Latest / Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) / How I Turned My House Into A Simpsons Halloween Special (with Daniel Alan Smith)

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How I Turned My House Into A Simpsons Halloween Special (with Daniel Alan Smith) · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Four-finger discount, dude.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Hey guys, welcome to a very special episode of Four-Finger Discount,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: a Halloween episode because today I'm joined by the man
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: who I think has the greatest Simpsons house display, lights
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: display of all time. It's Daniel Allen Smith. How are
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: you doing, sir?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Doing well, thank you so much.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I saw you on Instagram the other day and I
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: thought I have to get this man on because you
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: must have some sort of professional background in this kind
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: of thing because this is like something you'd see at
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: a theme park, this house display you've got here. How
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: have you managed to get this going?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I don't have a professional background in this specifically. I've
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: worked in advertising most of my career, but on the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: technology side. So I've tinkered with technology for a long
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: time and a lot of my personal projects, I'd like
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to do some of the things that I don't typically
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: get to do professionally. So a lot of times it's
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: applying technology things I know from work to things that
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I do personally.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: So advertising, what in particular in advertising? So what you,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I'm envisioning like, you look very much like Don Draper.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I'm envisioning like Mad Men style, but what do you
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: do in advertising? How does that link to being able
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: to do what you've done here with the Simpsons light display?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So for several years, I was the VP of technology
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: for a couple of different agencies. And that meant doing websites,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: more tech stuff and things like that. More recently, I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: took a step back and to pursue what I'd enjoyed
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: most about those years as a technology director, and that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: is solutions architecture. So now I work with innovation teams.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: They come up with cool ideas and I find ways
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to make them happen. A lot of times that's web-based things, apps,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: things like that. But every once in a while, it's
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: some cool physical execution that we do.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Is this the kind of thing you would like to
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: do professionally? Set up live displays like this? Because it
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: looks like a lot of fun. It also looks like
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: a very tedious job as well. Yeah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: If you asked me last year, I would have said no.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: After doing this this year, with the response I got,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: you know, something I'd consider.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's honestly, you can now be known as
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: like the Simpsons light display guy because you've set a
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: bar now, you realize this. So everyone who follows you
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: on Instagram is now going to go, what's he going
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: to be doing for us next year?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I know, I'm a little worried about disappointing people for Christmas.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So are you going to be doing one for Christmas?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I have to now. Yeah, yeah, the neighbors are asking
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and people online are asking, so.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Is this the first time you've done a display like
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: this at your house or is this something you're known for?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: No, this is the second year I've done it. Last year,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I did something for Stranger Things. It was kind of
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: on a whim. I had this projector sitting around. I
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't doing anything with it. And it's probably 10, 12
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: years old at this point. So I figured, you know,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I'll put some ghosts up. And actually, like three years ago,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I did do a sheet on the window and then
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: some silhouettes of ghosts. And that was it three years ago.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then last year, I did the Stranger Things 1,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: which I had a couple animated characters on a loop,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: very short animations, mostly environmental. And then this year it
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: was a lot of gags, a lot more animations.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Because the animations that are on your house, they don't
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: look like they're from episodes. So do you animate this yourself?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: How does this work?
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: That is a blend of a lot of different things.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So I start with Well, I can go through the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: whole process if you'd like.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: To hear that. I would love you to go through
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: the whole process. Yes, please.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: All right. So essentially, you start with an outline of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the house, or at least that's what I did this year.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Last year, I started with an image of the house,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and then I tried to kind of overlay a theme
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: on top of it, and it worked fine. But what
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I started to realize this year is that I really
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: didn't have the alignment that I was wanting. And last year,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it was a very dark, kind of blown out red color.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So the edges... didn't have much to align with and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: it wasn't that noticeable. But as soon as I started putting,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: you know, more high resolution characters in there and finer lines,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I started to notice a lot of alignment issues. So
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: this year I just did project a white screen onto
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the house and then started tracing out the edges, the windows,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the doors.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Ah, that's, I was wondering how you did it. Okay,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: that makes sense, yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so now you have this kind of fisheye, warped
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: kind of shape of the house that you can work with.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And you're just painting into it from there. So what
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I did this year is I took a more systematic
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: approach to defining regions of the house. There's some things
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that I knew played well in areas that others didn't.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And I learned that last year. The main one was
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: this central window. And last year it was terrible. So
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: as like a last ditch effort, I went on Amazon
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and I got some like peel and stick film. And
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I figured if it lasts a couple of days, great.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: We get the projection out of it, whatever. But it's
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: been up there all year and it still looked fine.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So I was like, all right, let's focus on that.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And then the other one was the garage, just happy circumstance.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: That was not something I was planning on doing and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: it worked out great. So those areas are regions that
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I define. And then I kind of just come up
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: with what gags do I want to do in which regions?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: How do we want to queue those up? make sure
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that like characters aren't appearing in more than one location
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: at the same time. Um, and then just kind of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: work through stuff like that. So you build out like
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: a storyboard, um, kind of skipping a little of the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: details at front. First, you got to come up with
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a theme, like, what are you doing? And, uh, Simpsons
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: is an easy one because there's, you know, decades of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: content to pull from and reference and very Halloween specific
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: with the treehouse or stuff. So, uh, it made it
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: really easy to ideate and come up with a lot
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of ideas. Um, so yeah, Yeah, that's kind of how
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that came to be.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: When you get, like, say, for example, you've got King
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Kong or King Homer climbing up the side of the house.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Is that ripped from an episode when he's climbing up
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the tower? Or did you have to, like, redraw that
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: so that it fits the schematics of your house?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: So, no, it doesn't fit the schematics of the house.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Some things just kind of work out better. Essentially, what
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I'm doing is taking keyframes from episodes, clipping them, cropping
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: them out to where they work for me. I get
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: keyframes and reference imagery. And then I put that into
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: an AI tool and then we generate the animations in between.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: So they are based on the original stuff, whatever I
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: could find online. And it's kind of just the AI
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: stitches things in there for you. It's not as simple
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: as just saying, you know, make Bart do this. Because
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: that's where I started and things did not look good.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: The AI hallucinates quite a bit. You end up with
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: like four-armed animals. Bart and things like that. So, or,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you know, multiple heads and things like that, which could
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: work for Halloween, but it wasn't what I was going for.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: So, how long have you been preparing this year's one?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: How long does it take to get this going? Because
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I see on Instagram, I can tell you're a perfectionist
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: and you've got to be when you're doing something like this,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: but I can tell you sort of, you're putting videos
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: on Instagram and people are going, dude, this looks perfect.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And you go, no, it doesn't. See, this is why,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: and this is why. And everyone's like, I don't know
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: what you're talking about. So, how long have you been
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: planning just this specific one?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Probably a month or so. Well, I started maybe two
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: months ago thinking about what ideas we were going to do.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: My daughter had a preference for Scream and we were
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: going to we were looking at doing that. And there's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: just there's not that much to pull from. There's a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: couple like famous pieces that we could do. And aside
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: from that, you have Ghostface and that's just not very engaging.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And it also is not very playful and maybe not
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: kid appropriate.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Simpsons is colorful too, yeah.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And it doesn't seem as graphic and scary
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: for little kids. So that's how we landed on Simpsons.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: But we played through a ton of different ideas. Resident
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Evil was one that I was really thinking about doing.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: In the early movies, there was a lot of environmental things.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: But when you pick a design for the house, you
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: have to think about like, how is this going to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: play on my house? Does my house fit? this theme
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: that I'm trying to do. And when you look at
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons house, my house is pretty different, but there
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: are some key characteristics that are similar, the garage placement,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the front door. So you try and lean into those things,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: find things that work well for your house rather than
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: forcing an idea into your house.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Where is the projection coming from? So I'm assuming at
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: the front of your house, obviously, but where do you
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: have a situation? Is it just one that goes onto
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: the entire house or do you have multiple cameras going?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: There's two this year. Last year I had three. Um,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and the main projector was originally just, I ran a
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: cord out to the truck. I put it up on
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of cardboard boxes that I had, and I
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: just tested some stuff out and, uh, it worked fine,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: but you end up with like, someone bumps the truck,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: sits on the truck, anything, you start seeing all that movement.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So it is at the street. Um, it's on a
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: pole and in order to keep it from shaking, I
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: did some things. Basically, it's in a bunch of concrete
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in the ground. There's a sleeve there, PVC sleeve. It's
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a fence post. I can take it out and we
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: are not using it. And I cap it off so
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: it doesn't fill with dirt and I can still use
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it next year. And then it didn't quite fit perfect.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So I 3D printed like a collar that went around
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: it to make it really secure and stiff in there.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And then I just kind of bought some parts on
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Amazon and fabricated them in a way that would work
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to mount. The key thing that I found that was
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: important was I bought a generic projector mount that has
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the ability to like articulate and then you just tighten
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it down. And that really helped dial in that alignment,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: which was really important. And once I did all that,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: it was just about like creating some sort of weatherproof
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: enclosure because this, like I said, was a 12 year
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: old projector. It was one that I had gotten that
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: was being e-wasted from a company I was working for.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: It was just something we had around the office. So
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it's nothing like special. It's not, Particularly bright, like laser
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: projector or short throw projector, those can get very expensive.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: So what's great, what I like to tell people is
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that you really can just work with whatever you got
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to start. How far back, how much of the house
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: you can cover, how early you can start. doing your projections.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Those are things that start to matter there. But if
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you have a relatively dark space, it's a small area,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you get the projector pretty close, you can do quite
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a lot with it.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: But how many hours are you putting into this a
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: day though, preparing for it? I mean, I know you
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: say anyone can do it and that sounds great. But
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: let's be honest, not everyone can do what you're doing.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you know what you're doing.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing through a couple iterations, but
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: there's professionals that do this, that do a killer job,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and it's beyond me. Some of the tools they're working with,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: they're crazy. I've tried using them, and they're pretty intense.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Very powerful tools. But, okay, let's say just 20 hours
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: for this one, I would say. A couple hours after work, yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Several days, you know, the last couple, last week or
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: so has been a bit more than that. But yeah,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: 20 hours per show, I guess, per projection.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: How long does the projection go for? So how long
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: until it sort of loops back to the start again?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting because we have two projectors now and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: they're not synced up. So it's about two minutes on
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: one and I think like two and a half or
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: three minutes on the other. So you end up with
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: like interesting iterations that I hadn't planned for. And it
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: makes it seem longer than it really is. If you
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: sat there and watched it all the way through, it
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it's two minutes. It seems like it's
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: maybe seven to ten minutes because it's a little different.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: The alien ship comes in. It looks like it's beaming up.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Barton Milhouse as the Avatar characters. And then when it
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: comes back around, the ship is beaming someone else, you know. So,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it just seems different every time you walk up to it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: But it's about two minutes on one.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Yeah. And lots of crowds are coming to
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: watch this now. So, you're now known as the projection
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: guy in your neighborhood or?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Well, from last year, yes. And I get people coming
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: by maybe one or two a night while I'm working
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: on it. But I live in a rural area, Texas.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of foot traffic. So, basically,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: it's just Halloween night. And, uh, because it's a rural
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: area and it is a more traditional neighborhood, we're surrounded
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: by ranches with no one, nowhere to go. Like you
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: can't trick or treat at ranches. So there's a ton
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: of people that come here. Last year we had like
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: 300 people in the first, I don't know, 30 minutes
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: or so. Uh, the kids start real early, the little ones,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it's still too bright, uh, out for
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: me to do projections. Um, So by around seven thirty,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: eight o'clock, we started doing the projections. The little kids
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: are gone. So I have a little more liberty. It
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't need to be like not scary at all. It
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: just needs to not be graphic and, you know, gory.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's there's nothing much to see during during
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the week for Christmas. I run it longer because people
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: will drive by. It's real cold. There's no nobody's really
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: walking around around Christmas time. Um, so I might incorporate
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: some like a radio transmission that you could tune in
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and hear the audio instead of having to roll.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Down your window.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Livestream. Do you think you can maybe sort of turn
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: this into some sort of like charity fundraiser of some kind?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Like what do you see as the future of this?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I really, I have no significant plans for the future
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: of it other than it avoids me having to continually
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: keep decorating and taking down decorations. It's like two projectors
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I set up and it's something I enjoy doing and I,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I don't enjoy getting on a 20-foot ladder to get
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: on top of the house. And it just makes my
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: life easier. And it's fun to do. I think where
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I would see doing more of this is, well, actually,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: what I really like is getting the feedback from people
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: on what they like to see. I incorporated a lot
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: of feedback from those early comments in the first couple
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of videos.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask that. Did you take suggestions
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: from people? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a ton.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things that I ran into
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: was I had an idea, a couple ideas for the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: for the front door. I originally wanted Homer to, you know,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: like on the shinning.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like the behind you right there. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wanted that on the door
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: originally and it didn't work. It was, the door was
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: too dark. One of the feedback items I got from
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: a few people were some great suggestions around peelable paint,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: washable chalk paint. But one of the best ideas I
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: heard was use a sheet, just a white sheet. And
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: we had one, so I threw it on there and
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: it worked great. So, It's not just feedback on the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: designs or animations. It's just general idea feedback. I posted
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: my build of the projector enclosure and someone else chimed
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: in with their setup. And I'm looking at it, I'm going,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: this guy has done everything that I've noticed is a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: problem with mine and he's found solutions for them, but
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: he's been doing it a few more years. So I'm
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: totally just looking at his going, all right, well, what
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: can I borrow from that when I rebuild this one?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Do you worry that you're going to accidentally sort of
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: steal someone's idea? Is there a competition in the light
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: display world? Are you now in that world?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not in that world. So I don't know. And I,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: last year, uh, I wrote an article on my entire
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: process and I intend to do the exact same thing
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: this time. So I'm not gatekeeping any of this. I'll
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: tell you where I started and where I'm at and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I'll share what I can. Um, I will say that
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the AI that I used runs locally. So, uh, you'd
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: have to have a pretty crazy, uh, GPU processor to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: run it. Your average gaming one's not going to work
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: for that. And the other trade-off there is that, uh,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: It's not licensed for use in the US personally. I
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: actually requested a license from them and they granted it
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to me for this project. So I don't know where
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: this is going to go long term, if they're going
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to keep granting me that. I'm not allowed to use
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: it for commercial use. I'm not making any money off this.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Disney, no money, no money.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody's getting paid anything for this.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So you're talking about Christmas time. Are you going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: do it Simpsons themed or what is it, a Home
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Alone theme? I'm envisioning like Michael Jordan's silhouette like in
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Home Alone in the window.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I think I have to do Simpsons again.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Simpsons, it's the easy option, isn't it, Simpsons? Everyone
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: loves the Simpsons.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: At least to round out the year, you know, do
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a Halloween and Christmas Simpsons theme for this year. And
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: then next year, look at some other ideas. And what's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: nice is I can save these. The projector's in the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: exact same position every single time because that's how I
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: built the mount. So if I ever don't have time
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to spend 20 hours leading up into one of these holidays,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I just put the projector up, choose one of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: shows that I've designed in the past and do it.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: How do these things work? I know in the 3D
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: printing world, you can put like your dimensions up and
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: people can use that and build their own things. Can
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: you put your schematics up or is it just, it's
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: very house specific?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Very house specific, yeah.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Like step one is trace your house.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: You're saying that, yeah, yeah.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So I would say that if anyone's looking to get
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: into this, I'll tell you exactly where I started. And
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, but
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the company's called LumaBox and the tool is called LumaMap.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And you can do AI with it. You could do
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: your own drawings with it. It's the outlining tool. It's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the projection piece. And if you're wanting to just get
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: started and, you know, animate some pumpkins on a, you know,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: faces on a pumpkin or something like that, you can
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: do that with a pocket projector.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Obviously, you're going to do Simpsons for Christmas. What are
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: some of your favorite Simpsons episodes or Simpsons Christmas moments?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Or what are you thinking for the Simpsons Christmas one?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: It's going to be, you're going to have something to
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: do with like Don Brodka right on there from Try
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: and Save, but still in the video game bone story.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Lee Carvello maybe doing some putting into the car park.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: What are you thinking? I don't know.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: The one that comes to mind when I think of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Christmas is the one where Bart, like, he burnt down
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the Christmas tree, right? And then he tried to hide
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it and bury it in the snow. And that's the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: first one that comes to mind for me on that one.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The snowman made of clay with Bart looks like
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the crappy twigs up for arms and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of material for that. I don't know.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't really done any research on it to see.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's as much, probably about as much
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: material as Treehouse of Horror.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: There's not that many Simpsons Christmas episodes in what people
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: call the golden era, which is like the first 10 years.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: The first episode's a Christmas one, and they didn't do
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: one until Marge Be Not Proud, which was season seven. Wow, yeah. Yeah,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: or was it season eight, maybe? I think it was
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: season seven. But yeah, and they'll sit there going, why
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: don't we do these every year? And it took them
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: until season seven to realize this. Yeah, so there's not
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: as much mature to work with, but like you said,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: you can sort of manipulate it to do what you
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: want anyway, can't you? Yeah.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I kind of did the same thing with
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: this one too, right? I wanted it to be Treehouse
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: of Horror, and then I I slipped in a few
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: gags that aren't from Treehouse to Horror, like the angel
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: fossil and the Burns as the alien, the injection one.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: It still fits the vibe of Halloween, though, doesn't it?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I think we can borrow on Christmas,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: borrow stuff from episodes that weren't Christmas specials necessarily.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I think Burns coming out was on your garage, isn't it?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I think that was my favorite part. Yeah, yeah. What
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: was your favorite moment where you sort of went, oh,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: can I make this work? Yes, it worked. What was
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: the one bit of this projection in particular that you loved?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I do love how big King Homer is.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: It's great, isn't it? And climbs over the roof, yeah.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: It climbs over the roof. And he wasn't intending, when
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I did it originally, I didn't think it was going
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to line up that perfectly and that he was going
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: to kind of drop back down like that.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: You know, the... What's that?
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Lardo? Is it Lardo? The donut character guy.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, Lardlard. Lardlard, yeah.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: That's kind of how I imagined that one playing out.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It's just him panning up and then coming back down.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: But as I worked on it more, it just kind
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of worked out in a great way. But I got
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to say, looking back on the whole thing, I think
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the alien stuff is my favorite. There's the arm coming
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: out of the window, which reaches in and closes. And
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: then you have the Barton Mill house in the, I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: think it was the Avatar episode, but where they closed
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the garage door and then the alien beam tracking down.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: But one thing- that I saw in the second video
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that someone pointed out as they were questioning whether or
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: not that was an actual alien in the back.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Of my video.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And I had to go back and look at it.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I initially assumed it was just the light off of
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: an insect, but I think it was a shooting star.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: We live in a dark sky community, so there's very
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: little ambient light outside of the holiday projection thing I'm doing.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: We don't have streetlights out here. There's no gas stations.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: What does that mean in particular? So no streetlights, really?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no streetlights. Gas stations are dark. Nowhere in the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods out here can you have any landscaping lights that
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: point upward.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I've never heard of this.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a few of them around the US, I think.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of them until we moved out here either. Big, big,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: big astronomy buffs out here. So I actually have a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: pretty decent telescope now. You got to get one when
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: you get out here. But it's dark enough out here,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you can actually see the International Space Station go over.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: There's like apps that'll tell you when it's going over
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and you can watch it. But just naked eye, no telescope,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: no nothing.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: What is your suburb called?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Where are you living? I'm just outside of Austin, about
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: an hour outside.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. I've never heard that. I do love it
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: when I go, or my dad goes hunting sometimes. I
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: sort of go out there with him. I look up
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: at the stars and I go, oh, that's right. There's
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: stars in the sky. I can see them now. Yeah.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I lived in Southern California most of my life
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and you don't have that there. I mean, you do,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: if you go out into the desert and whatnot, you
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: get it a bit, but you still have a lot
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of ambient light from around, which is not much out here.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you again for coming on. I do appreciate it.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure all the listeners would love to hear
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: how you put this all together. And we're all really
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: excited for the Christmas one. So you're definitely going to
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: do Simpsons for Christmas, you think? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: All right, guys, make sure you follow Daniel on Instagram.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: It is Daniel underscore Alan underscore Smith. Link for all
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: that in the description of this podcast. But thank you again, Daniel,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: and all the best with your Christmas display.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.