Single White Male

Saturday, 14 August 2010

I don’t even recall how we came up with the idea for Single White Male. I think it had its origins in our joking around about what Owen, as a newborn, would want in a mate. We figured, for example, that since nearly all the girls his age were bald, that he must like bald girls. We also assumed that, since he slept three-quarters of every day, that that must be what he would like in a mate, too.

So, one day – September 12, 2005, to be exact – we filmed Owen as he placed a classified ad for a lady companion. This was about the earliest possible day in Owen’s life that we could create such a film. He was just old enough to hold his head up and just old enough to listen to some of our cues as we directed him.

I finished that film today.

What could possibly have taken me nearly five years? you ask. That’s a great question. Let me try to give a great answer.

The thing is, when we first filmed the video, we weren’t much in the mood to create fun films like that. It was only at my insistence that we filmed it at all and, like the ICP Pregnancy Test, we knew there was a narrow window of time in which we could effectively get the footage we desired. So, after shooting the video, I shelved the project for about two years. At that time, I was ready to get working on films as a hobby again.

The first thing I did was import the footage into my computer. I then spent several lunch hours at work editing the footage down into a workable 2.5 minutes. Then I asked Jennifer to help me come up with some clever dialogue. Then, one evening when I had the house to myself, I recorded my voice as I read the script.

But there was part of the problem: an adult man’s voice did not fit very well with a little boy’s face. So I played with the audio filters until Jennifer first complained that it sounded like a man who had sucked in helium, and then that it sounded like a creepy midget.

“Well,” I said, coming up with a great idea, “how about we just wait until Owen is old enough to say the words himself?” Jennifer agreed this was a good idea.

Then my hard drive crashed. Thankfully, I had learned from past episodes to back up all my data, so the only thing I lost was (drum roll…) the edited footage for Single White Male. Oh well, no big deal. I figured I’d just wait until Owen could talk fluently.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

During the summer of 2009, I again imported the footage, edited it down and (to make a long story shorter) lost it again.

So, about six months ago, I imported the footage a third time, and edited it once again. Jennifer and I worked with Owen one winter afternoon to get him to say the dialogue but, as fate would have it, he was just getting over a cold and his voice sounded too nasally. We repeated our attempt in June and, finally, had successfully captured audio that could be married to our video. Embroiled, as I was, in another video, I didn’t bother to finish up the video until mid-July.

On July 27^th, the video appeared to be completed. I played it on the TV screen, and we noticed the titles looked a little pixilated. “No problem,” I said, “I’ll fix that tomorrow and then it will be all done.”

Well, instead of finishing the video that next day, our attention was diverted to the birth of our daughter. I thought it would be months before I finished the video.

Alas, hanging out at the local elementary school while Owen was in his community ed. class afforded me some spare time to work on selfish pursuits. At long last, I put the final touches on the little film last night and uploaded it to the worldwide web this morning.

Here then, at long last, is Single White Male: