Bobby and I have been watching an amazing documentary we found courtesy of PBS by way of Netflix: Circus. It sounded kind of like a silly premise for a documentary, just following a group of circus performers around as they perform, but once you watch this, you will be hooked into these remarkable people’s lives. Not only is the show so full of rich human stories, it also delves into many lost performance styles like trapeze, juggling, wire walking, clowning, and even dog training. Many of the performers shown have been born into families of international circus performers, who haven’t lived a life outside of the ring for generations.

The six part documentary follows New York’s Big Apple Circus during their 2008 season. You get a glimpse into the mechanics of how a circus works from the setup of the one ring Big Apple is known for to the planning of acts and, sometimes, cutting of acts. The production value of the series is really, really high and is everything that a reality television producer hopes for but never accomplishes: capturing truly special people doing truly special things and documenting them as they are–not as how you think they are. The documentary is doesn’t hold anything back and is quite beautiful.

The video above is the trailer for the series and is, admittedly, a little cheesy because of the music. However, it does give you a look into the series and how Big Apple’s circus conducts itself. You can catch the documentary on Netflix Instant Watch, which demands you clear six nights in a row so you can watch the documentary all the way through.

KYLE

This may very well be the strangest post ever entered onto The Fox Is Black, but I wanted to take some time to speak about a show which I regard as the best show on television: America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: it’s cheesy, it’s very nineties, it’s incredibly crass, and is as low brow as it gets. I recently caught a few episodes this past weekend and was glued to the television for an hour before going to bed. The show is an easy, early reality show formula: viewers send in their caught-on-tape funnies to Bob Saget (later John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes and, currently, Tom Bergeron), viewers watch strung together videos, and the top three are awarded (small) amounts of cash. The show has been on the air since 1989 and just ended its 21st season three weeks ago.

What makes this show so impressive to me is that it was–and still is–proto-YouTube. Based off of a lot of caught-on-tape formats, AFV is one of the only shows to capitalize on the five second to five minute user generated video with incredible success. Like YouTube, the funniest videos aren’t the staged ones but rather the ones that celebrate schadenfreude or things that are silly-cute. Things like “David After Dentist” or “Keyboard Cat” would have been huge hits on AFV, but–instead–have found great lives on the Internet. One would think that YouTube would have already killed off AFV, yet the show seems to still be kicking it and reinventing the wheel (although the wheel is very, very cheesy).

Last year, AFV named the Funniest Video In America, which ended up being a very popular video of a Chihuahua peeing and walking at the same time. Gawker posted about this, deeming the show irrelevant and viral videos being funnier; however, I think they failed to give credit where credit is due. Even though AFV is somewhat “off” on the comedic five second to five minute video, it does have one thing going for it: it may have originated the mainstreaming of the five second to five minute video.

Even though I don’t have any conclusive evidence to this, I would suspect that one of the influences of YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc., etc., etc. were all the videos from sites like eBaum’s World and the like, who hosted videos that were popularized by AFV years before. Similarly, many videos from the show are finding new life on these websites from people making megamixes of the show (and its international spin-offs) that millions watch. Yes, there is no way to prove this at all and I know I’m likely 85% wrong; but, I have definitely been entertaining the thought that the reason why our phones and other technological devices are linked so directly to YouTube and movie making is to be able to watch and create our own funny five second to five minute videos to share, a la Our Own Private AFV.

This is, of course, is not the case and is a ridiculous hypothesis since the point is communication. Yet, because AFV–and COPS, to a certain degree–has been on the air during the past twenty plus years film technology and computer technology have grown, I don’t think it’s entirely silly to discount the ties between camera phones and Bob Saget.

Moreover, why isn’t the show dead? Why hasn’t it been cancelled? The same for COPS: why are these two archaic television items not off the air and out of our lives? I would assume it is because they are indeed the Viral Video’s Grandfather. Like Disney has done, my peers and some kids today have grown up with these shows in our lives as safe, fun, entertaining family television. At this point, at this age, we can share our collective memories of AFV with friends and young people and older people in any social standing or economic status because it has been sewn into the world’s cultural fabric. Why else was the Spanish version of the show playing on Telemundo at the same time I was watching AFV? Coincidence, I suppose.

It is also extremely important to note that the show and all of its spin-off’s failure to adapt to the online world is a gigantic metaphor for why the film and television entertainment industries are nearing their own death: if you have such a brilliant idea such as AFV, why didn’t the producers, people at ABC, or anyone else involved with the show think about launching an online platform for the show BEFORE something like YouTube was birthed? I get the Internet was maturing as the show was, but YouTube wasn’t created until 2005 which means that AFV had sixteen years on YouTube to create something similar.

As someone who has worked in television for years now, production companies and channels are now desperately trying to marry the bridge between the television or film experience with the online experience. Besides posting videos online and creating websites, not very many TV shows or movies have been able to adapt its idea to something online. For Christ’s sake, the movie and television industry still uses Betamax, VHS, DVDs, and the like rather than only sending things exclusively online.

Yes, piracy is a huge issue, but there has to be a way for these people to make it work without issue and stop wasting countless DVDs and other materials. Thus, the DVD/CD-driveless Macbook Air will never catch on with television producers because they are ages behind on how technology works. If AFV is a Grandfather, the producers and network heads in television are artless centenarians.

Regardless of if AFV has had any influence on modern technology, it still is an incredibly funny mindless show that people love. It may not have exploded or translated onto the web like the new media it has inspired, but it should definitely be considered the silly, used-to-be-kind-of-funny Grandfather to the Viral Video and all other like technology.

KYLE

Yesterday, Comedy Central released a brand new logo and in my opinion, have done a really great job. Rebranding has become a hot new topic for people interested in design, and for better or worse, is being scrutinized more and more. Their old logo has been in use since they want on the air in 1991 and hasn’t changed in its near 20 year history. The thing is, it’s been pretty goofy looking this whole time, definitely having a dated late 80′s/early 90′s vibe. The logo was like a word bubble with a city popping out of it, totally awkward though I’m guessing was intended to have a comedy club vibe to it. Thankfully the folks in charge have taken an entirely new direction with the brand, simplifying things immensely.

The new logo was created by thelab who created a riff on the ubiquitous copyright symbol. It’s elegant in it’s simplicity which might be an odd work to use but when you have to represent a multitude of programs having an agnostic design like this makes a lot of sense. I thought the choice of font was nice though the upside-down ‘Central’ seems a bit silly to me. Nonetheless, I have no problem reading or identifying the brand, so it doesn’t hurt.

My first impression was slightly negative, but after watching the video showing the new branding in motion it made a lot more sense. You’re probably not going to see many static images of the logo anyhow so I feel like the rebrand should be judged mainly on the video.

What are your thoughts about the rebrand?

Bobby

I’m posting this tonight because all of your co-workers will be asking you if you saw this, so consider yourself covered. Earlier tonight The Simpsons aired a special opening segment that was put together by none other than Banksy who decided to take a jab at 20th Century Fox and their production methods. It’s pretty funny that they let Banksy do this but still kind of a weird move, in my opinion. I wont’ ruin anything here, watch and get a chuckle.

Update:The New York Times talks to The Simpsons executive producer Al Jean about the stunt. Click here to read it.

Bobby

To say that AMC is leading the pack in innovative television programming that might be an understatement, this coming from a guy who doesn’t even watch TV. But with their successes with Mad Men, Breaking Bad and now Rubicon the network is certainly making some great decisions with it’s original content. So the fact that they’re turning The Walking Dead, one of the finest comic books out there, in a series is amazing.

I’ve been reading The Walking Dead for a while now, I even posted about it a couple years ago, and it’s definitely a top notch story. Where you might think it’s just a standard zombie story it’s actually a human drama that just happens to have a bunch of dead folks walking around. The real dangers of their world are the people they run into, not knowing their stories, their experiences and their motivations.

The trailer looks extremely hopeful, the zombies are totally creepy and the environments they’re running around in don’t look fake or CGI. Could this be a Battlestar Galactica for zombie fans?

Bobby

It seems that cartoon backgrounds are starting to get some recognition lately as you might have seen these vintage Looney Tunes captures floating around lately. In the same vein I came across this great Flickr set of background images from the cartoon Adventure Time which I thought they were quite lovely. The backgrounds are created by several folks, including “Ghostshrimp and Santino Lascano as the designers, the painters are Sue Mondt and Martin Ansolabehere. Nick Jennings is the art director.”

So much fun going on in all of these images. How can you not appreciate a cartoon that takes this much time and effort on the background details of their show? I could watch an entire show of shots panning over the environments you see above. Maybe it would make kids less A.D.D.?

Bobby

I can’t say I’m a huge sports fan, though it’s always fun to watch in groups and live. That said, trying to decipher what the hell all the stats on the screen are can be quite a task, even with those familiar. FOX Sports decided to change that and enlisted the help of Michael Cina and Michael Young to rethink their onscreen statistics, refreshing them and making them ultimately more user friendly.

I think what they’ve done here is completely refreshing and a much needed improvement. The graphics are now bold and clear, combining a multitude of colors, fonts and shapes while somehow keeping it all looking consistent. I think my two favorite elements are the gradient on the penalty alert and the huge Touchdown pop-up. It’s funny though, as I wrote that last sentence it made sense to use web design terms to describe what the objects were. Perhaps the web is starting to bleed over to television or the two are really finally starting to merge?

Bobby

This has been floating around for a couple days now but I still thought I’d share it. Similar to what The Simpsons did for The Simpsons Movie, Mad Men has rolled out a Mad Men Yourself application that let’s you created a stylized version of yourself that could exist in the Mad Men world. The art is rather similar to that of Shag, which I guess makes sense as both Shag’s work and Mad Men fall into a similar world.

The image above is supposed to me, so if you know me personally let me know if this look anything like me, I went with sort of a hip Mr. Rogers style… although I think I might look 45.

Bobby

Remember those informational videos you watch as a kid? They’d always be really cheesy and horribly produced, and you had to remember parts of it for a test at the end? Yeah, those sucked. But a couple of guys by the names of Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz decided to create some very Monty Python-esque versions of those videos called Look Around You.

The series first debuted in 2002 with eight 10 minute shorts, consisting of Maths, Water, Germs, Ghosts, Sulphur, Music, Iron and Brain. These are all rather offbeat but amazing, and I’m guaranteeing that you’ll definitely get sucked into watching all of these, possibly getting yourself fired.

I have to say thanks to Mr. Ben Bours for introducing me to these a couple months ago while I was sick, they were a lifesaver.

Check under the cut for the rest of the series, parts 2 through 8. Enjoy ‘em!

Bobby

I’ve never been a HUGE fan of The Simpons, but this new HD intro is pretty dang spectacular. It’s almost one of those things you need to soak in frame by frame. I think my new favorite part is when they wake up Grampa up in the car when Marge and Maggie honk.

Bobby