The basic premise of the show was that a malevolent sorceress was vanquished centuries ago for sliming maidens with ‘magical slime,’ to complete some dark spells. But then she escaped and started again from where she left off of tormenting couples. Trapping a girl in the tank her boyfriend had until the Gunge Tank had filled itself (which was slowly filling over 20 minutes) to rescue her and win the prize. And I don’t think Captain Obvious needs to spell out what happens if they failed.
To perform the rescue he had to find 8 elemental orbs scattered around each of the campus’s colleges but his girlfriend has the map and she has to direct him to each orb. Once the orbs are collected he has to arrange the correct elemental orbs on the right symbols of the realms (colleges) by remembering where he found them in to release her from the tank. The format was partly influenced by the stereotypical – couple getting lost in the car, him blaming her for not being able to read a map and her blaming him for not being able to listen or remember the route (in this case where he’s been) scenario – played for laughs and a spoofing of the old rescuing the damsel in distress stories.
In reality I developed the show because the student’s union told me I had to do something with the Gunge Tank with one of the student societies to be allowed to keep storing it in the Societies’ Portakabin as I had nowhere else to store it at the time and thought trying to make an adventure game show with the TV station I was already a part of might be cool.
As it turns out making an adventure game show is a complete nightmare (I know who’d have thought it), the bloody pilot took two years of mainly development hell to produce. And it nearly looked like it wouldn’t get shot due to a wide variety of delays – most significantly having to take legal action against a nightclub called Cuba that was refusing to return the Gunge Tank after I’d lent them it for free for a student event.
Despite the show being nominated for Best Entertainment and Best Title Sequence categories at NaSTA 2010 (National Student Television Awards) the actual show I’m not going to release the actual full show on YouTube because the thing sucks. The animation, special effects and the general concept worked well it was just that due to the Cuban Tank Crisis as it became known we were stuck with only the final week of the academic year to shoot it and it being North West England it rained non-stop on all but one day which meant we didn’t have time to take follow up planned shots of the running around campus to really make the footage look good so instead got stuck with mostly having extremely shaky footage taken by a camera man running behind the contestant, we were also unable to get the art studio for the Gunge Tank part of the shoot so had to shoot that outside with a Chroma Key Screen behind repeatedly being blown down only to have it rain again before we could finish meaning the outcome of the show had to be fixed so we could shoot everything needed to complete the show without destroying all the camera and sound equipment in the first place (you’d be surprised how many game show are actually fixed on TV in varying ways). And so that show shall never see the light of YouTube. But what I am doing is releasing all the other stuff with the show. The gunging shoots, backstage documentary and perhaps the title sequence all of which I’m promoting shamelessly to all corners of the internet that I can find.
This particular gunging is the only one shot in a costume. It was shot to get a second long clip during the narration in the opening titles to go with the centuries ago sliming fair maidens bit.
The clip features the behind the scenes camera angle for the making of documentary, before and after special effects shot of the “magical slime,” and slow motion close-ups for two gungings and includes the in tank mess limitation wash down.
More clips will be added once I’ve dealt with some footage that has already been loaded on YouTube by someone who pinched the footage and posted it without authorisation. I realise that I’ll be posting it free on YouTube myself with added camera angles but having spent two years working on this production I’m not amused to have other people stealing my work and getting the credit for it.
Enjoy.
Big ‘Ed.
Race Against Slime Producer, Director and Gunge Tank Engineer.
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