When last we left THE TAPE, it was in shambles.  An old man was turning 100 without his favorite nephew, An invisible murderer was on the loose, and a man ate soup; cardboard soup.

If you don’t remember, then here’s a recap:

And now, here’s my reply (I recommend watching it full screen):

And now, here’s me overanalyzing and explaining:

“Happy Birthday Murderer” was about death.  This was the stone that I began my ideation process off of: What comes after death?  Well, to that I had one answer: Resurrection.  And what is an ongoing symbol for resurrection?  The Philosopher’s Stone.

However, along with resurrection and alchemy, I also wanted to explore the theme of multiplicity, which was certainly present in “Happy Birthday Murderer”, and I also feel it was present in the other three works of THE TAPE.  So, multiplicity+resurrection= The four classical elements.  My overall working point for this new web (in case you wondering “Copyright Infringement” was the theme and inspiration for the title of “In Fridge”. I have given away the secret). In order to explore the four classical elements, I broke each down into an exploration of a thematic portion of THE TAPE. Let’s take a look at that.

FIRE: I told you you weren’t the only one who could make soup, Andrew.  Except “No Chicken With Onions”, the calcuttan dish, is NOT A SOUP.  My feelings were hurt when Andrew cooked my package, showing a disregard to something I put a lot of time into and was very proud of.  I understand that Andrew did this because, in order to get “In Fridge” on THE TAPE I had to tape over “I Got The Poops” (Boulder’s dubbing facilities sucked, like many things), but it still hurt my feelings.  So, I devoted one entire element to the cooking and eating of package elements from the Hard-drive and the Perfectly Ordinary Box.  It was cooking, it was vengeful, and it was angry. Fire.

AIR: How best to represent Air?  Sound, which is something I feel Andrew’s pieces have had a bit of, but “In Fridge” was lacking.  So, I took an oral examine for my French class last semester and started editing it.  One of the ideas that I’ll explore later is that “Happy Birthday Murderer” was a film about me.  So, in return “Powerful Magics” had to be a film about Andrew.  Thus, I took his narration from Shrimpocalypse! which included some fun extras like “FooOOOooOOtbaaaaall PraaAAAaaaAAAActice”.  Finally, I also had Nepetalactone by Venetian Snares.  ”In Fridge” introduced the idea of “leit motif” (that’s film language for “A repeated musical theme”).  I decided to take this idea, and have a techno breakdown in the middle of the film.

WATER: Water was found footage.  I may have had reasoning behind this. “Happy Birthday Murderer” introduced actors, namely Landyn Banx.  I decided I’d use a common actor, and I took Landyn’s demo reel from youtube.  In “Happy Birthday Murderer” Andrew used footage from All The Presidents Men, an inspiration to him.  I decided that I would use footage from “The Room” in my reply to him.  I also wanted to bring back the cat motif we’ve established in the other two pieces, but was absent from “Happy Birthday Murderer”, both because I enjoy this motif and because THE CHOPSTICK CAT IS ADORABLE! Also, there’s the popular YouTube video/meme that’s been common since “I Got The Poops”.  I had my footage, and yet I was still missing something.  Fortunately, I had one other reference to Mr. Gingerich: 16 Heads and Counting.  How’d I get the footage?  Well, I did some sound editing for it, and due to my paranoid thinking that he may need the footage back, I’ve kept it all these years.  Finally, the photo of me from “Happy Birthday Murderer” was taken from promotional stills from 16 Heads (which also starred Landyn Banx, see the connection?).  I took Andrew’s promotional still from that very same photo shoot. Thank you Facebook.

EARTH: The only other reply to “Happy Birthday Murderer” that I had to address was the interviews.  Well, I don’t think “Happy Birthday Murderer” was an adequate response to “In Fridge”, mainly because I don’t think Andrew put as much work into it as I did mine and he did “I Got The Poops”.  This is understandable, as he’s editing together a Political epic, but I still wanted to make sure he knew I was calling his bluff.  So, I had people criticize his film.  After all, this was a movie about Andrew.  Also, over December (when Andrew was busy bettering the world and working on a nobel cause) I was housesitting for the Gingerich’s.  I’m sorry that I took advantage of this and filmed without your permission, Andrew, but….

So there we have it.  I could say plenty more about this film, but I don’t want to.  I have a headache.  But I CAN say more about the packaging, but must wait for another time.