Snitch & Langford was a series of 3 short parody videos produced for the popular tech news site Gizmodo. It featured a Laurel and Hardy-esque duo in a variety of adventures. The shorts were well received by Gizmodo and its readership, and in total garnered well over 200,000 views.

The Videos

Here are the videos we produced, along with links to nice-quality versions of them on Vimeo.

Bluetooth Buttplug – Langford tries to save Snitch from looking like a tool with his Bluetooth headset.

Apocalypse 7 – It’s the Robot Apocalypse! (It’s not that big of a deal, apparently)

Geek Squad – Snitch and Langford uncover the deep, dark secrets of Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

Retail Wars – When a Windows store opens up beside a Mac store, sparks fly. (This one was produced but didn’t make it to the site. We still think it’s pretty cool)

Mosspuppet, a parody of popular Wall Street Journalist Walt Mossberg, has fast become one of our most popular efforts, because apparently everybody loves an angry old man who’s occasionally drunk.

Who knew?

Mosspuppet started as just a series of short parody videos featuring the irate puppet complaining about something to the camera, has evolved into something more: a strange attempt to have the puppet respected as something of an actual entity beyond his parody value. The weirdest thing is that between the videos — which range in audience from 5,000 to 100,000 — and his frequently updated blog, this effort seems to be working: people are, quite bafflingly, starting to take him seriously.

Press

Mosspuppet gets talked about a surprising amount, and is frequently linked to via the popular tech blog Gizmodo, and is a staple of Fake Steve Jobs, Mac|Life, Laptop Magazine, and others. Maximum PC even gave him the #96 spot on their annual top-100 end of year list for noteworthy things.

The future sure does look bright for this 127-year old tech journalist.

You can watch Mosspuppet videos, and read his blog, here: http://www.mosspuppet.com/

Information about the building of the Mosspuppet itself is here: http://www.hoggworks.com/2009/07/mossberg/

About the Show

Ask Palpatine is back for season 2! Our new, 20-episode long season has been much anticipated by the show’s fans, and features not only Palpatine, but a rotating selection of assistants, all of whom seem destined for a very hilarious — but untimely — end.

The show features a puppet version of Emperor Palpatine, the Dark Lord of the Sith and over-villain of the Star Wars films. This version of the character isn’t as aggressive as his filmic counterpart, however: he’s actually a nice guy, often misunderstood, and he’s doing his weekly show to let people get to know him better, so that they won’t be afraid of him.

Ask Palpatine is a question-and-answer show, featuring Palpatine answering at questions submitted by viewers. Each episode of the show has the same format:

• First is the prologue, where Palpatine typically talks about something unrelated to the question at hand. This portion is often used to further develop the Palpatine character, and to enrich the corner of the Star Wars universe that he’s claiming for himself
• Next is the question. Here Palpatine reads the chosen question, then answers it in a humorous, and most often rambly, way. The intent is to answer the questions – both Star Wars related and otherwise – in a surprising, unexpected way. Though it was never our intention to do so, many of these questions are serving to fix continuity errors within the Star Wars films. For example, when asked why he never told Vader that the Skywalker twins were alive, Palpatine revealed that he only withheld that information because it was so obvious, it didn’t occur to him that Vader wouldn’t have known;
• Last, after the end credits, is the song. Every episode (with the exception of the interview episodes), Palpatine sings a few chords of a song. Aside from being good fun and a blast to do, this is specifically added after the show to keep people watching the end credits – which feature a Hoggworks Studios stinger – and to have people leave the show with a very “up” moment; many of the songs he sings are opposite to what you’d think Palpatine would sing, such as “Man eater,” “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts”, and “Don’t Worry, be Happy.”

Ask Palpatine is generating a growing audience, and it’s one that is committed to the show. Every episode features questions supplied by viewers, of course, but recently Palpatine has begun requesting that people suggest songs for him to sing at the end of episode, and the response has been overwhelming.

In only a few months, Ask Palpatine has, without advertising of any kind, and on an almost non-existent budget, generated substantial buzz, accruing an average of 10,000 views per episode, and has gained a dedicated, loyal audience, most of whom are males in their teens and twenties.

What we Did

We built the puppet, and we film and edit it ourselves.

Credits

Puppet Design and Construction by Brian Hogg.

Watch Ask Palpatine here: http://www.askpalpatine.com/

This is the horse puppet being shown off:

And here’s a news segment showing the horse puppets in the play, and at one point realistically running down the street; it’s an eerie visual, but so great:

That’s the plan, anyway.