Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's, the MIX festival did a Gong Show program. For anyone who is not familiar with the 70's classic, it was a screwball variety show with crazy and outrageous acts. The panel of 3 celebrity judges had the option to hit the gong at any point, at which time the performance would end. If the act was good enough to play through to its conclusion, the judges would give it a score from 1-10, and whoever had the highest score at the end of the show would win a stupid prize.

MIX festival cloned this format to great effect. Anyone could show up and hand in a VHS tape on the spot. The program was then a conventional Gong Show competition, typically hosted by drag king Murry Hill, and with a "celebrity" panel to judge them, or gong them if warranted. I took it very seriously. Every year I would arrive at the festival with my Gong Show submission in addition to the formal video that I submitted to the festival proper. I put a lot of thought into these Gong Show videos. They were intended to be screwball enough to fit the spirit of the program, but good enough to have a chance at winning.

Making videos for the Gong Show was pivotal in my development as a short subject producer. It taught me valuable lessons in how to grab the audience's attention from the very start, and keep it throughout the run of the video. In short, it taught me pace. When you are under threat of getting gonged at any point, particularly when the video first begins, your work needs to be well paced. You need to get to the point promptly and keep things moving briskly throughout. I began to apply this to all my productions whether they were for the Gong Show or not. Producing short subject videos is a very specific art form with very specific needs. In my humble opinion, if your work has a short running time, then it requires a brisque pace from start to finish. All my diverse video work has this one quality in common, and I would say that it has served me well.

The first video I ever screened at the Gong Show was "Pard' Me" but since that one was already listed here as my student film, I'll skip right to the first video that was purpose produced for the Gong Show.