MASKTASter
Client: Personal project
Goal: Make online Zoom gatherings with friends fun!
Demographic: 25-30 year olds
Team:
Daryl Choa (Producer + Co-Host)
Dylan Wolff (Production Assistant + Host)
Platform: Zoom
Project Summary: During the pandemic, my partner and I were isolated in coastal Maine away from all of our friends and society. To pass the time, we began watching a lot of the popular game show, Taskmaster. Taskmaster is a British comedy panel game show created by British comedian Alex Horne during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010, and adapted for television in 2015.
After clipping almost all of the episodes on YouTube, we decided to adapt the television series to a Zoom format. We recruited our best friends (and Jeff) as contestants, sent them tasks to do and asked them to film themselves. Once we received all the footage, we cut the best takes and put together a run of show.
Titled "This Looks Promising," the debut episode of MaskTaster (with a soft 'A') was a live event on Zoom, hosting an audience of about 20 people, and featuring live commentary from our contestants.
We’re currently in the production of episode 2, “2 Mask 2 Taste.”
REMOTE PRODUCTION
Given the pandemic, we knew everyone’s resources and mental capacity would be pretty low. Our goal was to reduce the amount of work (for all parties) and maximize the fun.
We sent out tasks in the form of PDFs and provided specific instructions on how much to film, since we didn’t want to sort through hours of footage.
We intentionally kept tasks vague and gave contestants the artistic freedom to interpret and execute tasks as they wished.
We only asked that contestants not spend more than an hour in total completing all of the tasks (which inevitably, our very competitive friends did).
As a result, this was a very lo-fi production.
Live Event
For the live event, we put together a run of show, which closely followed the format of Taskmaster.
Task 1: Show & Tell: Contestants were asked to bring in the best piece of childhood art or literature that they created when they were young. Contestants had to defend their pieces.
Task 2: Roll the furthest. Trimmed footage from each of the contestants attempts were shown and contestants had to defend their choices.
Task 3: Create a piece of artwork, using only images of Dylan’s body. We provided pictures of Dylan to use, but players were able to create or find their own as well.
Task 4: Create the best 30 second synchronized swimming routine. This task was performed live. The audience was broken up into teams, which worked together to choreograph a routine. Teams used music, coordinated Zoom backgrounds, got into showers, and obviously there were feet involved.
