Revisiting My First Review After 15 Years...

Hello Everyone and welcome to my editing
bay or as I like to call it my laptop.

Now I've been doing this now for 15 years
which is an absolutely frightening thought

My videos go all the way back to 2009 and
even a couple a little bit beyond that,

but technically that is where the first
bad movie beat down episode originated

Not on YouTube though,
lots of you don't seem to realize that

I've been around longer than
the YouTube Channel

because back in the day, THE OLDEN
DAYS, I didn't post things on You Tube

I posted on blip.tv that got bought out
by Maker which got bought out by Disney

who then strip mined it for parts,
and then shut it down.

AWWE, the internet....
I don't feel very comfortable celebrating

milestones on this channel because I feel
like it's a bit self-congratulatory.

And when the 10,000th story rolled around
I just left the old website

about a year or so ago prior and I didn't
feel like I had

especially much to be proud to celebrate
at that point in time, but 15 years is

enough for a celebration, I think,
especially since I did not acknowledge it

back in 2019. But of course, I don't want
to be too egotistical. So I've decided to

punish myself by watching my first
bad movie beat down video.

This isn't my first video, but it's close
enough. So we are going to go

right back to 2009 and watch me
absolutely squirm at my younger self.

Oh God, here we go.

I'm about to press play..... Now.

"Hello and welcome to bad movie Beat Down"

Oh My God, so much hair, so much hair

and unfortunately, mate, you are not
keeping any of that.

WOW, not in the long run anyway.

Appreciate it while it lasts.

You might notice by the way that I
deliberately decide to wear the exact same

t-shirts that I was wearing back in 2009,
arguably it has aged better than I have.

I'm not wearing the same jacket,
however, because I think I threw that out

at some point. So I've deliberately worn

something that is close enough to the
clothes I was wearing back in those days.

"the bad movie Beat Down is for everyone
that went to see"

Oh man, I drew these in MS paint.

MS Paint.

chuckles

Man, that's fantastic.

Oh, and I've paused on a still frame
of myself.

I need to contextualize this, a little bit
I think.

Somehow when I was doing my early videos,
I actually edited those in Windows Movie

Maker. That's right.

Windows Movie Maker.

Always known for its high-quality
production standards.

This still frame here is literally pulled
from out of the video somewhere. I've

apparently, pulled the most embarrassing
image of myself humanly possible.

So I did all of my editing in WMM for
a long time,

An embarrassing amount of time.

It was kind of split between WMM and

Vegas, everyone had a crap version of
Vegas in those days. I still use Vegas

to this day, obviously
a much later version.

What I would do a lot of the time
is that I would edit the movies in WMM and

then finalize them in Vegas
especially if they were in wide screen.

WMM was incapable of putting out a purely
wide screen file, it would in (?) and

anytime you would upload it directly like
that it would be squished and stretched.

But it proved to be a good learning ground
And eventually, longer than perhaps it

should've been I did eventually
stop using WMM.

"Here's where I unleash
my good friend PAIN"

The MR. T thing, what on earth

"Now you must be wondering, isn't this a
bit nostalgic like?

Well, right you are. But no one in their
right mind would consider any of these

celluloid feces be nostalgic?"

I know what you are thinking at that point

Isn't that an ipod touch?
It is an ipod touch!

Ok, being serious now, yes, that is Doug

on there are you know he gave my big break
back in the day but

effectively bringing me onto the website
and I didn't start out by making videos

I was actually writing articles, people
were looking at the videos there, they

weren't reading the articles, so I very
quickly pivoted towards that. And I

do have to admit that I am grateful
for the opportunity that was afforded

for me. It opened doors that would not
have happened, otherwise.

And I got to meet some fantastic people
that I still call my friends to this day.

I just wish it wasn't so conflicted in my
mind because of what happened afterwards

and the way things panned out.

It didn't have to be that way. I try not
to be bitter about it.

It is a shame unfortunately.

Now I was talking there about the fact
that when me and my friends Chris and

Lewis were conceiving of the show, we were
trying to think of ways to separate it

from what Doug was doing as the nostalgia
critic, originally the conception of the

show was that there was originally going
to be a 3 man show, that it was going to

be split duties between us. But Chris and
Lewis weren't really into the idea of kind

of co-hosting and so I end up becoming
the main host purely because I was the

one that most wanted to do it.
And so the early scripts, and certainly

the early episodes, me and Chris would
kind of split duties on editing them.

So there were some that were edited by me
like this one. There were some that were

edited by Chris, and we'd kind of pitch
in all a little bit when it came to the

writing. But there were other influences
on the show aside from Doug.

Harry Hills TV Burp was a big one
especially the kind of surrealism to

some of the humor but especially
Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe, those

were kind of my influences, I know a
lot of my peers would kind of say things

like angry video game nerd or
mystery science theater, those weren't

really things that I was into. Those were
the American centric ones and as you can

tell, while my influences are very British

"if things would be a little bit ran
different! Grand, great! Now I'm"

Seamless edit there!
Absolutely seamless edit.

You will notice incidentally throughout
this entire review, that white balance

changes quite considerably, you'll also
notice the camera moves a little bit as

well. There is a reason for that.

We didn't film this on a tri pod.

You see, one of our brilliant ideas
when it came to the show was to film it

shaky cam. A lot of this is actually shot
handheld. The reason that I came up with

this stupid idea that we abandoned almost
instantly, was again we were trying to

make ourselves look visually distinct
from Doug, how about we do an edgy style?

No, it just looks stupid. Buy a tripod,
Matthew. And you did.

And you still use it to this day.

Because tripods hold value.

"Let's hear it for the first film that
I'm going to be reviewing. Drum Roll

please drum roll"

"Pluuuuto Naaash"

Okay, so the reason I chose Pluto Nash was
actually because I'd found the DVD in the

99 P store. And that was literally the
origin store behind it. Although I suppose

there is a little bit more to it. You
remember Quick Time Movie Trailers?

I remember seeing the trailer for Pluto
Nash back in the day and I always wanted

to see it, and so kind of became
fascinated when I found the DVD in the

99 P store and I remember watching it
and thinking this is absolutely terrible.

And that's why I chose it because I
chose it as the first movie because

I did have that connection to it as
someone who wanted to see it and was kind

of into Eddie Murphy as a kid growing
up with things like Nutty Professor

and Dr. Dolittle and Shrek and finally
seeing it and going 'oh this is bad'.

'This is really bad'.

"Since then, Murphy's career has been
like riding a roller coaster."

So Lewis actually did the animation for
this section, this is something we wanted

to do more of, but as anyone who has
tried to do animation would quickly tell

you, it takes a long time. And so this
became something we very quickly dropped.

"They had 20 years to perfect the script
apparently, so it must be good, right?

Wrong!"

You might have noticed that the audio
quality is quite abysmal

I mean, that's just standard for, you know
an online video in 2009

because no one had a clue how to record
audio. And arguably, looking at this video

that might still be the case, even though
I'm using a wireless microphone here.

But I literally have the camera that I
used to record this.

This is a mini DV camera, and what you're
hearing a lot of the time is the tape

noise from the actual mechanism inside
here. The battery in here is dead, so it's

not gonna spring out, unfortunately,
but yeah.

This camera was a cheap JVC model that I
think was bought for me down ASDA as a

Christmas present.

There's one big problem with this camera
that really annoyed the piss out of me for

the first couple of years that I used this
before I traded to an actual, you know,

SD card camera.

You can't actually see yourself filming
with it. Its unique feature is that the

screen slides up and down, which is
functionally useless in most applications

unless you were doing, like, this,
'oh, I'm doing a lot of low-shots.

oh, I'm going up and - look at the top of
the skyscraper.'

Unless you were doing that,
if you were trying to frame yourself

or doing any kind of vloggy stuff, uh,
that ain't happening with this.

That became a bit of a nightmare
to try and frame myself as you can

again tell in several of my episodes,
where there's way too much headroom.

Oh, and while I look at this pause frame,
what's wrong with it?

I'll tell you what's wrong with it,
it's got a dead pixel in the bottom third

of the frame. That little red dot there,
yeah. That is a dead pixel on the camera

sensor that has always been like that.
It literally came out of the box new with

a dead pixel. And so in all my old videos,
have fun spotting the little red dot that

periodically pops up and is especially
identifiable against dark backgrounds

like, say, my black jacket in this review.

"You know what? These effects are pretty
good, but they're not really funny,

are they? Ooh, prepare for lunar gravity.
That's hilarious!

Let's really not..."

And that we call straining for criticism.

The detail there of the world building,
the 'prepare for lunar gravity'

is not meant to be a joke. Some of it is
in Pluto Nash, but it's not actually

a joke. So I'm just reaching.

And I did get better at this as I went
along, as I realised, you know,

you don't have to make everything into a
joke. If you can try and find a legitimate

criticism, and then turn that into the
basis of humour, you know that tends to be

how the joke actually works. Sometimes the
joke lands better if you have a legitimate

observation. I'm just saying.

"There's a complex-"
Can you tell which bits I shot

considerably later with a tripod?
Is it the bits that have the correct

contrast because the camera isn't
panicky because it's being thrown around

like a ragdoll. It's these bits right here
and the reason behind these new insert

shots is that I actually sent it to people
before it was released, to try and get

their opinion on it. And I send it to
Angry Joe. Yeah, that Angry Joe.

He sent it back and he said,
'Oh, I like the review, but I didn't like

the camera shaking. You need to reshoot
the shots with the worst shakiness.'

And he was absolutely right on that.
So Joe, you saved the video. Partially.

But you gave me some sound advice.
Use a tripod!

So in the intervening time since this
review, many people have covered

Pluto Nash, one of them being my friend
Alison. And I think her review of

Pluto Nash is much better than mine, for
the obvious reason that it's not her first

video, but also because she had more info
to deal with at that point in time

because people had spoken to some of the
people involved with it.

One of them was the guy that was hired to
rewrite and kind of save the movie

except he didn't, but one of the things
he suggested was writing a new opening.

Knowing what I know now, it's very obvious
to see that this opening portion of the

movie is a total reshoot, it's something
that they came back and did later because

they needed a way of introducing the
characters.

I think that this reshot opening is also
terrible. It's got no energy to it

whatsoever. In fact, it feels really odd,
the kind of Scottish crooning thing, it's

a gag that dies completely on its arse.

And if I was reviewing it now, I would've
said that. But of course, I don't say

that in this video because I didn't know
it at the time.

But, you know, that's the sands of time.

"...Pluto must now turn the bar into a new
nightclub, imaginatively titled

'Club Pluto'."

You might have also noticed there,
those kind of clacking sounds

that's because all the narration is
actually filmed in camera, and this was a

piece of quite bad advice that I took from
Doug back in the day, and perhaps still

does, I don't know. But he used to record
all his voiceovers directly to camera

using the camera's microphone, which in
one way, yes, that does make sense

because you've got continuity of audio.
But also, if your camera's got terrible

audio, that means your voiceover's also
got terrible audio at the same time.

And it seems to me from those clacking
sounds that I decided to record my

voiceovers while we were hand-holding the
microphone, so you can hear the lens cap

scraping against the body.
Fantastic!

"She's come to see Pluto because her plot
device, sorry, moon card, has expired."

I've been saying not a lot of very nice
things about my work from 15 years ago

So I'm gonna level that out and say
I'm actually surprised at how fully-formed

in some ways that this video is in terms
of its kind of commentary and

especially the way that it airs it-
you can tell that there is a kind of

attempt at pacing and rhythm. And one of
the things I would always do when I was

cutting my videos together is I'd always
pace it to match what I was saying in the

voiceover. There was a comedy program way
back in the day, that, like precision

engineered comedy, and I believe that when
it comes to