 |
 |
 |
   
|
 |
Who Made Earl, And Why?Earl the Monkey are a new series of video ringtones for mobile phones that are fun and original. We decided to throw some questions at the creators, comedians Chris Tomkins and Liam Cody (aka The Gorskys). They decided to answer some... Q: You have written and performed comedy for stage, tv and the radio.. why did you choose to create Earl the Monkey for mobile phones? Chris: One day I spent the whole day waiting at the station for a train, and it never came and the only thing i could do was play with my mobile phone, and I got over 6 million points on "snake" and thought, surely there's gotta be something better. So I called Liam and asked him investigate. Liam: When I looked at what was available for multimedia mobile phones, none of it made me laugh. As a comedian, that made me sad. I like to make people laugh, and there seemed to be a great yawning, horrible, miserable mobile phone gap. And I thought "what could fill that yawning, horrible, miserable mobile phone gap?", and I came up with a clumsy monkey. Q: What makes Earl different to other video ringtones on the market. Chris: Earl is a character that lives in your phone, so he's kind of like a pet, rather than just screen decoration. He has a job, and his job is to tell you that your phone's ringing, and it could be important. He's like a seeing eye dog for your phone, except he can't see. And he's not a dog. Liam: Earl was created specifically for mobile phones. He's not just a cheap re-purposed rock video. He's special and different and he makes it obvious that the people who own him are a bit more imaginative and fun than the next guy. Unless the next guy has Earl on his phone, in which case it's a tie. But you can win by downloading the next Earl episode. Q: What were the challenges involved in creating video ringtones as they are a relatively new concept? Liam: It was a bit of a challenge to take into account that the ringtone market is international. We made a decision that Earl needed to be funny, no matter what language you speak, so where we usually concentrate more on the dialogue, in this case it's all about the physicality of the comedy. Chris: I think the other challenge was keeping in mind that video ringtones are the smallest videos anyone will ever watch, so its important to make everything big and obvious. Liam: Video Ringtones are also a good idea, cos they let deaf people know their phone is ringing. Chris: So do vibrating alerts. Liam: Yes but video ringtones don't make you think your hip is having a mini-seizure. Q: What do you think will be the “Next Big Thing”? Chris: In telecommunications, I see a big market for baked-bean cans with string tied between them. Liam: You can't watch videos on baked-bean cans. Chris: Alright, Video ipods with string tied between them. Q: What help did you receive in making Earl? Chris: Earl was developed with the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission, and the love and encouragement of Richard Mitchell who did the drawings, Neil Salmon who did the animations, and James Hazelden, who did the music. Liam: I also helped by adding the AFC logo below.
|
 |
 |
 |
