No Shirt, No Problem

Those of you who watched my documentary (and if you haven't watched it...why not?) may be curious about where the name of the "production company" came from. Read on and be enlightened (I'll put it in the extended entry)...

I mentioned in the post that there's a story behind the name, and it involves a member of our three person production team. I'll just refer to him here as "SJ" (of course, you could easily find out what that stands for by watching the credits of the video, but for the sake of consistency, I'm sticking with the abbreviation).

Anyway, the documentary was the third project of the semester. I also worked with SJ on the first one, which was a two-minute fiction piece. The basic story: Two college students are supposed to meet before class, but one of them forgets and goes straight to the classroom, then the other student walks in and is shocked to see his friend already there. Pretty simple, right?

Well, for this particular project, SJ decided to play the part of the student who remembered to wait, so at one point, we had to shoot him walking into a classroom and looking surprised. However, in the middle of shooting it, he came up with an...interesting idea. The conversation went something like this (no, it's not verbatim. As if you didn't know.):

SJ: Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I took my clothes off before I walked in?
CD: What?
SJ: Yeah, then when we screen the dailies, there'll just be a random shot of me walking in naked!
CD: You're not serious, are you?
SJ: Wait...how about if I just take off my shirt? Yeah! Get the camera ready!
CD: You're seriously going to do it?
SJ: (takes off his shirt) Okay, I'm gonna come in. Are you recording?

So we ended up shooting him walking into the room without a shirt. And then screening it in front of 20 people. That became kind of an inside joke, but it's not the end of the story.

You see, the second project was a persuasive piece, and SJ's group did a parody of the Budweiser "real men of genius" commercials. Their subject was "Mr. Overactive Perspirator," the guy who always sweats. SJ played said perspirator in the commercial, and one of the shots showed him playing basketball without a shirt. So he was now 2 for 2 in the "shirtless TRF project appearances" department.

Do you see where this is going?

SJ wanted to find a way to appear with his shirt off in the documentary. I actually had to talk him out of it by finding a way to at least refer to the joke. The answer? "No Shirt, No Problem Productions." I designed the logo and everything just so he would keep his friggin' shirt on for one project. It was either that, or go with his idea of appearing in the background of Gary's concert without a shirt.

Aren't you glad you know the backstory now?

(On a side note, SJ and I both have very brief on-camera appearances in the documentary, but I'm not going to tell you where they are. Yet.)