my web series research factual project york college y2

1. Research into Web Series
William Young – Y2 York College

2. Web Series
1: Absolute Mad
Lads - Count
Dankula

3. • Absolute Mad Lads is a series created by Markus Meechan (aka Count
Dankula) that involves him talking about the lives and actions of
people and events that are not often talked about in history.
Meechan uses edgy (sometimes outright offensive) humour while
going through the lives and actions of the people that he talks about,
with some of the people that he has covered being some of the most
violent and dangerous people to have ever existed.
• Some of the people that Dankula has covered in 'Absolute Mad
Lads' include Shoko Asahara (the founder of the Japanese doomsday-
cult group Aum Shinrikyo), Tarrare the Human Stomach (a French
showman and soldier) and Uday Hussein (the eldest child of Saddam
Hussein).
• The series has nearly thirty installments, all of which are posted on
Dankula's YouTube channel. The series has been going on for over a
year.

4. • Absolute Mad Lads doesn't seem to take much
filmmaking prowess (from a technical standpoint) to
make. Most of the videos include Meechan sitting in
front of the camera and simply talking to the camera,
with other videos sometimes interloping with
Meechan's dialogue. Major examples of this include
footage from the 2000 film 'Chopper' accompanying
Meechan's dialogue during his Absolute Mad Lads
video on Mark "Chopper" Read, an Australian celebrity
criminal, and clips from a Channel 4 documentary and
the 1984 film 'Comfort and Joy' accompanying his
dialogue during his AML video on the 'Ice Cream War',
a turf war in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s between
rival crime organisations that sold drugs and stolen
goods from ice cream vans.

5. Web Series 2: The
Angry Video Game
Nerd - James
Rolfe

6. • The Angry Video Game Nerd (formerly known as Angry Nintendo Nerd and currently
abbreviated as AVGN) is a comedy web series, created by and starring James Rolfe. The series
focuses on the character of "The Nerd", a video game fanatic with a foul mouth and an
extremely short temper, who reviews and delivers commentary on video games and things
involving video games (often very old and of extremely poor quality). The comedy that is often
present in the Nerd's videos is a mixture of insult-comedy (consisting of offensive insults
directed at a specific thing, video games in the Nerd's case) and off-colour humour (humour
that deals with topics that are considered to be in poor taste).
• The series has been running for over fifteen years, is still running today, and consists of over 170
episodes. Over the years, the series has grown in scope and technical prowess, with some
episodes featuring guest stars, such as Pat Contri (better known as 'Pat the NES Punk'), Lloyd
Kaufman (the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio) and Macaulay Culkin (the guy
who played Kevin McCallister in Home Alone).
• Angry Video Game Nerd is considered to be one of the progenitors of internet reviews, and his
style of video-making is considered to be immensely influential on subsequent video-reviewers.
The series has been a large cult success, and the character of the Nerd has appeared in a
feature-length film (written and directed by Rolfe himself, alongside fellow filmmaker Kevin
Finn) and two video games developed by FreakZone.

7. • The forty-ninth episode of the series is an episode where the
Nerd reviews a collection of games based on the sci-fi series Star
Trek. The episode, as early Nerd episodes go, is rather simple
from a technical standpoint, but still features some impressive
effects (by the standards of one or two people producing the
episode with little to no budget of any kind), with one involving
the Nerd being beamed into his living room (the top, top-middle
and bottom-middle pictures on the right depict this)
• Most of the episode consists of the Nerd talking about the Star
Trek games with footage of said games being featured for the
viewer to see. Some shots also feature the Nerd himself (played
by James Rolfe) playing the game.
• The games that the Nerd reviews in this episode are 'Star Trek:
The Motion Picture' on the Vectrex, 'Star Trek: Strategic
Operations Simulator' for the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, and
'Star Trek: 25th Anniversary' for the NES.

8. • Another effect that appears in the
episode is one where a Klingon
(played by Mike Matei, commonly
nicknamed 'Motherf**ker Mike' by
fans of the Nerd and Mike himself)
appears in the Nerd's TV and
attacks, with the resulting visual
and sound effects emulating what
often happens in science fiction
shows, where a space-ship gets
attacked by enemy forces).
• Another effect that appears at the
end of the episode, similar to the
one where the Nerd was beamed
into his living room at the start of
the episode, is one where a Metron
(also played by Mike Matei) fades
into existence to talk to the Nerd.

9. • The ninty-forth episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd is an episode
where The Nerd re-visits Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an NES game loosely
based on the novel 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde': a game that
he covered in the second episode of the series. The game is infamous
for its bad graphics, confusing gameplay and poor use of characters and
setting, and has become something of a joke amongst fans of the AVGN.
Rolfe himself has stated that, at the time of the second episode of the
series' production (which was the first time he covered the game), it was
"the s**tist game he's ever played".
• Near the start of the episode (around three and a half minutes in), when
the Nerd inserts the cartridge of the game into his NinToaster (an
original NES modified to look like a toaster), and turns it on, a thunder-
and-lightning effect shows up on screen, in order to comedically
enhance the hatred that the Nerd has for the game, and to play along
with the common film trope that when thunder and lightning sounds in
the vicinity, something bad is about to happen/is happening.

10. • Similar to the Star Trek episode, the 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde Revisited' episode consists of the Nerd playing the
infamous game and commentating on its numerous poor
qualities. One difference from the Star Trek episode is that
he drinks alcohol during the course of the episode, and
becomes more and more intoxicated throughout.
• The climax of the episode depicts the Nerd, in a drunken
rage, turning into a Hyde-like monster that goes to (a re-
creation of) the grave of Robert Lewis Stevenson (the
author of the original novel on which the game was loosely
based) to attack his corpse, which comes to life, attacks
him back, and mocks him, stating that he is the Devil, and
ordering the Nerd to play the game. However, this
eventually turns out to be a nightmare, from which the
Nerd awakens and has a fake epiphany about the game
before saying that the game just "F**KING SUCKS!"

11. • The 139th episode of the series (my personal
favourite) is one where the Nerd reviews older
Mega Man games that weren't sold on Nintendo
consoles, where the series first made a name for
itself. Games that he touches upon at the start of
the episode include Mega Mans X4 and X5 for the
original PlayStation. After a dramatic sequence that
mocks X5's overuse of dialogue and explosions, the
Nerd 'quits', and ends up inadvertantly going back in
time to past episodes of the show (specifically,
episodes 29 (where the Nerd reviewed
Independence Day on PlayStation), 13 (where he
reviewed Nightmare on Elm Street for NES) and 2
(where he reviewed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on
NES)), where he, alongside his past selves, reviews
Mega Man and Mega Man III on DOS, Mega Man
Legends on PlayStation, and Mega Man X7 on
PlayStation 2.

12. • During the episode, the use of a green-screen is
featured extremely prominently. At the start of the
episode, it's used when the Nerd throws all of his
video games into a landfill, sheds his iconic button-up
shirt, and walks into the sunset (simulating the ending
of Mega Man 2). During the episode, where the Nerd
goes back in time, green-screen is also used to
simulate the Nerd in the rooms that Rolfe used to
record and make the AVGN episodes of the past in. As
well as this, in the 'past', the Nerd interacts with past
versions of himself, using video-editing techniques to
clone himself, in order to make it look like he's talking
with his past selves. It's used to great effect, and looks
to be on the level of professionally-made feature films
that also use this effect.