STBD 5-5: Revealed!

This week's episode of STBD was a drastic departure from the norm. How so? Read on...

The Making of "Pittsburgh Politics" involved:

- 3 scripted "PSAs"

- 9 improvised sequences (of which, 5 made the final cut)

- 30 minutes of raw footage

- 1 shoot in 1 day

- 6+ hours of editing

Fun Facts, Scene by Scene:

* This entire episode was filmed in one day -- the Sunday before the epsiode went live. (Actually, filming only took three hours, including driving time.)

* The PSAs were scripted. Everything else was improvised by Erik Schark (aka Rich Mathis) and Courtney Jenkins (Tabitha), with minimal direction from yours truly.

* We purposely diverged from the standard STBD "look" to obtain a more "documentary" feel, which necessitated the removal of the opening credits sequence.

* The piece of cheesecake Rich devours really did cost more than $8...

* This episode is only the second, ever (that we're aware of) that DOESN'T feature Leo, Caroline or Dierdre in some capacity. (The first? Episode 4-28, which revolves entirely around Tim's romantic duel with guest stars iJustine and Matthew Ebel.)

Matthew Ebel Outwits the RIAA

All right, maybe "outwits" is a slanted term. But "Matthew Ebel Empowers His Fans With Groundbreaking Announcement" seemed too peppy.

Either way, here's the deal: Matthew Ebel (he of the smooth talking and bird fascination in last week's episode of STBD) has announced he's allowing his fans who've recorded his previous online concerts in Second Life to release a bootleg CD of those performances [called Virtual Hot Wings] with his blessing.

Or, in other words, a guy who's already known mostly for creating podsafe music has now taken the anti-label stance a step further by allowing his fans to openly share their recordings of his music with the world at large.

Onward and upward to a day without restrictive copyright law!

(Read more and Digg the story here!)

Ustreaming with Matthew Ebel

Last night, we filmed a scene at Affogato for next week's STBD episode featuring traveling troubador Matthew Ebel, who happened to be in town mid-tour.

iJustine was there too, and each of them ended up Ustreaming the filming live... which is odd, considering the folks watching their Ustreams were able to see the live filming of what will end up being an edited video. How meta can we get?

The revolution will be Ustreamed...