Casting celebrities does not a good project make, and thinking otherwise is a huge mistake. That’s my web video rhyme. Seriously, though. Too many creators think that all they need to do to send a project into the stratosphere is attach a recognizable name, and that’s so misguided. Celebrities, just like any talented performers, are great when they have great material. The key to making the most of talent like Scarlett Johanson or even Will Sasso is creating a project that can stand on its own two feet– or banana peels as the case may be–without them and then presenting it confidently to the famous folks you hope can help give your masterpiece its proper, deserved due. Banking on big names to save something from obscurity will never work. Success is driven by passion first, and the people on the marquis should come a distant second. If you build it, they may come, and if they don’t, you’ve still got something worthy of the world’s attention. Just ask Assassin Banana co-creator Jordan Rozansky. Well, we asked him, but you can read about it. Here…
How’d you get your start in comedy?
Well I have always liked comedy and moved out here to write and produce. I got a job working at Dark Trick Films, which is Ryan Reynolds’s production company. This project came through a friend and my buddy Blake Goza and I, who also worked there. So we were there and Assassin Banana came up and Blake and I developed it from there and then just kind of ran with it.
What was your role at Dark Trick? Are you still there?
No. I was there years ago just as an assistant and left to make the show.
What was the inspiration to make this show, specifically?
We had just started making Internet videos, and we had made some sketch comedy videos and I think it was as simple as us wanting to make something a little longer, something that told a story longer than just a 2-3 minute video. Make it kind of like Adult Swim where it’s not a half hour and parody’s the longer form. Shows like Childrens Hospital. We saw an opportunity to do something similar for way less money.
How long did it take from conception to fruition?
I’d say I put the scripts together pretty quickly. The initial project was way smaller than what it became. David Odio, who directed it, took something that would’ve been shot against a wall at some fake law office to this big production and made this big world and give it a visual scope it would not have had without him. From there, it took 6-8 days to shoot these 3 episodes that run 25 or so minutes, and then post production took forever. We had no money when we were making this so it was a lot of calling in favors, working around people’s schedules that could help, getting actors and animators and so on. We shot this two years ago and have been working on it on and off for a whole lot of time.
Did you write all of this yourself or did you have a co-writer?
The idea originally came from one of my co-producers, Chris William Martin. From there, Blake and I talked about it as a bigger idea and then I wrote the scripts and David directed all the episodes and Chris and Blake co-produced the show with me. All in all, it was a fairly small team working on this, but so many people gave us a day or however many hours they could to help out in enormous ways.
How’d you get people like ScarJo involved?
Honestly, a lot of luck and a lot of calling in every favor imaginable. We also had the luxury of making the whole show before approaching any actors. It was not an easy sell, “Hey do you want to voice a Banana or an Orange in this show we’re doing?†does not sound like the sexiest thing. By the time it was finished and got some temporary voices, David put together these great little character reels to send out to those actors, which is something I really credit to David and Chris. Once we got one person locked in the rest kind of fell into place. We lucked out big time.
That’s the big catch-22, isn’t it? Once one A-list person has signed on the rest come running but you need that one.
And then we got ridiculous, getting our head in the stars, emailing people who never got back to us. But it was all very exciting and we had a lot of fun. People like Will Sasso who came in and are so hilarious and they’re just playing one character that says one joke and then leaves the series.
And all of these people were pitching in for the love of the game, right? You had no money to make this?
The only money we had went into the actual physical production, which was just buying tiny sets and renting equipment, but all the other work like making the theme song for the opening credits came from people, like composer Danny Walter, who very generously donated their free time for the show. We had a really talented cast working on this project, not including just the voice actors. From our DP Ryan Ovadia to people like Nick Gligor who voiced a ton of characters on the show. We owe them everything. We were all in for a couple thousand dollars and came out with 25 minutes of really amazing footage.
Speaking of those 25 minutes of footage, how have they been received so far? Where do you want to take this thing next?
So far the show’s been well received. That’s all on a very small scale. We haven’t been able to get a lot of people to watch it because it’s pretty long for a YouTube video, but the people who have seen it seem to like it, which is really nice and flattering. We just put it in a competition out here in LA called the Web Show Show, which we ended up winning, which was really nice. So the reception has been great, although fairly small. We get a huge kick out of people tweeting about it from places like Italy and Spain. In terms of where we’d like to go with it, we’d definitely like to make more of Assassin Banana. It’s a pretty easy show to script with the kind of classic Scooby-Doo style of, “Here’s a bad guy, let’s solve the crime.†We really just want to make more stuff. We love working together and we think we’ve figured out how to make low budget stuff and still make it look big and big budget, so any opportunity for the three of us to work together again would be great.
Is this your full-time gig now or do you also work a day job?
Jordan Rozansky:We all work day jobs. Blake still works for Dark Trick Films and David does a lot of editing and directing and I work at a management company. We’re trying to figure out when the three of us can shoot something again. David and I ideally will be shooting something in a month or two. We’re just all trying to find opportunities so that we can make this into our full-time gig.
What advice do you have for people who are looking to break into the digital space?
The most important thing is: just start making stuff. I’ve not made that much stuff but I feel like every time we’ve had the opportunity to get on set and make something and see it through to completion you either make something good or you don’t and then you learn a tremendous amount from it. Before David and I made Assassin Banana, we made a web series that we were really excited about and put a lot of time and energy into, and it really turned out to be so bad. It was the best learning experience we could have possibly had. We figured out how to make something by making something the wrong way. Ultimately that show was a failure but it taught us a ton, Assassin Banana taught us a ton and made us better for the next project. I really think it’s all about getting out there, shooting stuff, editing stuff, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work and hopefully expanding the world of people you work with.
Here are your three reasons to watch:
1. Medium
2. Writing
3. Hustle
Episode 1
Plenty of web shorts have been made in stop motion. I’ve never seen one this complex, executed so well for so little. The amount of painstaking work put in to Assassin Banana is as admirable as it is impressive.
Episode 2
Lesser writers might’ve fallen prey to the temptation to oversexualize the fruits in this absurd world. Jordan instead penned a piece that resides in a pithy PG-13 space. It’s edgy and smart and pleasantly surprising. Spoiler alert: The banana’s superhero costume is a purple condom but what else are you really going to put on an assassin banana?
Episode 3
The folks behind Assassin Banana fought for years to turn next to nothing into a something that just might launch their filmmaking careers.
Luke is a writer/director for CollegeHumor and a watcher of many web videos. Send him yours @LKellyClyne.