From the Cutting Room Floor: Unused promo image concepts

Hi there, Traxians! 

Erik here once again! (I hope you're not sick of me yet.) I'm in the process of editing a podcast episode that I hosted with Mary Jo Pehl and Matthew J. Elliott where they talk about Sherlock Holmes, surprise surprise. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you something that I dug up from the ol' Archives. No one outside of the company has seen these - until now! 

One of the difficulties we've faced over the years at RiffTrax is explaining to people what exactly it is that we do here, without relying too heavily on the opening line, "Do you remember Mystery Science Theater 3000?" So I decided to brainstorm. 

Was there a way to, in a single image, explain what we do, without referencing MST, or without using the faces of the guys (who some people might not even recognize, as 2/3rds of them were puppets)? In addition, I wanted to not necessarily rely on using speech balloons, as they can be a bit cliché, as well as not easily translating to all sizes and mediums. A challenge, to be sure.

An idea struck me: parody! Similarly to our logo, but more specifically with our old poster designs from our graphic designer Jason Martin, in the same way you might see MKB as characters from Star Wars, maybe I could abstract the concept even further. Inspired by a diorama I saw, and possibly because I had microphones-on-the-brain at the time, it made sense to me to swap characters from a movie with mics, and place them within a very recognizable scene. So I got to work and whipped up a couple of concepts.

To begin with, I picked our biggest MP3 seller at that point, Twilight. I found a stock image of a generic forest, and then made sure one microphone was sparkly and had Robert Pattinson's gloriously coiffed hair: 

Not bad! (Note that this version does not include the credits block from the version in the header of this post. Which one do you think works better?)

I thought, because the image could look like a movie poster, that this could be a fun addition to further resolve the idea of "movies," as there was really no other indication as to what's happening here. So the title block does a bit of heavy lifting, but maybe too much. 

The slogan "Your Movies. Our jokes." was an attempt to convey the idea that "We don't make movies, we make them funny" in fewer words, and also to further drive home the fact that, for blockbuster movies like Twilight, it's up to the viewer to obtain a copy of the movie, and sync the MP3 to it. At least, I'd hoped.

Next, I wanted to try an iconic classic, and what better than a still from The Wizard of Oz, with a microphone standing in for the Tin Man:

I thought it worked, and integrating both the mic and logo into a scene was cool. Plus, I loved the idea of Toto barking at a giant, anthropomorphic microphone. 

I also debated whether we needed to include the same number of microphones as riffers in the commentary track, but eventually decided that this sort of detail was a bit superfluous.

I thought that the quick, low word count slogans could work as a complement to our "We make movies funny" slogan, or the slightly longer "We don't make movies..." — variations of which have existed since RiffTrax was founded. This one, "Old Movies. New Way to Watch." was to highlight the fact that we don't just do newer films, but even older classics, such as The Wizard of Oz. And I felt that the idea of "a new way to watch old movies" was an underutilized angle on what RiffTrax provides.

The response I got at the time from our CEO, David G. Martin (no relation) was: "I think you're onto something." We ended up leaving the concept as it was and moving on to other things, but part of me still thinks this sort of motif could be fun for movies we've riffed that are well-known, as well as hopefully telling a story about what we do visually in as few words as possible.

What do you think? Are they successful? What other movies (or iconic moments from them) would make for silly visuals like these? 

Until next time! 

Your Pal,

Erik