Behind the Scenes: “Pranking the Garbage Man- Part 2″

Some people have expressed interest in the “making of” my videos. So this post will describe the “behind the scenes” of how I made this short video titled “Pranking the Garbage Man- Part 2.” You should watch the video first, since this reveals key plot elements. Its prequel to this was titled “Prank the Garbageman.”

• While driving to work yesterday, I was captivated by the new hydraulic lifts on the BFI trucks. Imagine the time and costs they’ve saved.
• I followed our local garbageman to get some footage of the lifts in action. Unfortunately they spotted me, and got out the truck to find out what I was doing. When I explained it was for a YouTube video, the tattoo-laden guy demanded to see my paperwork. The nice guy, an African-American who never fails to smile and wave, wasn’t as concerned. But he did recall seeing me hiding in a garbage more than a year ago, and reminded me it wasn’t safe.
• In respect to the smiler, I left them alone. But as I drove to work, I was bothered by the reaction of tattoo man. I don’t believe there’s a law against videotaping in public, and I became more determined to complete the video.
• Luckily, I found a separate crew later. They’d have “plausible deniability” since I wouldn’t tell them what I was doing.
• Finally when I got home last evening, I asked my wife to shoot her portion with me crawling into a garbage can. No trucks were on route at this point.
• The editing was tricky. I had to overlay clips and sound to give a rough sense of continuity.
• The confused reactions of my wife (wifeofnalts) were authentic because she had no idea of what she was doing. Finally I explained, then fed her some lines so I could insert those audio-clip reactions (“it’s the hydraulic kind!”) while the lift is presumably dumping me into the truck.
• There are parts of it I still don’t think are quite right. Continuity errors since the trucks and locations were different. Ultimately I decided to give my “garbage can” camera a different look (black and white) because it was visually confusing.
• Total time to shoot: About 12 minutes. Six minutes of footage. Edit time was about 1.5 hours.
• Viral prediction: Maybe 100K view on YouTube.

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