The JibJab Blog

In 2007, my brother and I had the incredible honor of meeting President George W. Bush when we premiered a video satirizing the news media at the 2007 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner.

Back in 1999, when we started the business, we never would have believed that someday we would have the opportunity to entertain a sitting US President.

Fast-forward a year and a half and Ivan Goldberg, the wonderful woman who manages the RTCA dinner every year, sent an email introducing us to Heather Dahl, Chairwoman for the 2009 event.  They wanted to know if we would consider doing a video for the 2009 dinner.

Entertain the next leader of the free world with one of our creations?  HELLS YEAH!

Following the inauguration there was an air of invincibility surrounding Obama. Sure, the world was falling apart, but it had all just fallen in his lap and he hadn’t had enough time to either help or hurt the situation.  These two facts made it very difficult to find a comedic angle.  Then we realized that the absurd expectations WAS the angle.  We would turn Barack into a super hero.

After three grueling months of creation and production we were ready to show our creation to the leader of the free world.  We were even more eager to meet our second President.  That meeting almost didn’t happen.

The tradition at the Radio & Television Correspondents Association dinner is for the President to attend the VIP gathering beforehand.  I guess Barack Obama’s plans for “change” in America included not following the RTCA traditions.  A few days before the event we got a call from Ivan who told us that Obama was not going to attend the pre-dinner reception where we were scheduled to meet him.

To say we were bummed out would be an understatement.  That said, we understood that the POTUS is a pretty busy guy and probably had more important things to do than hanging out with two guys who spent three months creating something to make fun of him (like monitoring the election crisis in Iran).  Luckily, Ivan Goldberg wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“That man is not leaving the building without seeing you boys”, she told us before hanging up the phone.  A few days later we heard back; we would meet the President on his way out of the building.

When we arrived at the dinner, Ivan gave us the plan.  As soon as John Hodgeman started his performance, she would grab us and lead us backstage.  That’s exactly what happened.

Ivan led us through the maze of tables towards the curtains that shielded the President’s entrance into the banquet hall (and soon to come exit).  It was surreal to be guided past people like David Axelrod, at the next table, and countless media luminaries, all looking up at you and thinking, “Who the @#$% do you think you are getting up and walking out while the President is being entertained?”

We dipped behind the curtain and landed by the service entrance for an industrial kitchen.  We could see the President 20 yards away, on the stage, watching John Hodgeman’s performance.  We had been deposited directly in his exit path.

I remember thinking at the time that it was funny that someone would be so busy that they would have to have people positioned in their path to maximize use of every second of every day.  Then I thought, “Of course, he’s that busy.  He’s the leader of the free world you moron!”

Behind the curtain there were numerous Secret Service agents buzzing around.  That said… you got the distinct feeling that you didn’t see the half of it.  Like if you made one wrong move a flying secret service ninja would come out of nowhere and kick your ass.  Hard.

While Evan and Ivan chatted with a secret service officer (who was telling them something about an incident with a lady trying to bring her Chihuahua into the event), I chatted with a nice guy named Jordan who worked on the President’s advance team.  Jordan told me this wasn’t the first time the President had seen our work.  He had been in the room in the past when the President was watching.

Suddenly, the entire organization snapped into action.

Seconds later, the President stood up on the dais and we heard the applause of the audience on the other side of the curtain.  He stepped down from the stage, waved, and made his way along the edge of the curtain shielding him from the audience, towards my brother and me.

As he got closer (but before he noticed us), Evan heard him say to a guy he was walking with, “I have to get a copy of that that CD.”  Then, when he looked up and saw us, two things were obvious.  First, he must have recognized us from when we stood up to take a bow after the video screened and, second, he really enjoyed the video.

“HEY GUYS!”

He had a really big smile on his face as he extended his hand for a shake.

“I can’t wait to show this to the girls.”

As we stood there exchanging hand shakes, my fragile brain was trying to wrap its arm around the fact that the leader of the free world was going to show our video to his kids.

“Come over here”, the President said to Evan, who standing two down from him.

When Evan came over the President put his arm around him and we all posed for a few photos.  As the President lowered his arms, we exchanged a few more seconds of small talk.

He told us we do excellent work. I think I remember telling him, “So do you”, which is an exceptionally retarded thing to say to a President.  (Unless you have stood in the presence of a POTUS, don’t judge! It’s intimidating!)

After that, Barack bid us adieu, heading out with his entourage of secret service agents in tow.  As Evan said in the voicemail that we recorded moments after it happened to make sure we wouldn’t forget, “It was a ridiculously awesome experience.”

Having met both a Republican and Democratic POTUS, we can say it’s an amazing honor to meet a President, regardless of his political affiliation (or ours). We are grateful to the JibJab team for all of their efforts that helped to make the night such a big success!

One of the greatest honors we’ve had in the nearly ten years JibJab has been in business was being invited to the 2007 Radio & Television Correspondents Dinner to premier a new JibJab video with President Bush in attendance. Regardless of your politics, my brother and I are of the mindset that when you get a chance to entertain the leader of the free world, that’s pretty darn cool. So we were equally excited when the organizer of the dinner contacted us last summer to see if we’d be interested in releasing a new video for a new President at their 2009 dinner. The answer: @#$% yeah! When we started JibJab we never could have dreamed of entertaining one sitting US president, let alone two! God bless the Interweb.

The writing process is normally difficult but coming out of the inauguration of Barack Obama, it seemed damn near impossible.  His approval ratings were sky high and comedians everywhere were lamenting that there was no “angle” on the guy.  He was too smooth!  Our problem was compounded because of the long production cycles involved in animation.  We had to find something funny about him that would still be funny 3 months later.

Finally, we had a break through.  Rather then try to predict what would be funny about Barack Obama in 3 months, we thought it would be funny to satire the unrealistic expectations surrounding his presidency and portray him as a superhero solving impossibly difficult problems with a wiggle of his super ears.  After two weeks of brainstorming, we wrote the first verse on March 1, 2009 to the tune of the American Civil War song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”:

Barack came marching to DC,
Horah!  Horah!
And proved we weren’t racist, see-
We’re not!  (white people)
You are! (black people)
He’s a man of might,
No known Kryptonite,
Smooth as glass,
Born to kick some ass.
He’s Barack Obama,
He’s come to save the day!

While the verse did not make it into the final lyrics, my brother and I felt confident enough in the ‘hook’ (He’s Barack Obama; He’s come to save the day!) to start the process of producing the music track.

After we have a first pass of a script that we feel pretty good about, we need to “hear it” in order to work out the timing and make sure the lyrics flow.  Gregg and Evan go off to a quiet place with a laptop and a crappy microphone and screech out the lyrics to the best of their ability.  If you listen to the clips below, you can tell that they have virtually no ability when it comes to singing.    Be warned.  You might want to cover your ears!

Here is a pass from 4/1/09…

Here is an early pass from 4/16/09…

After we’ve got a solid first pass of the script in place our artists take it and begin to play around with the characters and concepts.  In some instances they’ll illustrate ideas straight out of the script (like Obama wrestling a bear) and in other cases they’ll just begin to flesh out the world.  The purpose of the visual development stage is not necessarily to create finished art that will make it into the piece but rather to get a “feel” for what works and what best supports the story we’re trying to tell.  In this case we knew we were going for a comic book vibe but finding the proper balance between old school campiness and kick-ass action took some figuring out.  Here’s some sample of early art that was generated to get the ball rolling…

Once we knew we were going the superhero route, our Production Designer, Ian, went to town!  In addition to just making something that looks super cool, we had the challenge of designing a costume that would enable us to make the President emote.  Not only did the balaclava mask let us slap ridiculously large ears on the guy, it also lets us change his expressions mid scene.  Here’s some original concept art working out the costume…

Once we had the look worked out and knew what we wanted it was time to make the costume but first we had to cast the Obama body model.  Luckily, we didn’t need to look any further than our own office!  Our Director of Community, Tim Gillons, is not only a great sport, but also one of the few people in the studio that visits a gym on a regular basis.  After he agreed to climb into the red leotard we shot some tests to make sure it’d work…

Once we felt good about the approach, we laid out some sweet designs and called upon our amazing costume-making friend Leighton Aycock Bowers to work her magic!   Here are the initial designs and samples we sent her..

And here is the finished product in all it’s glory.  We can proudly state that we largest library of “Tim G. punching, chopping and kickin photos” on the face of the earth…

 

After the script has been worked on for a while we’ll pass a copy of it to our artists and they will begin the process of translating the written ideas to visuals.  We like to keep the process of writing and storyboarding somewhat iterative as there are times a storyboard artist will come up with a great gag that will lead to new lyrics.  We try to keep ourselves open to new ideas all the way up until we record the final version of the song and at that point we stay open to new visual ideas and gags until the day before we wrap!  Our goal is to “plus” the project at every step along the way so during the storyboard phase the artist are asked to take the lyrics and find visual ways to make them funnier.  Here’s a few sample storyboards…

Bringing together the music, words and pictures into one file is what we call making an animatic.  These tend to be SUPER ghetto files that just let us test our ideas and make sure things are flowing along the way they should.  An animatic lets us test out our ideas without investing a lot of time and energy and it also helps give the artist a sense for how what they are working on fits into the bigger picture.  As the project moves along we continually update the animatic with new work and new thoughts until it ultimately morphs into the finished product.   Here is one of our first animatics from April 24…

And here is a more evolved version from May 21.  You’ll notice the animators no longer had to listen to the awful scratch track and some of the finished art has started to find it’s way into the file…

If my brother and I agree on one thing (and we agree on most, thankfully) it’s that the recording session is hands down the most fun part of any production.  Why?  Animation production is a very long and tedious process.  It takes months to see a concept emerge in final form.  When we record our songs, we walk into the studio in the morning with lyrics and a temp track and by the end of the day we have a finished product.  It’s instant gratification compared to visual production!

The recording session for “He’s Barack Obama” was extra special thanks to the all-star band of legendary rockers our music composer, John Frizzell, assembled.   On lead guitar and drums, Foo Fighter’s very own Chris Shiflett and Taylor Hawkins…  on bass guitar, Chris Chaney, of Jane’s Addiction and Alanis Morissette fame… and on keyboard, Roger Joseph Manning Jr, core member of the Jellyfish as well as session keyboardist for Beck, blink-182 and Johnny Cash.

Lead vocals were sung by Jess Harnell, who has voiced thousands of TV and Film characters, including Wakko Warner on Animaniacs, and who sings lead vocals for the heavy metal band, Pop Sugar.  Gabriel Mann sang lead on the beautiful opener as well as the harmonies throughout the song.  There is nothing more amazing than watching Gabe meticulously lay down 20 tracks of vocals to construct a harmony.

Finally, we would be remiss if we did not call out the stupendous efforts and talent of our musical composer, John Frizzell.  This is our fourth track with John (prior tracks include “In 2007”, “Time for Some Campaigning” and the “2008 Year in Review”) and each time we work together we are more impressed by his passion and creativity.  It’s no wonder he has a filmography that includes comedy classics like “Office Space” and “Beavis and Butthead Do America”.  Backing up John is audio engineer, Freddy “The Fredster” Wiedman.  Freddy can make computers do things with audio that are illegal in twelve states.  Seriously.

From left to right: composer John Frizzell, Evan Spiridellis, Gregg Spiridellis, Roger Joseph Manning Jr, Chris Shiflett, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Chaney and Freddy “The Fredster” Wiedman.

Taylor Hawkins stops hitting things long enough to show his sensitive side to band mate Chris Shiflett. Chris Chaney watches in background.

Roger Joseph Manning Jr on keys and Chris Chaney on bass.  These guys have such mad skills it’s humbling to be in their presence.

From left to right: JibJab co-founders Evan and Gregg Spiridellis review the take with composer John Frizzell.

Gregg, Evan and the musical wizards gather to listen to the scratch track and talk through things before starting the recording session.

A bit of trivia… the citizens pointing up to the “Barack Obama” sign are the band members.   Facing the camera, from left to right, are Chris Chaney, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Shiflett and Roger Joseph Manning Jr.

Every time we make a new video we wind up having to cast dozens of secondary characters so we almost always turn to our friends and family members first.  There are a handful of familiar cameos in this video along with a few new faces.  For our Jew and Arab we called on Mike and Josh Jaffe to reprise their roles from our video “Second Term”.  Gregg and Mike have been best friends since the second grade so we can always count on him to make goofy faces for us.  Here they are in “Second Term” along side the new one…

Another friend that we called on mid production was Jarl Mohn.  We posted about Jarl’s contribution earlier and the magic of Facebook, as we scoured our friends list for someone with the perfect look to play the general.

When Obama dumps the Federal Reserve building we tried to have everyone that works at JibJab get swept away by the currents.  The scene goes by in the blink of an eye but here’s some of the photos we shot of the team to work into the scene…

And of course no post about extra characters would be complete without PIRATES!  This was one of the most fun shoots we’ve ever had.  I mean, who doesn’t dream of coming to work in the morning and hearing “Hey, let’s dress up like pirates today”?  For all of the body assets Devin and Evan put on a few costumes and shot TONS of photos.  We actually thought about making a second “Behind the Scenes” blog called “Devin Bell is a bad-ass pirate”!  Check ’em out…

For the pirate faces we took the scraggliest guys hanging around the studio, asked them to put on bandannas and hats and just look MEAN!

And last but not least no post about photographing pirates would be complete without a mention of their trusty ship!  We knew we wanted the boat to have an air of authenticity but the pirate fight montage is pretty long and we did not want to have to build all of those assets from scratch for each shot.  That’s when our good friend Google came into play.  We simply typed in “pirate ship model” and you’d be amazed at what came up.  We couldn’t afford to buy any of the higher end models (as much as we wanted to) so we reached out to a seller that was in Southern California and asked if we could come down to just take some pictures for a fraction of the cost.  Victor was nice enough to meet us at his public storage space in Laguna early one Saturday morning and we popped off a ton of photos.  If you’re looking for a GREAT model ship Modelshipmaster.com is the place to go!  We shot the “Queen Anne’s Revenge”…