All posts in Wicked Pig
RETROSPECTIVE: The Wicked Pig saga – Chapter 4
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...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Wicked Pig saga – Chapter 3
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...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Wicked Pig saga – Chapter 2
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...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Wicked Pig saga – Chapter 1
Some of you may remember a few years back when myself and Dan unexpectedly became the official faces of a short lived pork snack… For anyone new to the party, we entered a film competition on a whim asking for “a new comedy double act.” The prize was £2,000 and the opportunity to be the “faces of Wicked Pig pork snacks” – whatever that meant. For a laugh we entered. We didn’t think we’d win. Anyway, we won. That wiped the smile off our faces. Our winning entry was a film called Disparate Set Pieces, which followed myself and Dan playing caricatured versions of ourselves, attempting to make a competition-winning short film to enter into the Wicked Pig competition. Get us and our postmodernism. We shot it in a “found footage” home video style, and amused ourselves with the idea that somebody might mistake the idiot characters of “Dan and Richard” for real people. We kind of suspected that nobody would find it funny unless they knew us, and we were fine with that. But it turns out we were wrong. If you’d like to watch it, here it is, otherwise scroll down for the rest of the story…...
Advent Calendar 15: Pork Offcuts
On the fifteenth day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: An introduction to the first Wicked Pig film which was asked for and then never used . Anybody who has spent any time around the Bakery kitchen in the last 6 months will be aware that Chef Dan and I have been exhausting ourselves producing vast quantities of material for our wise overlords at Sty TV. Once we have baked and iced all this video content, we are usually instructed to cut it into bits, get rid of the icing, and pick out all the fruit. The resultant stale crumbs are then uploaded to YouTube. Below is an introduction which we were asked to produce to complement the first Wicked Pig Challenge video. Once upon a time there was supposed to be an introduction like this for all 4 episodes (Ours is not to reason why). After producing and submitting this first introduction, we were then informed it was never going to be used. Although the last few seconds were trimmed off to make a short movie teaser. Please consider this a Bakery curiosity, hurriedly cobbled together while we were in the middle of millions of other...
Advent Calendar 9: Wicked Pig – Challenge 3
On the ninth day of Christmas, The bakery gave to us all: A long overdue film for Sty TV Several million years ago, we produced the third in our series of comedy challenges for Sty TV. Instead of being released, our employers have seen fit that it undergoes more re-editing and censorship than a hardcore porn flick at a W.I. charity screening . . . or a 1939 German movie titled “Hitler is a Massive Bender.” Anyway, here, now, is the day we never thought would come: the release of the officially-sanctioned edit of ‘The Wicked Pig Challenges: Episode Three.” Dan and Richard’s comedy double act is on the rocks; Richard is unhappy with the quality of the Wicked Pig films, and wants to do better stuff; Dan is the eternal optimist, and believes he can forge on with the latest challenge. Is this the end for Sty TV? . . .
Wicked Pig – Challenge 2.
At long last Sty TV have unveiled our second challenge video, sponsored by Wicked Pig pork snacks. Richard and Dan have a week to become fully-fledged celebrities… P.S. Apologies for the title card grafted onto the beginning which is almost as long as the feature itself. Sometimes our baking gets re-iced after it leaves our kitchen…
The Bakery meets Zoo magazine
Some would call it a meeting of minds. Others, the inevitable union of kinsmen. Yes, it was bound to happen sooner or later: Richard and Dan have finally joined forces with Zoo magazine. This puts me in mind of another recent comedy/marketing alliance: between the Edinburgh comedy awards and Fosters piss-water, which resulted in the Frank Chickens becoming Comedy God (yes they did! Look here! How fantastic! Well done to all who voted!) Kazuko Hohki, lead member of Frank Chickens, rather gloriously said to BBC Scotland that “Frank Chickens were not comedians, they were a band of performance artists.” And, magnificently, that she does “not understand stand-up comedy,” because “her English language skills aren’t good enough to listen to someone talking for an hour.” You’ve got to take your hat off to Stewart Lee for turning such moribund marketing on its head so triumphantly, so authentically and so damn amusingly. Meanwhile, Dan and I are awaiting the results of the above Zoo competition which will determine a future challenge. It closes tomorrow. None of you are exempt, and we don’t choose the winner – they do – so ENTER WITH YOUR INGENIOUS SUGGESTIONS! Our sponsors would get very upset...
Press Coverage Roundup
Our second Wicked Pig challenge film is coming very soon, and the topic is celebrity… Appropriately enough, the gormless faces of Richard Dadd and Dan Fryer have been turning up in all sorts of odd places recently. Here is a roundup of some of them: 1) This week’s edition of YourCanterbury includes an interview which is by turns sarcastic, sobering and hyperbolic (left – click image to enlarge) as well as a generous plug for this ‘ere Bakery website. Our thanks to Florence, the journalist. 2) The University of Kent ran with ‘Kent alumni named Britain’s next comedy double act’ and even embedded our video on the University homepage for a short time . . . despite YourCanterbury having labelled our campus-based occupations “the most boring jobs in the world” above . . . 3) Amongst such worthy headlines as “What entrepreneurs want from their accountants” and “100 days later – what has the Coalition done for you?” can be found an article about our egg portrait business model, which concludes “it’s probably more of a lesson on how not to set up a business” at the official website of Real Business ‘The Champion of UK Enterprise’ 4) The...
Wicked Pig – Challenge 1.
Here at last, is the first of our Challenge Films for Sty TV! And a trailer…
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