Patatoa

For whatever reason, things are different now. Despite each child having no less than two screens to entertain them, they are the sole owners of the living room TV. Grown up shows must be watched on the sly. After dark, on mute, and rarely worth the effort. We're marooned on our phones and subject to the kid's choices. I always thought this would work out beautifully. I still love watching kids TV. But no, that type of TV is not what they want to watch. (To be fair, Like us), they prefer picking something off YouTube. 80% of the time this comes down to which yell they prefer to hear. But one channel that's won me over — nay; inspired me — is Crazy Mario Bros.

As parents subject to these YouTube channels, we've become unwitting conesseuirs. Crazy Mario Bros. belongs to an apparent genre of videos where kids produce and act out stores with their plushes, and even more specifically belongs to a sub-genre where the plushes are predominantly from the Super Mario franchise. I'm sure these genres have a special name, but I draw the line at researching what that is. The boys have watched these shows on and off for years and they are mostly unobjectionable. While I'd love for a Doc McStuffins or Captain Underpants, Crazy Mario Bros is still pretty preferable.

One day I looked up from my own second-class parent screen, to the nice TV I bought for myself. Crazy Mario Bros. was on and I was kinda blown away.

This is a typical scene, two plush characters talk to each other. But I noticed what was happening at a production level. The author essentially breaks every rule. He jump cuts to animating one character, jump cuts with the same angle but puppeteering the other character. Then jump cuts back again. And again. And again. And it's all seamless. He specifically cuts already in the action of the next character, so your mushy parent-brain darts attention over there. It happens in such quick succession you wind up immersed in this terribly silly scene.

As someone who has a Bachelors in film production and specifically studied editing and animation, I was blown away. I suspect this is organic, out of years of practice of making these videos. Perhaps no formal training even. This reminds me of the fact the best artists practice. They make. They do and make and iterate and learn and just know what works not from reading books or taking notes in lectures. The practice comes from the making and not the studying.

I hope one of these endless Minecraft personalities inspires such insight one day.