Kings in the Corner (film)

Kings in the Corner is a 2003 short film by Dozerfleet Productions. It is the first production since the early days of the Dozerfleet founder's work in high school at developing a concept for The Mutt Mackley Show. It is in this piece that the characters Gambino Penguin (portrayed by a Beanie Babies Waddle doll), Smiley Toucan, and Detective Hooper are first established as characters. Noteworthily, while this is a spin-off of the original 1999 idea for a Mutt Mackley program, Mackley himself never appears in this production. Released in March, the film was shot in February of 2003.

Plot
Ignoring his childhood advice, Smiley Toucan decides to lurk about at night in an alleyway in an unspecified town. He runs into Gambino Penguin, believing Gambino is an equally-lonely bird looking for someone to talk to. Instead, Gambino jumps Smiley and begins strangling him in an effort to mug him. Smiley begs Gambino to let him go, insisting he doesn't have any money on him. Gambino continues to pressure him, disappointed at the lack of cash to be mugged.

Out of nowhere, Detective Hooper shows up pretending to be a normal bum. He tricks Gambino into agreeing to a game of "Kings in the Corner."

The two of them continue to play, as Smiley disappears from the scene. Gambino is impressed with Hooper's skills, and accuses him of cheating. Hooper insists he is merely lucky. The two continue to taunt each other as they play for money. In the end, a flashing spotlight blinds the both of them. A voice hollers out that the police have arrived and that nobody ought to move. Hooper then reveals to Gambino that the whole thing was a setup to catch him.

Officer Hornet puts the cuffs on Gambino, and thanks Detective Hooper for providing a distraction.

Cast

 * He-Man Buzz-Off action figure as Officer Hornet
 * Ty &reg; Beanie Babies Waddle &trade; as Gambino Penguin
 * Cloud Nine Toys Basketball Plush as Detective Hooper
 * Toucan toy of unknown make / model as Smiley Toucan

Video capture
The original video was shot using a news-style camera borrowed from the LCC television department and a DVCAM digital video tape. The same tape would also be used to make The Blue Face Film Strips. Footage shot for KitC was done with low F-stop numbers, never exceeding f/2.8. White balance didn't matter as much for this project as it did for Blue Face, as the excessive blue hue was done intentionally as a cheap way to create a night sky effect. While a streetlight orange effect would have been desired, there was no way to set up such a system with the equipment provided. Therefore, the city of unspecified name appears to be experiencing a blackout.

Differences in the releases
Due to the years that have passed from this film's initial creation to when its follow-ups were created, (a difference of 4-5 years), there have been several adjustments to KitC regarding its the script and duration edit.

Musical differences
In the lost-to-the-ages original 2003 version of Kings in the Corner, Larry Carlton's song "Fingerprints" is taken directly from the hard drive of a Macintosh in a lab at Lansing Community College. No musician credit is provided, as this version was not originally intended to be viewed outside of the FILM 118 class in which it was used. By contrast, the 2008 version involved taking a microphone directly to a speaker and recording off an internet stream, in an effort to compensate for loss of the original soundtrack. The 2007 version was made in desperation to have at least one restored version of KitC available for public viewing. As a result, it was edited together from the KitC raw footage CD-R in a bedroom of the same house where The Blue Face Film Strips and Volkonir Journals: Attempt #43 were shot.

Said house at that time did not have a cable internet connection, so no attempt was made in December of 2007 to retrieve a copy of the original song. Therefore, a tune by the Irish Film Orchestra was used in its stead. The Irish Film Orchestra is given credit in the video itself for their work. Larry Carlton is only credited in the YouTube side credits for the 2008 version, since this version tried to be a "near-perfect" re-creation of the 2003 version with only the title card, Dozerfleet Productions logo, and Dozerfleet Studios logos added.

In March of 2020, for a re-release, a royalty-free song dubbed "Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod replaces both Larry Carlton and Irish Film Orchestra.

Dialog
Liberties were taken with the 2007 and 2008 versions, to improve some of the dialog from 2003 version, which was rushed.


 * Smiley Toucan's line of: "Hi, wassup?" in the 2003 version was replaced with: "Well hello there!" to indicate that he was merely trying to be friendly to Gambino; whereas the original line seems to indicate falsely that the two had a prior relationship.
 * Smiley's line of: "Hey, what gives?" is replaced with: "Come on, what gives?" This was a simple case of poor memory.
 * Gambino never originally uttered his threat "O' yah dead!" explicitly. That was added for the '07 & '08 releases.
 * Gambino's line: "An' why doesn't I believe yuz?" is replaced with: "I know yez gott it! Foik it oveh, prettybird!!!"  This change was made for increased topical clarity.  It was also an inside reference to the phrase "prettybird" that was believed to be uttered by the house family's parakeets, which were not around in 2003.
 * Hooper's line: "Hey, I got money! I'll play ya for some!" is replaced with: "Hey there, I've got some dough!  I'll play ya for it!"
 * This is to make it clearer that Hooper intends to gamble with Gambino.
 * The original line leaves his intentions ambiguous, as well as making Hooper seem a softer character than he should be.
 * Gambino's questioning of Hooper's choice in game selection is spelled differently to keep his dialect intact.
 * Hooper now says "A card game..." before announcing that they will play "Kings in the Corner."
 * This is to add clarity to viewers not familiar with the game.
 * The original assumed everyone viewing the film was familiar with the name of the card game.
 * The line: "Pitiful, simply pitiful!" used to be colored orange to indicate that Hooper was saying it. It was recolored green to indicate Gambino saying it after a lucky card move.
 * The significance of this change is that in the original, Hooper is the cocky one and Gambino is a frustrated, dumb oaf.
 * The rearrangement indicates that Gambino thought he was winning not only in the card game, but in the world of crime also.
 * The following line by Hooper of: "Guess what, buddy! I win!" becomes a twist at the end, showing how Gambino's overconfidence that he had things figured out proved to be his downfall.
 * The original script had this line as Hooper being a sore winner; which didn't fit with the moral of the story.
 * The original's motivation was to indicate early on that Hooper would win no matter what Gambino tried to do. The change, however, creates a plot twist more consistent with the story's moral message that one can never be too certain that they have any situation completely figured out (a variation of Murphy's Law).

Length
One reason for the fact that the re-releases are considerably shorter than the original is because quote cards are up on screen for a total of ten seconds fewer this time than in the original. In addition to editing quote card times, the theme of the changing numbers on a clock is missing in re-releases. The original version's clock showed approximately that the characters were taking a remarkable amount of time to play their game.

This is because the original FILM 118 class with Jeff Hamlin assignment at Lansing Community College was to show a passage or progression of time. However, this passage is irrelevant to the story and therefore, poorly motivated. Because of this, the clock footage was edited out entirely for public release. Combined shortening of the quote card durations and removal of clock scenes cut the video's runtime by about 51 seconds. The original version was consistent with assignment parameters that the video had to be "between 2 and 4 minutes long." For public release, there was no duration prerequisite.

Character names
This segment of The Mutt Mackley Show was created back in 2003, when only Mackley himself had a name.


 * Waddle, the Beanie Baby model used to play Gambino, was known merely as "Some Penguin Gangster." He would not be identified as having a name until he and Mutt Mackley would perform in a music video for Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong."
 * Detective Hooper is the only character to be identified by name in this entire movie.
 * Smiley and Officer Hornet did not receive their names until 2008, and Officer Hornet is not in the sequel 3-13.

Reception
Kings in the Corner remains controversial among critics as to whether or not it was a "good movie." Generally, this short has been met with mixed reviews and ambivalent opinions.

Special effects
Visual effects were achieved using very low-tech tricks. The police car flash effect was accomplished by merely waving double-thick gels of orange and blue types rapidly back and forth in front of a single studio light that was being used for lighting the set. When said police spotlight was flashed to subdue Gambino, the studio light that had been pointed slightly off-camera and covered in multiple layers with blue gel was allowed instead to flood the scene with unaltered light.

This same effect would be re-purposed for the 2007 music video of Gambino and Mackley's version of Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong." That time, the footage of orange and blue flashing gels was deliberately off-balanced in the camera's white balance correction setting to make its orange gel lighting look more red. Redness was then further enhanced digitally.

Puppet work
The characters in this piece were all stuffed toys, save for one action figure. Therefore, shots were often on the screen for very little duration to compensate for the fact that the figures couldn't actually move. When Gambino is strangling Smiley, for example, the camera moves to compensate for the fact that Gambino cannot. The figures did not owe themselves well to stop-motion animation, especially seeing that a video camera was being used to capture footage. One revealing mistake is when Hooper hobbles onto the scene. In the far lower right corner, the puppeteer's right hand and arm are clearly visible.

Filming location
This entire short film was recorded inside the upstairs master bedroom of 7779 E. Mt. Hope Hwy. in Grand Ledge, MI.

Distribution
Shortly after Kings in the Corner was produced, it was printed to a CD and to VHS. The VHS version would survive for many years. The CD would be stolen later in the summer of 2003 by a Muskegon resident. Finally, KitC was added in January of 2008 to YouTube, and was made available for a time on the Dozerfleet MySpace page. The 2007 version was released on January 12th, and the 2008 version on January 13th.

On August 18th of 2010, KitC was returned to Ivan's Vault. On March 18th of 2020, it was re-released to YouTube with a new soundtrack, as a foundational video of Dozerfleet history.

Theory of environmental conveyance
The general summary of what Kings in the Corner sought to teach artistically regarding how it was shot, was that sufficient setup and manipulation of an environment can be used to substitute for a subject's lack of native emotional expression dynamic range. Stationery Voyagers, The Trapezoid Kids, Ciem and its sequels, 3-13, Volkonir (or its comic adaptation), and The Blue Face Film Strips would all similarly rely on this aesthetic gimmick, as they would all feature characters that were limited in terms of capability of displaying a wide array of emotions naturally.

Outside of Dozerfleet, tokusatsu programs, with varying degrees of success, attempt employ these techniques of using lighting, gesture, and environment to compensate for the limitations of a stoic face. One reason many masked or hemleted characters in Hollywood adaptations only wear their masks or helmets for a very small amount of time on-screen, is because actors and directors often lack faith in using environment as a substitute for facial expression. Characters such as the Power Rangers, or Spider-Man, or Daredevil, can have a very hard time relating their feelings toward the audience without a director who is attuned to environmental conveyance. Therefore, the actors in these sorts of films tend to try to have their faces be visible as often as possible.

Kings in the Corner, however, embraced the fact that its subjects were each only capable of showing one expression. And therefore used manipulative lighting and angles to compensate for what the characters couldn't convey on their own.

Sequels
In addition to the shelved concept for a Mutt Mackley-based TV series, this Mutt Mackley concept spin-off's official sequel is 3-13. Unlike KitC, 3-13 was originally shot on 16mm Kodak 7266 Tri-X reversal film stock, with an ISO of 200, as opposed to a DV tape. Reshots were made on April 8th of 2020 for a remake of 3-13, using a small Canon camera and storing images to a high-capacity SD card. A tie-in joke video for 3-13, also proposed in 2020, was finally released in early 2021 on YouTube: Penguin on Drugs. This was originally the backup assignment, in case 3-13 couldn't be made at all.

Music
The FILM 118 class was not required to use original music for the movies they made; but was expected in their end credits section to provide credit for who made the song that they did use. In the final movie, this was required. However, for the time progression assignment's purposes; it was not necessary. The selection of Larry Carlton's song "Fingerprints" was a coincidence. On the Mac being used to edit KitC at that time, there was no other song available that proved a better mood fit.

Editing software
The original's edits were made in Adobe Premiere 6.0 for Mac. Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 was used to make two re-releases. The Irish Film Orchestra had a song of theirs substituted for "Fingerprints." However, this too was eventually rejected by online copyright claim software. For the 2020 re-release, Kevin MacLeod's royalty-free "Dirt Rhodes" filled the soundtrack. This edit was made using Adobe Premiere Elements 2020.