Effinfunny Blog of Death

Okay. Wow. People seem to like this Legend of Neil video. Apparently a couple more people besides myself played the original NES version of Zelda for weeks a time breaking only for some Star Crunch and Ecto Plasm flavored Kool Aid.

It is genuinely amazing watching the viral process take over. I posted the Legend of Neil on YouTube on Saturday, I think. By monday it had only 7 views. I was very confused. I really felt that I had put together something fun that nerdy youtubers were going to love and yet the love was no where to be found. On YouTube’s homepage I watched Mario: Game Over which had something like 1.5 million hits. I was bitter, jealous. “This isn’t better than my short, why does this get all the love. Who did these guys have to blow to get featured.” (In retrospect, I do enjoy the video. Great concept, special effects, some really slick writing, not in love with the acting in it, but hey, what can I say I’m a whore for NES parodies).

But not two minutes later I checked my video and we suddenly had 40 views, 2 new subscribers and a couple comments. Then before you knew it, we had 200 views. I went to bed satisfied that at least one movie theatre full of people watched and seem to really enjoy the vid (based on the comments) even if I was a little self-promoting whore.

I woke up. The room was spinning. No… I was just hungover… oh quoting my own video. Lowest of the low. Anyway, I did wake up and suddenly the number of views turned into this crazy 4 digit number, the likes of which I’d never seen: 1032. Over the next 8 hours I got an email a minute: new subscriber, new comment, new subscriber… By the end of the day Tues we hit 13K views! I saw some of the nicest comments anyone has made about anything I’ve ever done (even my parents, especially my parents, they’re Indian they don’t get me).

Cheeeeeseman writes:
Awesome job man! Please make more episodes. This is amazing writing. I love it!

Oh Cheeeeeesman, you sure know the quickest way to a egotistical director’s heart. Flattery and lots of it. Honestly though, what astounded me is how many requests we’ve gotten to make more episodes, which we always planned on doing (But now, we’ve got to get our asses in gear).

The love kept spreading. VH1’s Best Week Ever featured a shorter version (and in some ways better edited version) that we submitted for Acceptable.TV. They said:

“While weve made no secret of our adoring love for Acceptable.tv, I will admit that I’ve thus far found the user-generated content to be a bit lacking. But boy do we have to give it up to user Sandeep for putting together this awesome Zelda send-up called The Legend of Neil. Please, Acceptable voters, do the right thing and… [vote] this video to the top of the pops. Anyone who can make Hyrule so hilarious is someone after our own hearts”

Single tear drop… of joy.

www.destructoid.com called it “The Best Zelda Spoof Ever”
www.1pstart.com featured it and have requested an interview

and more. You’ll see. Just google Legend of Neil. I sure do. Way, way too much.

Bottom line, I’m really blown away by the response. The viral machine is really adrenaline pumping. It’s tough to beat the live experience, when you’re on stage (i do improv) and the audience is loving you. That is a great feeling but this rivals it for me. Also, in a way it makes you feel real small. No matter how much I go out and post this to Myspace, Ifilm, Youtube, and of course Effinfunny. I can’t get this posted nearly as many places as it has been posted without using up all my time, in essence, sacrificing my life. And I’m already sacrificing my life trying to get effinfunny to be a great comedy community on the web and unlike Link, I don’t have unlimited lives.

Well, to sum up. I can’t express how happy it makes me that people like it. And I look forward to making a bunch more.

Thanks everyone for watching. Spread the love: www.effinfunny.com/legendofneil. I simply can’t do it without you.

Oh and a super special thank you to everyone who helped make the short what it is:

Mike Rose and Tony Janning absolutely nailed it as the Old Man and Link/Neil. They’re both amazing improvisors.
Richard Stark our DP was a painter with those lights… like Monet but not as dead.
Leah Mann hand crafted those awesome costumes and designed the amazing cave set.
Jesse Quigley made Mike Rose look like an unf*ckable old man, and gave Tony pointy ears.
Mat Greeleaf and Danny Jelenik did sound and camera respectively without them you wouldn’t be able to see or hear the video which may have hindered the experience. They were both great to work with as always.
and last but certainly not least Robert Harrington is this dude we found on the message boards over at channel101.com and he put together a spectacular score.
Oh and my mom made lasagna for everyone. Good job, Mom!