The opening shot is a little confusing
and a little unreal. That sense of unreality is because
nearly every shot in this video is being played back at the wrong speed. We filmed this section at 30 frames a second, but it’s being played back at 24, 80% of normal speed, so it just seems a little bit off. Plus, we’re using rapid cuts with
no continuity between them. Different clothes, different locations, different everything. We’ve also got some cutaways
in extreme slow motion, because it looks spectacular, and it lets me do a moody stare into the distance without having to hold it for so long that
it becomes awkward. It also lets us fit in some product placement. Some of the shots aren’t slow motion, though. This is being played back
faster than real time, so that the dancers seem more synchronised
and precise than they really are. I mean, don’t get me wrong,
they’re good, but with the speed change,
their movements look superhuman. Also, there are dancers, because having attractive people
move in attractive ways makes the video more appealing. We couldn’t afford a wind machine
for this shot, so we bought a leaf blower
from a hardware store. We kept the receipt,
so we can return it after we’re done. The trouble with filming everything in the
wrong frame rate is that my voice won’t sound right. So the vocal track for this
was pre-recorded in a studio, and I’m lipsyncing it at the wrong speed. If my lips don’t quite match up
at some point, we’ll just cut to another take, or to a completely random slow-mo shot of
an object being destroyed, and no-one’ll care. Actually, this isn’t the studio where we
recorded the vocal track. I recorded this weeks ago
so we could plan everything, but we didn’t film that session, so we had to go to this separate
recording studio to fake that footage. This microphone isn’t even plugged in. - We’re now about two thirds
of the way through so here’s a middle eight from me,
the featured artist, in an attempt to cross-promote us. Our schedules didn’t match up,
so this was all filmed separately. Despite that, we’re still trying
to convince everyone that Tom and I met up and are great friends and are definitely in the same room. - This is the bit where we break up the video
with a bit of diegetic audio, so people can’t just rip the whole thing
off YouTube. This isn’t actually a party. It may look like we’re having
a spectacular time, as that’s the image we want to project, but in reality we are on our fifteenth take. Everyone would quite like to go home. This final section is important, though, because it resolves the question at the start: why am I falling into a swimming pool? Because ending the same way we started
makes the audience think that there’s a sensible, circular narrative that
ties everything together. Even if there isn’t. You can’t buy this on iTunes
or stream it on Spotify. It’s... it’s not a song.
Someone should remix his voice and make a song out of this, we already got the video.
The scene of him doing the voice over, when he isn't actually doing the voice over, saying he had to plan it before hand, but record it after, is like something out of inception
The image of Tom sitting waist deep fully clothed in a bathtub with his classic red shirt is hilarious.
Weird AL's "White and Nerdy" video is a pretty extreme example of the recording speed tweaks. Half the cuts look to be 2x or 3x frame rate adjusted. (video and behind the scenes)
Wow. I knew Tom Scott has been on top of his game for quite a while now, but this, surely, must be his peak
I didn't know that all I needed to make my day was a slowmo shot of Tom Scott receiving a dice facial, because those words in that order never crossed my mind.
I wonder how Tom Scott comes up with ideas for videos. They're all over the place on different topics and he makes them all so interesting.
He should have sang a little bit, with some auto-tuning going on. Point out how it could do wonders even with his (possibly) terrible singing.
Inspired by Charlie Brooker's "How to Report the News"?
Seriously, though, how old is Tom Scott?