Archive for February, 2016

It was the Autumn of 2010. We had just finished filming the third of our challenge videos, and submitted it to the marketing agency. Looking back, we might as well have picked up our ball and gone home at this point. Because Episode 3 would prove to be the final instalment released. But we didn’t know that. And so we would spend the closing months of 2010 completely wasting our time making an Episode 4 that wouldn’t see the light of day. Until now that is! Further down this blog post, we shall at last unveil the never-before-seen concluding episode of the Wicked Pig Challenges, and thus resolve a cliffhanger that has been hanging for half a decade now. But first, join me as I go into minute detail about the trials and tribulations of getting the bloody thing made in the first place… You will recall that our third challenge had been to invade France. The origins of this challenge lie in our original pitch document, when we had suggested the challenge of: “How many countries can you drink a cup of tea in, in 24 hours?” I still think this is an excellent challenge, and I wish...

The story so far: Chapter 1 is here and Chapter 2 here, after which our heroes turned their weary minds to the third challenge… It’s hard to overstate the extent to which making these videos was beginning to occupy all our time. During the week, Dan and I both worked at the same IT office in the University of Kent, but our weekends and evenings were now wall-to-wall Wicked Pig Challenges. Our girlfriends may have been understanding, but life was increasingly looking like the scene in Disparate Set Pieces where we talk over Becky’s head. Of course, all-encompassing projects were nothing new for The Bakery. Mine and Dan’s friendship was cemented during the monumental production of Konkers, after all. But this was different… You see, with a normal Bakery project, all we have to do is satisfy ourselves. We just have to make something we think is good. And that is motivation enough. But in Wicked Pig Land, we found ourselves frustratingly beholden to baffling feedback; required to re-edit and re-edit, dragging the production out, and squeezing much of the fun out of the process. It was a collaboration of the worst kind, because we really didn’t feel like...

The story so far: Dan and Richard have accidentally become the faces of Wicked Pig Pork snacks, and are now obliged to produce regular YouTube videos tackling comedy challenges. In their first video, they attempt to make a million pounds by painting faces on eggs. But as they await their second challenge, they are perturbed by the marketing agency in charge, who are showing worrying signs they might not know how to run a campaign properly. Richard takes up the story… A package arrived by courier. We eyed it suspiciously. It was a squarish box from the marketing agency, very unlike the slim brown envelope which the first challenge had arrived in. This box gave us an uneasy feeling. We filmed ourselves opening the box, just as we had filmed ourselves opening the challenge envelope at the start of episode one. This was to be the start of episode two. But what we found inside… oh, I’m wincing just to write this… Inside were luminous lycra dancing outfits. Just to clarify, we had specifically asked the marketing agency to set us simple challenges. The kind that could be summed up in one line. Challenges that should not, in themselves, be...