier question actually um they most theater companies yeah there's the popular shows and that will fund the Arty ones and so you needed to get bumped on seats for that so when you're doing like juggling like seven main stage shows you can guarantee that three of them will be considered popular he said using ear quotes again uh if there's one Roger Hall that would have guaranteed a couple of other ones um but yeah so basically they'd be it would be balanced and that's the challenge of any programming for a main Stage Theater is that you have to mix the artistically valid with the generally popular and if you could get both even better yeah yeah um more often than not you are going to have to sort of walk that tightrope and balance both sides I find the economics of running a theater fascinating so I enjoy talking about this case they were just figuring out as they go yep so I guess we could talk about the content of the Indiana Jones a little bit and why it's meaningful to you I was there one scene that grabbed you in particular or was it the whole vibe of the movie that you just really enjoyed is it a comforting watch to you what kind of what makes it special to you um it's an adventure I think it was just really adventurous and fun and for someone who has grown up to love storytelling and stuff like that it doesn't really have a very deep story like they've made the argument that Indiana Jones could be removed from the plot and it would happen exactly the same the Nazis get the art because they take it they open it it kills everyone you're an except Indiana Jones like that's the classic gag of it is that his presence isn't really that but he's kind of the character who who ends up doing these things but um it was just super fun it's a great wish fulfillment sort of thing for a you know young asthmatic eight nine-year-old um a guy going out making archeology look cool sweet that was great um and this is you know on the on the heels of things like start I mean Star Wars I I chose to raise the Lost art poster just because I know the poster for that one more than I do the Star Wars poster like Star Wars for me is just the biggest text of Star Wars appearing on a screen with that Fanfare that's the image I have when I think of Star Wars it wasn't so much the posters that got me there it was just such the show whereas roses are Lost Ark I knew I was in for a good time when I saw that the um that original style was posted with Luke where he has that gigantic cross-shaped lightsaber I think that is a really cool I mean it's nothing like the movie but I think that's a really cool poster just that artwork of him and I believe they also did this um bleedless look didn't they because they had I should bring that up so that I can um know what I'm talking about now but because like the original original design with like the eye of with it being the eye of Darth Vader yeah right I think I am I'm just going to bring it up and this Princess Leia would like that it's like it's like the cover of a fantasy novel yes and you've got like all the ships heading towards the Death Star on one side and yeah I've got it here I've got it here um yeah amazing right it's um yes yeah and he's got his chest exposed and everything they're both very sexy compared to how they were in the movies aren't they they're way too sexy yeah I mean something about the way that that cross cuts through the rest of the poster always I thought was really cool and yeah it's again it's not like how the lightsabers were and then interestingly enough I'm just noticing the logo it was Tiny in that poster it's just not the logo that's not the logo that it ended up being no yeah you're right there's that the iconic yellow outlined interlinked yeah this ring right I don't mind that logo though but anyways let's get back to Indy because the social coming this will become another start we could always do a Star Wars one later on but I think I really know what you mean about just seeming like fun um I think we've all had that kind of fantasy of discovering a a temple of doom I suppose kind of thing and finding treasure or something like that it's all quiet yeah uh like yeah like you say wish fulfillment and then link is the the best way to put that yeah and I think it's very easy to play Indiana Jones when you're just in your garden running around oh yeah yeah it's much easier you don't have to have a spaceship and all that you'd have to sort of coat your room with like egg cups and paint it white and then you for it to be a realistic sort of Death Star set that's true there's also something about the sets and and Raiders that I think like it looks fake but not in a phony way like it looks it sounds weird but they're kind of a safe they're a safe danger like um yeah I mean they were they were going for the matinee cereal feel yes I can't remember what the original they were I heard them described as a Pastiche of a Vibe of these doctor Adventure or something I think was the other movie that they were sort of PlayStation slightly yeah that idea of traping traipsing is the word traips right through the jungle with a machete cutting down Vines and you've got um the guy behind you looking scared reading through a book and and uh all that kind of fun stuff snakes and everything yeah and is there anything else you can think of you'd like to talk about about Raiders about anything just that you've been thinking about those just those first three movies are great they're just really really good and the fact that the second movie was a prequel and then the third one was the sequel yeah that was going going through that yeah we're gonna do what we want kind of order of yeah yeah just jumping around it's very cool I'm trying to get my my ordering correct because it's been a while since I've watched them the second one was Temple of dome which is where it has I should have researched his name the his little sidekick uh Short Round who just won an Oscar for yes um everything everywhere that's the one yeah which awesome I I thought he was was great in that has has you've seen it presumably yes I have multiple times has Jackie Chan kind of scene where he um I forget the exact combination of things he had to do but he had to do something with Bubblegum and then he turned something into nunchucks and just had that awesome fight scene that was so technical spectacular yeah but how good for him that he he sort of that was a massive Gap 20 years or something he's been 30 years 30 years wow yeah oh that's awesome because he was really funny in that second one wasn't he oh he was great he was a great character he's I like that Dynamic the rock often does this Dynamic quite well where the adult character is almost outwitted by the child quite often and yeah just really funny indeed Indiana Jones does a he's not a dumb person but he is a bit of a lunk head at times and oh yeah he gets to stop beating out of him pretty much every turn he does fails eighty percent of the time yeah he's he doesn't seem like a great fighter when you see him yeah like you say getting the snot beaten out of him yeah in most of his movies but that was something that I think speaking of Jackie Chan there was a thing that he put into his films and said he would very rarely be he was fighting his way up from the bottom rather

and sort of putting a little little twist on the modern movie over and now we have Superstars like you know the Rock and things like that who have contracts about um they can't lose fights yes to win all their fights we we literally speak about this on the Stephen Lyons podcast yeah and we have movies where you know the the end of the linking back now to the superhero movies we've got the we know that superheroes have got like five more movies coming soon with those characters so we don't think there are no Stakes yes and then even with things like Multiverse that brings a whole nother because I feel like the con the movies have finally caught up to the comics in terms of Multiverse stuff like they had yeah like you say very low stakes and even I'm not sure if you're a fan of Dragon Ball Z but they recently within the last five years just crossed into the there are multiple universes with different characters that are sort of versions of the main cast but just different and I think I think the longer a series goes on it is an inevitability that they'll eventually kind of reach that point of what we have to do a Multiverse now well maybe not have to but they seem to all end up in the same area like that yeah do you think Star Wars will ever end up there I think it did ah okay I think it did I think it really did I mean you look at the the one-two punch of Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker in the films and both films incredibly divisive and polarizing

um and I'm not going to take sides because I don't want to invite a massive storm upon myself you don't want that smoke no but I will say that the problems with those two films was so with the result of what happened in the the first sequel first sequel being raised before the force awakens yeah okay I think that the seeds were sown there because it didn't it said here are stormtroopers again here's a death star again yeah here's someone with on a Sandy planet with powers again and I know that they like the the recycling and The Echoes and the Poetry they I just look at see it in the prequels but it wasn't by George Lucas this was a challenge and so the the it it oversaturated it and so now we've got as many Star Wars films being announced and then canceled as we do actually making it to the screen and in this case we've had less Star Wars making it to the big screen we've got multiple TV shows um some of which uh artistically valid and some of which are entertaining um sometimes both but it is that sort of it is it is the problem with pop culture now is that it has become this massive Behemoth of a thing that is essentially eating itself in terms of there's no room for anything else to grow but the creature itself is so over over fed that it can't move or be nimble or do the stuff that it needs to do that's why I've gotten quite into reading the Lesser Comics yeah like I've gotten really into Dark Horse and image like I've been a human Cowboy fan for years but yeah I've just read through East of West I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one no that is an Image Comics one very good little series it is probably a bit long I wouldn't necessarily say it's a short comic but it was really good really cool artwork yeah but yeah like you say it's I think even the movie industry has been a bit like this where you know when was the last time you saw in a like a new idea for a movie to come become a franchise like I guess you could say John Wick was one of them perhaps yep but otherwise it's just a lot of the same kind of being re-rolled isn't it I would say there's nothing really that's come out in the last few years that has been significantly bold or original and that's and I mean it's the the problem is it's that audiences the the audiences like what they know they like the feeling of familiarity and stuff like that um but at the same time you have to give them so it has to give them something new otherwise it's just that they'll they won't realize it but yeah it's not gonna give them what they need yeah I think um one thing that I saw articulated quite well is because I'm like big into movies like murder on the Orient Express and that kind of Agatha Christie murder mystery yeah like also obviously I love knives out and oh yeah Glass Onion and the author Ryan Ryan Johnston I think it is Johnson he said that Agatha Christie became at some point people just wanting her to tell them the same story but a different way yeah exactly yes I think that's kind of what you were talking about there with people the Star Wars thing the the same the same elements but just mix it up a little bit and give us a difference a different spin on it exactly and Ryan Johnson wrote and directed Last Jedi um and it's for real what yeah yeah and um which was massively polarizing because he subverted it he tried to subvert expectations and yeah surprising and be bold and it was incredibly polarizing because you have these people that think they want more of the same yeah and you and they don't get what they want and they get really really angry and then you have other people that go oh I I ah this is amazing I got something I wasn't expecting and it's delightful and so you've got two groups of people that saw the same thing but had completely different experience because they went into it with completely different expectations that's a big one the expectations isn't it yeah yeah are they making a new Indiana Jones a fifth one yes they are do have they released any information about what it's kind of going to be yeah it's the yeah there's a trailer for it and everything it's the dial of Destiny wow okay there's more of them it jumps around in time I think they do a lot of digital de-aged Heroes and forward okay that could be interesting yeah and um Shia LaBeouf is nowhere to be seen um it's called mutt was it mutt yeah and it's got Phoebe while a bridge I believe as the goddaughter who's um with her with Indiana Jones oh goddaughter is for some reason I was thinking like God that isn't god king like Xerxes from three all right

like literally uh the daughter of one of his friends I'm with you now yeah okay well I'll probably still check it out because I mean everyone will but you're right there that's the way they do it I've mellowed on the alien ones as of as more time has gone past like I didn't really mind Shia LaBeouf's character I thought he was interesting I thought it was okay it's just it what is it yeah it was one of those things where you sort of thought did they need to make another one yeah I don't know I think I fear that Indiana Jones is going to be one of those ones that we we want them to stop making movies uh long before they stop making movies about it yeah yeah and I mean they've already almost got the technology to have a digital Harrison for making movies you're not wrong forever yes we had a big conversation about our actors gonna have to start signing their rights to their likeness to be like Paul Walker and Fast and Furious I'm you know I'm sure he would have been fine with it but yeah you've got actors from Star Wars like what was he called he was one of Vader's like lieutenants and they recreated him digitally in um yes um Rogue one that's another one where I'm sure he would have been fine with it but yeah wow yeah you've got to wonder at what point do you go like all right come on enough like there's been seven movies where he used me just recast me actors will be created by it'll be written by chat gbt yeah it'll be uh virtual actors have signed away their likeness and stuff like Darth Vader's voice James or Jones has signed over the voice for Darth Vader yeah so it's it's on it's so we're already more than halfway there it's come up quickly hasn't it yeah so I think that's probably about 20 minutes on that shall we move on some of your I gotta say the conversation is Flowing a lot better than I was expecting it to so this is quite good

so we'll move on to some of your personal sure things some of your personal ones so the first one I think we'll look at is present which I've got in front of me now is the third is the most recent poster that I designed I think June last year was it uh yeah I think it was I think it was um yeah it would have been last year so to the audio only listeners what Jeff has done here you designed this I presume I did yes so what Jeff has done is he's created three versions of the poster that are subtly a little bit different with just a different photo of himself and Laura Irish who was his co-improviser it's an impression yes it was an improv improv show so what does made you decide to create three different variants of the poster I like I like threes I like that I I I I just love posters or material that links together somehow that doesn't do the same thing every time I think it's more interesting um and also I can't decide on what one I like the most so a chance to sort of be indecisive and go actually let's make all of them yeah I mean from a from a from a design and print version of point of view Flyers um if you've got a dle flyer that's one third of an A4 sheet so you can quite easily create three Flyers three different Flyers really easily because for a printer it's just the same thing on a chunk of paper that they chop up and um it's also the same but different each time yeah like when they see the poster it's visually the the style for it is all the colors being blasted out except for cyan and magenta um it's black and white and then you can see I'm wearing a black shirt Laura's wearing a black shirt but I'm holding a blue present and she's holding a pink present and then the text is in purple which has 50 cyan and 50 magenta yep and at different intensities so I used all this the print tricks for that one you think it would have been cutting costs if we were printing on a uh what do you call it one of those rock those old school rollers if you were the old school rollers but nothing's on an old school or anything you could have done away with the yellow completely it was no there was no saving yeah there's no savings if you if you'd been on an old school printing it would work great it's like okay I'm sorry no no after you when you do pixel art except you put more than 256 colors on it and it's like technically yes it's pixel art but that wouldn't work on the system that you're emulating so exactly yeah um go ahead sorry yeah well basically it's just um I I it's that whole colorful idea yes two color colors and black two colors of black that's what it is it's um it's blue and it's pink and it's black and white color yeah and it's on a white background it's all clear-cut that to me is very scary to have a post with a little white space that's my sort of designer toxic trait is I am afraid of white so I love the threshold but yeah I love I love negative the negative space is the way to yeah there you go describe it without way too good to awkward territory yeah just negative space space for with nothing on it and that could be an all-white background it could be an all black background if you're obviously wanting it to be a printed post of white is going to be the most cost effective option I think um yep

um and it means that the title just pops really nicely it's called present and that's the thing that you see and then you see people holding presents and you go ah it's because you know there's a little joke in the title it's called Jeff Clark and Laura Irish present yeah um or present yeah so I like well to pull them interpretations and things yeah you've done a lot of work and yeah that's I'm kind of glad we get to showcases to people now I hope people appreciate it I was going to say when you perform a two-person improv show like I've been to see uh scrip list a few times which is with four people which for the list is not familiar with it easiest way to describe it is a bit like hose line when you do two people what does the format look like when you when you do the show it's much the same because I mean when you're doing when you're doing a show like scriptless or Who's Line you look at the scenes that they do and normally it's about two performers in each scene anyway that's just in this version in the in the version of present no one got arrest um it was just we were there for the whole hour just listening to each other and reacting to each other's ideas and making up stories with the concept that the only the only rule was that at the start of the show every scene every story would start with someone giving the other performer the other character a present there you go that's the tie into the title that's really cool so it could be an anniversary present or a birthday present or a free gift with purchase or something like that although we never did pre-gift with purchase that would have been a nice way of doing it yeah but it was always characters it was basically I'm giving you this gift and how the gift was given and how it was received immediately laser and work for what that story could be about gotcha and would you take a suggestion from the audience as to what it would be you're just kind of coming up with it we would we would normally have a little bit of a chat to the audience at the start about their best or worst presents they've received yeah and that would often weave its way in yeah but for the most part it was just let's start by giving each other something because you know the whole idea there's a it grew out of a warm-up game or activity not even a game a sort of warmer exercise that doesn't normally make it on stage which is called the present game which is about I'll give you an object I just mine a specific size and weight as vaguely as possible and then the other person names what it is and then that's what it is and then the person who was giving it adds a feature to it and so it's sort of that one two three shape name detail yeah and then you just do it again and you do it again and it just is setting up the game of tennis but but what I wanted to do was just keep it going yeah you know give them an object they'd name it I'd give it a special feature they'd have an emotional reaction I'd say why they're having an emotional reaction and then they do the same to me and so it would it would it grew it was just a a little thought experiment that yeah it worked out to be a really fun show to do how long would your typical scene be in that kind of show well the thing is they all sort of came back it became sort of interweaving threads yes so we'd have sort of our establishing scenes which would be about three or four minutes I'd say at least and then we'd sort of move on to the next one and that might be another three or four and then we'd do one that might only be a minute and we it might not come back it would just be a little gag silly scene that um sort of acts as a little sorbet or palette you do need to have those in improv shows as well a little color cleanser um I wouldn't say you have to I think and I think it's just that it's fun to do that because you're like okay well let's do something silly now because we've done a lot of sort of serious character work let's do something else completely totally different because again if you're giving people the same sort of thing for the whole show it can it can wear on them I mean the the that's the weird thing isn't it it's improv so they know what they're going to get and if it's good you know you go to a movie and people are happy to sit for two hours with the same sort of theme and feel of a show yeah but with improv like there's so like it's a long form improv show as opposed to a short form so short form you want to have as much variation and tone and speed and style and length um whereas in the show we sort of it was a bit more deliberate but we would still put in these little Flights of Fancy just because that's the sort of people we are as performers we like the little silly bits as well yeah I've found that um I've been doing a lot of one-liner stuff lately and up sometimes you feel like you just need a really stupid one and then oh yeah like it can't be all clever wordplay stuff sometimes you just need to see it little like I've got one that the punchline is poultry Geist and you can imagine what that is oh yeah yep that's great yeah do they say Exorcist oh that's quite I might have that if you don't mind yeah wonderful I I love puns like my stand-up is very much but again it's sort of you have the little silly one-liners but you also have the longer narratives and you have the you know like that's how you craft a long set or a shot yeah like a stand-up comedy show it's not just one liner one liner one liner one liner one liner one liner one lineup for uh an hour or 45 minutes however the length it is because it's not sustainable for anyone involved diminishing returns it's in yeah seven minutes apparently exactly exactly and so you wander off and tell a story then come back and yeah yeah you have to reset that yeah is there anything else you wanted to talk do you have a favorite of the three posters like my I quite like the one where you're listening to the present almost like you're listening to her yeah I feel like you're holding it a little bit like a baby for some reason yeah it's it's I that's my favorite one as well because it's the mystery box um I just like the fact that it's it's got like visually it's got a bit more bounce to the eye like you know your eyes stop start in the top left corner most of the time and then it bounces down to the blue and then back to the pink because those are the sort of key through the visual the online with that one actually yeah and and so it sort of bounces it has it has a nice sort of playful feel to it yeah there's a place the other two which are more sort of presentery there's less story in those yeah I think that's I think that's my favorite too and then I think you've got the tagline changes a little bit as well right yeah yeah but that's a game because I just can't decide on a blurb yeah did you have any people will notice that you had different Flyers when you were when you were barking for them or anything I mean that's the thing like with most marketing material for a thing you need to have three you need to have at least three points of contact before it sort of turns it into a maybe I'll go and see that yeah I've heard that too yeah and so most of the time they do that by just putting the same image everywhere and it goes great whereas in my case it was just the same text yeah present and it's like slightly different to get a little bit more attention yeah you would definitely think that they were the same show though which is good it's a success there yeah um is it the kind of thing you think you'll put on again or if you're going to do another two-person show would you come up with a new title um I would probably do it again um I I was I'm quite Keen to pitch it to a little Andromeda where I did it last time I'd love to do it again if they are still going um they're still sort of they're having you know it's it's not a great time for Arts organizations yeah at the moment so it would be lovely if they do come back and I could do it again and I'd probably do it with different people each night so it would just be Jeff Clark presents because then if you've quite presents yeah um that's great the good thing is I don't have the compulsory thing of having my own name 50 of the title of the show that'll make it a little bit easier for you there yeah yeah imprisoned to seven letters so that's a good number for titles it's nice and Visually easy you can imagine a letter right in the middle of the the right the middle of the poster that's true and you haven't got any letters like M which can be a for Maverick when it comes to spacing out titles oh yeah yeah oh that's really great I like that quite a lot so the listeners can keep an eye out for Jeff Clark presents alrighty this is present day Taylor again like I said at the start that was part one of my interview with Jeff Clark there's some really insightful pieces of information about Jeff's history doing marketing for a theater as well as a whole bunch of uh geeky digressions for lack of a better word I suppose that's what's going to happen when you put two Geeks into a room together we're going to go off on a lot of tangents it was really enjoyable talking to Jeff I didn't think we were going to click quite as much as we did but it was a pleasant surprise to see how easily the conversation flowed I've got the second half of that interview releasing next week on Wednesday at 11 30 New Zealand time and in that interview we do a real deep dive on his Gary Starlight character I was able to ask so many questions that I've had for the entire time that I've known Jeff we also do a lot of Multiverse talk talking about his show infinite GIF and just the general idea of mold breaking stand-up comedy sets and things of nature and then at the end he gave me a little bit of feedback on my first ever comedy poster he was very gentle and he gave me some good advice right towards the end of that interview as well you will see him basically decide the name for the podcast I honestly thought I was going to be calling this the rod cast but Jeff made a pretty good argument for the name ruddle me this and over the couple of weeks since we recorded that interview the name really grew on me and here we are with the current title of the show thanks to Jeff I'm hoping he's not going to expect some kind of a commission payment on that I'll have a little bit of an update in terms of my life and what's going on for me at the end of next week's podcast there's been quite a few changes definitely positive ones I am really looking forward to the next six months of life and to see what kind of exciting things I get up to just a little teaser there so check back next week if you want to hear the second part of the interview as well as what's going on in my life but until then thank you so much for listening I will catch you next week