Snuff Box is another great comedy from British comedian Matt Berry and Yankee Rich Fulcher. If you’re into The Mighty Boosh then you’ll love this as well.
While watching one of the episodes, I think I may have come across what could (and should) be Apple’s next TV ad.
Note: Clip may contain some swearing and violence.
Snuff Box is not for the faint hearted!
Unfortunately there’s only ever been one series of Snuff Box, which was broadcast in Feb 2006. But the good news is that it was released on DVD on June 16, 2008.
Here’s the wiki article, here’s the IMDb entry, and you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk here.
Making the Movie
For those of you who might be interested; the ad was (obviously!) made on a Mac using Final Cut Pro.
It was compressed using Compressor, and Apple’s default ‘H.264 800Kbs Streaming’ setting. The change I had to make was to the height and width, because the Snuff Box movie clip was in 16:9 aspect ratio whereas the default for Apple’s setting is 4:3 aspect ratio.
The background ‘Get a Mac’ music was downloaded from this blog, the Snuff Box clip came from Episode 5 of Series 1 (about 10 minutes in) and the final picture of an iMac came from Apple’s own advert.
Putting them all together was simple enough, except the original ‘Get a Mac’ music was too short so I had to loop it a few times so that it would end the same time as the clip did.
Final Cut Pro is pretty easy to use, and there’s always Google if you’re completely stumped.
A few things worth mentioning;
- I imported the section I wanted from the Snuff Box episode by opening it in Final Cut Pro, setting the Mark in and Mark Out points (shortcuts ‘i’ and ‘o’ respectively) then dragging the clip to my new Final Cut Pro project.
- I managed to remove the black lines (at the top & bottom) from the Snuff Box clip by changing the height in the sequence’s setting after importing. To do this just right click / CMD click the sequence (usually called ‘Sequence 1’), clicking ‘Settings…’ and changing the dimensions under the general tab.
- Reducing the volume of the background music was done by double clicking it in the timeline and reducing the level to around -15dB.