Blog | Srizzil

Somebody to Love & Billionaire covers

October 13th, 2011

The last time I recorded myself making musical noise was in May. So I readied my money maker with a good slap across the face, set the camera down and recorded one of my favourite songs: Somebody to love. The song was originally by Queen, of course, but I fell in love with the song after the late Brittany Murphy covered it for the Happy Feet movie.

As with all my singing videos, I immediately hated it afterward and tried not to look as I clicked render and upload. I’ve come to realise that the more I fuss about trying to make it perfect, the less fun I have and the more uncomfortable I look in front of the camera.

I am learning slowly but surely to let go and be more relaxed. It’s a strange thing to be in front of the camera. It changes the situation in the room. Increased time spent in front of it doesn’t actually make it more comfortable, it just gets you used to it. You learn to get over the weirdness of this large eye capturing your every move.

This is why I’ve uploaded the second video, a short cover of Billionaire by Travie McCoy and featuring Bruno Mars. In this video, I was actually just testing how to use and set up my new mic, so I didn’t do the whole song. However, I like the way the song came out. It’s a small glimpse of me messing around with music.

Posted in Blog, Music, Video |

Alex Rider: Scorpia Rising

August 11th, 2011

I started reading Alex Rider back in the eighth grade. That was 2003. It’s been eight years of following the reluctant teenage spy, (The author, Anthony Horowitz, has been working on them for ten.) and now it’s finally time to say goodbye.

Scorpia Rising throws Alex back into the Spy world after months of freedom, just when he was getting used to normal life. As usual MI6 manipulates Alex into doing their bidding, totally unaware of Scorpia’s sinister plans. This is the third time Alex is taking on Scorpia, and they have something to prove.

There’s something magical about the way Horowitz writes that grips you from the beginning. I sat down with the book on Tuesday afternoon and finished in the early hours of Thursday morning. Having to force yourself to stop and go read some boring text books in between is akin to torture.

As usual Horowitz has done his research. This time Alex is thrown into the heart of Egypt as the popular author brings the city to life in sparkling detail. It’s also topical, using real world events and tensions to bring a sense of reality to the story.

As promised, Horowitz is ending the series as Alex turns 15, and with a promising future. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some absolute shockers in the story, including the truth about Smithers, MI6’s gadget genius, who joins Alex on his final mission.

The beauty of these books is that they feel like a movie, playing out scene by scene, holding you in suspense and throwing curve balls. The disappointment that was the 2006 film will haunt me for ages. How can you take a book that screams to be made into a film and turn it into a joke? I look forward to some genius director turning this series into the gritty action packed movies it deserves someday. Until then, we have something better, our imagination.

Posted in Adventures, Blog, Books, Product Reviews |

Granny Robber

August 3rd, 2011

From the brain boxes of Jason Du Randt and Marc Williams comes the outrageous idea that a Granny as cute as Diana Chevalier would rob someone as innocent looking as Byron Langley. Apparently, according to news reports, grannies have in fact been known to rob people. Perhaps, however, none are as flippant as ours.

This time we set up at the Du Randt household, thanks to the amazing hospitality of the family, we took over their entrance way for a good few hours and got to work. Yet again Byron Langley brought his game face and we introduce the amazing Diana Chevalier. If you watch the Behind the Scenes I think you’ll easily agree that she has to be one of the coolest grannies you’ll ever meet. She’s an undiscovered gem of an actress and it was an honour to work with her. Jared Price, a new addition to the Srizzil crew, brought his beautiful granny car and gaffer skills to the shoot. And Christy Kiggan, Diana’s unofficial handler, was there to make sure everything ran smoothly.

After sound issues on the last video for people with dodgy laptops, I tried my utmost to make the sound better in this one. Some people may see an improvement, some may not. But trust me I tried hard to improve the sound with the software I’ve got. I hope you also notice some beautiful shots thrown into this video, if you’re an arty type I trust they made you smile.

For more laughs, maybe even more so than the actual video, watch the Behind the Scenes including discussions and outtakes below:

Posted in Blog, Comedy, Main Channel, Video |

Planking

July 10th, 2011

If you haven’t heard about the planking phenomenon yet, you’re probably described by friends as a hermit. The planking game (originally known as the lying down game) has taken over the internet with people all over the globe trying the completely pointless activity. Learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_down_game. It may be pointless, but it’s also plenty of fun, and something random you can fill your holidays with.

A few friends and I decided to find some cool places to plank. We ran into a rather unhappy security guard when attempting to plank on a telephone booth, but otherwise it was smooth sailing. I’ll keep adding more pics if my friends and I feel so inclined to continue doing it in more random places.

Planking
By Srizzil | View on Facebook

Posted in Articles, Blog, Photography |

Fat Free Beaches

June 2nd, 2011

We are aware that some laptops seem to have issues with the sound in the video. Please plug in earphones or watch the video on a PC/Phone if this problem occurs.

Last year, my friend Msizi and I were walking along the beach discussing the influx of overweight people around us. We were joking around about discriminating against them and not allowing them on the beach, and that’s when the name popped out, ‘Fat Free Beaches.’ When I got home it got me thinking. We’re so obsessed with being thin, or fit. In the past, it was considered beautiful to be overweight. Thanks to increased health awareness we know its better not to be, but society has taken it too far with young guys and girls now obsessed with being fit or thin. Guys are taking all sorts of weird and wonderful substances to build muscles whilst girls aren’t eating in the hope of keeping off the pounds. At the same time being fat is still bad for you, but we as people can’t seem to find balance.

Comedy is one of the greatest ways to tackle issues from all sides, to show people just how ridiculous we are without preaching to them. Instead it highlights issues by making people laugh. That is exactly the purpose of this video. The video throws in political references and balances things out with Jock free beaches for maximum discrimination.

Byron Langley is a friend of mine from youth who got a kick start to his acting career in Spud: The Movie. We had been talking about doing a Srizzil video since December last year, in fact I had written the Fat Free Beaches Script with him in mind, but it took us five months to finally get together and film it.

Byron brought his high school friend Willem Nieman, a comedy legend of Glenwood High’s stage, to add some spice to the video. Throw in some help from dynamite Mandy Rothquel and Msizi Hadebe and you have a winning team. Msizi took the honours of the voice over and, I’m sure you’ll agree, did a fantastic job getting overexcited about such a horrible product.

Special thanks to Gary Friedman and Susan Foster for allowing us to use their dog Max. It’s a beautiful thing that complete strangers can be so willing to help out. You can see Max chasing Willem (Jeff 2) in the background of one of the shots. Max is official Fat Free Beaches security.

Watch all the bloopers on Srizzil Extra:

Posted in Blog, Comedy, Main Channel, Video |