One week later… or “Mr. Bungle Goes to Midland”

Okay so it has been quite while since my last post, the inauguration day video. You’d think that there would be so much to talk about, and there is actually; but it has been rather busy at work. I work in a small public access station in Montpelier and with a staff of 2.5. Anyway, I was looking for programming for a slot we call “ORCA Presents!” which airs on weekends and shows whatever we want to put in, usually something fun, that balances out the oh-so-serious religio-politico-social issues programs we have on most of the time – you know, usual public access TV stuff. Sometimes we show old movies, sometimes it’s documentaries, sometimes concerts, etc. So this week I decided to check out the public domain moving picture library of Archive.org for “new” material. Success! I found these 1949-1951 era behavior modification films aimed at children and teens, titles like I Want to be a Secretary and Mr. Bungle Goes to Lunch. The latter film was excerpted in a Pee Wee Herman special on HBO in the eighties, and centers around “Phil” remembering that he is not at the center of the universe and making sure to wash his hands, comb his hair, not cut in line, etc. as he joins his classmates for lunch. I downloaded several of these films at full MPEG2 quality, then transcoded them to MOV, imported them to Final Cut Pro, then stitched them together, more or less. The end result is about 70 minutes of side splitting mind control – well not really, but it is worth popping corn for. May I have more butter please? Thank you. I wouldn’t want to sound like Mr. Bungle, you know.