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NASA Space Idle

NASA Parodies Reach New Level of Awkwardness 28

Posted by samzenpus from the go-back-to-film-school dept.
MMBK writes "NASA TV recently produced six movie-trailer parodies about current projects for a 'themed exhibit at an international conference.' But for the most part, the attempt remains pretty corny, far, far away from the imaginative, inspiring work of space artists like Bruce McCall."

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NASA Parodies Reach New Level of Awkwardness More

NASA Parodies Reach New Level of Awkwardness

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  • I didn't think the videos were that terrible but maybe it's because I've had to sit through corporate sexual harassment videos that made my sides split.

    Anyway, what do you expect? Our elected officials cut NASA's budget and then you expect them to come out with award winning promotional materials? I'm glad marketing and publicity are the first things to get cut and not, you know, the actual James Webb Space Telescope.

    Personally, if I was NASA, I would have just commissioned Apple Daily to make the videos for me. I actually started preferring their news style to Fox News and CNN [youtube.com] despite my inability to understand Chinese. I don't know if Adult Swim commissions them or if they're just rebranding Next Media's productions but they sure are hilarious [slashdot.org]. I'm probably not your average consumer but seeing the first of those videos on Adult Swim just made me want to see more. NASA should have just invited their reporters out with no translators and let them make the promotional videos as a poignant stunt to remind the public how little taxpayer funding they're getting these days [slashdot.org]. Here's to hoping private industry picks up the slack otherwise we're never getting off this rock.

    •     So you were forced to watch this [youtube.com] and this [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by openfrog ( 897716 )

      Eldavojohn, I agree with you: the videos are not that terrible.

      I would add that the first one is about the first humanoid robot in space, to be launched soon. If this proves popular, this may help to direct funds to more scientifically oriented missions, instead of this obsession with sending people in space.

      This is a touchy topic of course; that might explain the rather slanted tone of the story. Oh, and I checked McCall's work. A bit too corny for me, except the poster he did for 2001 Space Odyssee.

      • The summary has an error: Bob McCall [wikipedia.org] is the space artist, Bruce McCall [wikipedia.org] is a humorous illustrator and writer.
      • It depends on where these videos are shown. Recently I attended the IAC2010 in Prague and NASA's exhibition area was a just cinema theater with poster of these movies. They were also serving popcorn for free. I saw no actual data on the current or future missions. Considering the congress is a more technical one I don't think the pop science approach was very successful.

    • Our elected officials cut NASA's budget..

      No they didn't. [wikipedia.org] Yet so many people think they did. It's odd.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by magarity ( 164372 )

        Our elected officials cut NASA's budget..

        No they didn't. Yet so many people think they did. It's odd.

        You're not very good at government budget speak. When a given agency's budget is increased by:
         
        1. less that it was in a prior year
        3. less than promised for this year from several years ago
        4. less than what its administrators want
        5. less than some other agency's increase
         
        The budget was slashed! Oh noes!

      • No they didn't. Yet so many people think they did. It's odd.

        Yes, they did.

        Linking to a web-page that has no numbers newer than 2007 (and the latest "news" on which talk about a preliminary plan outlined in February) isn't goingto make reality go away.

  • It's kinda cute and I learned something. At least I think I did. Is that robot for real or what? Now I'm confused.

    The problem with parodies (and this isn't really a parody - it's not mocking anything) is that it's hard to know what to take seriously.

  • So then DON'T post it on the frontpage! My life is boring enough thank you very much.
  • Am I the only ones who think they should have hired the people from Futurama to do this? I also think Prof Farnsworth would have been a far better narrator.

    • "Good news, everyone! Due to budget cutbacks, I've hired a new, expendable crew—made entirely of robots!"

  • ... they need the new version of iMovie (http://www.maclife.com/article/news/imovie_%E2%80%9911_introduces_audio_filters_movie_trailers_mode)

  • It's rare that I'll say this, but these are painful to watch and I wish I had not wasted six minutes of my life watching those.

  • I hate to say it, but they really shoulda just waited a few weeks and done this in iMovie '11 with that trailer creation thing they spent an hour discussing.

    That, or like someone said earlier, just contract them out to Futurama... The Simpsons shill for Butterfinger, why can't Futurama for NASA?

  • from the good, the bad, and the marginal with obvious exceptions of classified material. There is lots of techie stuff that video guys can take and post on NASA-TV (ya know the good "streaming" video that is broadcast quality like you get from ENG cameras). Techie stuff? Things that go on at test labs, facilities, maintenance guys fixing stuff, scientists dabbling with chemicals, engineers struggling with laser flowviz techniques, etc. But don't bother to make it pristine, at least white balance the camera.

  • intentional (Score:3, Informative)

    by j00r0m4nc3r ( 959816 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @01:26PM (#34026976)
    Why is nobody considering the possibility that the videos are intentionally campy? I thought they were a little fun for exactly that reason...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CXI ( 46706 )
      I know who produced them and "campy" is his middle name. Well, ok I'll admit that that particular name is just an alias but I can't tell you his *real* name or he'd try to sell you copies of the promos on DVD.

  • The bright white flash style of screen transition should be used sparingly. The first video makes copious use of it and it's very distracting.
    Scrubbing through a couple other videos, it looks pieced together by an amateur with no scene seemingly longer than 5 or 10 seconds.

    Possibly better off as a slideshow.

  • With the campy voiceover, gratuitous transitions, and fake movie credits at the end I'm pretty sure this came out exactly like they wanted it. NASA was making some funny movies about their projects to show to their peers at a conference.

    They're rocket scientists, not cinematographers, so cut some slack on the production values.

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