TV Content
The TV CONTENT video category shows examples of how the JFC New Media Department integrated content into the TV series itself and organically extended the universe and narrative online.
To learn more about John From Cincinnati, including information about characters, setting and plot, please visit the Wikipedia page.
Thanks to David Milch, HBO, and the cast and crew for the opportunity to be the first embedded New Media Dept for a TV series from pre production through post.
JFC Opening Credits
Super 8mm documentary footage of locals and iconic imagery from Imperial Beach and Tijuana are integrated into the opening credits sequence of the show and also used as elements in the online experience.
Shawn Yost Sponsor Me Video
Linc Stark, owner of Stinkweed (a Volcom-like surf brand), tells Mitch that Shawn sent him the sponsor me video. Mitch and Sissy watch the video and discuss it’s implications.
StinkweedUSA.com
The URL of Stinkweedusa.com is prominently featured on screen when Cass (a young, cynical and sexy assistant who works for Link Stark) sends Linc a text message.
Yost Clan Website
The Yostclan website appears on the screen of the character Dwayne, the site’s webmaster, when he receives a critical message from John after his abduction of Shawn.
Mitch PSA
Mitch’s old PSA campaign are brought up in a scene between Mitch and Sissy. These PSA had already been populated on YouTube and environmental blogs before the airing of this episode.
Rosa 1
Rosa, one of the “Resident of Imperial Beach” documentary subjects, appears twice as the Avon Lady (her real profession). She gives both Dr. Michael Smith and Ramon supernaturally inscribed Avon catalogues.
Rosa 2
Cass Parade – Episode 5
Perhaps our biggest cross-over moment was when JFC New Media produced an entire sequence for the TV show, John and Cass’s outing to San Diego. In this sequence, John teaches Cass about the power of the camera as a creative instrument, rather than as a manipulative tool. We also see a few of the subjects of our “Citizens of Imperial Beach” series like Serge Dedina, the environmental activist, and the tailor of Lucha Libre , Mexican masked wrestler. We also show some of San Diego’s more exotic characters: the Hari Krishna’s and the Rainbow Family Drum Circle.
Cass Editing
The Earth Day sequence is then used again in the subsequent episode when Cass begins to edit the images that she has captured at the park, as she learns to become a documentarian.
Cass Finale
Milch revisits the Earth Day sequence’s festive atmosphere with his own “Stinkweed Parade” sequence at the finale of the show. Cass again is filming it. This time almost all the JFC Experience documentary subjects appear, as well as all the characters from the show. Cass no longer works for Stinkweed, but now is a full fledged documentarian.
In the end, the JFC New Media Dept accomplished its mission: it extended the show online as no other show before, and also, perhaps most importantly, successfully extended itself into the show — becoming a truly integrated and pioneering transmedia experience.
yostclan.com
The Yost site – on the surface at least – was a long-neglected fan-built page, circa ’97. When the viewer went there, they had access to some archived footage of Mitch and Butchie Yost, old photos from surf magazines, and an outdated (but still functioning) message board.
On Yostclan.com, users could:
• Watch Mitch and Butchie Yost archival footage, flip through photo galleries
• Read Articles about each man’s rise to success as well as their demise (Mitch’s knee injury, Butchie’s addiction)
• Learn more about Mitch’s support of local environmental issues (“Clean Ocean PSA” TV spots)
• Dig in to the old bulletin board threads and even post new comments.
After a minute on the site, yostcan.com would begin to “break”. Once users solved three problems/clues to fix the broken site, they were redirected to another site called “The Pipeline”. This was the gateway to content for avid fans of the show.
The content was a mix of new media on-set video, show clips, licensed and original photos and text. Users were able to watch seeded “Node” videos (below) or watch user-generated videos. Once a video finished, a tool palate would emerge and users could then create their own “node” video, save it, and enter it into “The Pipeline” for other users to discover, creating a feedback loop of creativity
In the Pipeline, users discovered:
• Clues (e.g.: “easter-eggs”, roll-overs) led users to hidden traditional video and/or visually “altered” content (tying back to the themes of the show)
• Hidden content evoked users to interact and share their experiences, thoughts, and content with other fans (e.g.: create videos, comments, photos, etc.)
• The “node repository” enabled the user to discover, create and share existing “user journeys”.
Ultimately, The Pipeline was the never seen Controller’s (G-d’s) observation center – the digital outpost of what David Milch called “the place from which the spirit can apprehend the universe…”
Node 1 – Spirit
Node 2 – Family
Node 3 – Nature
Node 4 – War
Node 5 – Commerce
Node 6 – Games
Node 7 – Tech
Node 8 – Sex
Node 9 – Medicine
Node 10 – Art
stinkweedUSA.com
StinkweedUSA.com was the commerce and branding site for the surf/skate company owned by Linc Stark (Luke Perry). Stinkweed’s URL address and apparel were seamlessly featured in the world of the TV series and led fans to discover the website (see TV Content section of the site). The Stinkweed site also featured a traditional retail page offering apparel and promoting their brand/culture. The site’s “news” section kept users up to date on latest events with Shaun Yost, Stinkweed’s newest sponsor. In addition, a fictitious surf team, complete with profile videos, was created to lend authenticity to the site.
StinkweedUSA.com design incorporated impressionistic elements from Imperial Beach life, giving it a gritty feel that matched the tone of the TV series. The recurring themes and images that dominated the site included telephone poles, power lines, barbed wires, fencing/netting that surrounds the old “outlaw” IB surf/skate spots. Custom designed sound effects enhanced the overall user experience – for example, electricity and ocean/wave sound effects augmented the images that appeared on the screen.
APPAREL EXAMPLE:
Stinkweed Surf Competition Promo with Linc Stark (Luke Perry)
Stinkweed Surfer and Team Captain – James Pribram
Stinkweed Surfer – Pat Ryan
Stinkweed Surfer – Dave Pascal
Stinkweed Surfer – Mahea
Stinkweed Surfer – Sean Fowler
Stinkweed Surfer – Dean McMahon
YouTube Videos
The JFC New Media Dept created over a dozen YouTube videos with several stars from the series. The videos gave a deeper look into the characters’ lives and helped expand the narrative, themes and ideas of our vision to blur the lines between the online world and TV series. These videos were also featured in various episodes during the season.
Below are the videos that people discovered on YouTube:
Mitch Yost’s Clean Ocean PSA Campaign
As a favor to a local environmentalist, Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) agreed to become the spokesperson for several Public Service Announcements. These PSAs stressed the importance of clean water in San Diego County and the dangers of cross-border water contamination and pollution.
Mitch Yost PSA #1
Mitch Yost PSA #2
Mitch Yost PSA #3
Meyer’s New Board
Meyer shows off his new Yost short board (given to him by his girlfriend) and discusses his club “the surfing attorneys” – who appear in the season finale parade scene.
Surf-Side Realty Commercial
This is a local commercial for Meyer’s Imperial Beach real estate company Surf-Side Realty. See what all the excitement is about!
Shaun Yost’s “Sponsor Me” Video
This short video was scripted in the story as a tool for Shaun to instigate the arrival of Linc into the lives of the Yosts. It showcased Shaun’s personality and surfing proficiency and style, as well as showed off his editing and GarageBand (royalty free Mac music software) skills. New Media posted Shaunie’s “sponsor me” video on YouTube.com and on Shaunie’s MySpace page – the posting appeared one month prior to the airing of the premiere episode. People could e-mail Shaun at shaunyost@aol.com (it was in the video and was already registered and cleared). Shaun also had a YouTube account. Shaun could reply to emails with more info & links to other websites, like his Video Dairy. After Linc signed Shaun to surf with the Stinkweed team, the videos were featured on the Stinkweed website.
VIDEO DIARIES
Shawn recorded several “video diaries” during the course of the season and uploaded to YouTube as a way to interact with fans of the show and give additional insight into his character.
Chilling in My Room
Half-Pipe
Crap Machines
Potatoes
Room 24
The ghost in room 24 breaks down for the crimes he committed against the Yost family… The ghost makes a key appearance during the dream sequence in episode six.
Shaun Will Soon Be Gone
John Monad foreshadows the disappearance of Shawn. This clip was featured in the show (as an online video) as well as on YouTube, allowing fans to discover additional clues.
Message 1
Additional clues about the stick figures that appear in the show.
Message 2
Additional clues about the stick figures that appear in the show.
Message for Resentments
John Monad responds to the garage metal band, The Resentments, about a lyric in their song about the appearance of John in their neighborhood.
Butchie, The Resentments & The Vatos
One of the most exciting aspects of the JFC Experience was our opportunity to extend the narrative of the show by creating online shorts that mixed the actors from the show with the locals we’d profiled in our Citizens of Imperial Beach material.
Perhaps the best example of this was our Earth Day scene at San Diego’s Balboa Park where John and Cass mix it up with large crowds, Mexican wrestlers, Wildlife activists, Hari Krishnas, and a large drumming circle. The opportunity to shoot with two of the main actors for an entire day off-set in this complicated location was the culmination of the trust that had grown between us and the production team. This footage was used in the show and can be found on this page.
Another achievement in our organic fusion of the show and the locals was the series of videos centered on Butchie Yost. In these digressive storylines, we deepened the reality of the character of Butchie by having him be profiled by a surfing fan (One Day in the Life) and by hanging out with Eric Dogol.
We also took on the John Monad storyline and shot it through the lens of the local band, the Resentments, as they composed a song in tribute to the new stranger in their town (Monad Song HOME) and then performed it live for fans at a local tavern.
We treated the Shaun Yost storyline of his near death accident through a vigil scene where locals come to pray for him.
Finally, we extended the Vatos characters storyline with an online scene of them hanging out in the van before their deadly attack on John.
Butchie One Day in the Life
Butchie with Eric Dogol
Resentments Monad song HOME
Resentments Monad song LIVE
Shaun’s Vigil
Vato
Citizens of Imperial Beach
As the pilot was being shot in early fall, we worked with the cast and crew on location in Imperial Beach, CA, the rundown beach-town setting of the show (based on Kem Nunn’s surfing noir novels). Imperial Beach is not only the struggling southside of upscale Coronado, it’s also the last refuge for a group of outsiders, rebels, outlaws, and immigrants. Those who don’t fit in, can’t buy in, or want to stay lost, live in Imperial Beach. It was this defining aspect of the city that drew Milch down for weeks at a time to shoot there rather than on a set in Los Angeles.
These documentaries were essentially mini-portraits of the residents of Imperial Beach. Metal garage bands, Luche Libres, environmentalists, Mexican immigrants and hot-rodders are a small sample of the subjects. David Milch’s vision of blurring the lines between fiction and reality were put into practice by taking many of the subjects we documented and placing them within the world of the show (Rosa, Jesus, Luche Libres and Kevin & Kirby). Many of the video and audio elements were also dissected and used within the yostclan.com’s “Node Videos”.
Resentments Intro
The Resentments, a local metal band formed in the nineties, practiced in Eric Dogel’s garage on 7th Avenue, a quiet street of small homes on the edge of the San Diego harbor, where much of the show was shot for exteriors while on location. The Snug Harbor was located at the beginning of this street, the Yost’s home was near the middle of it, and Eric Dogel’s house was between them.
Luche Libre
The Tailor of Lucha Libre, a semi-retired mexican masked wrestler, once traveled around the world as a “lucha fighter”, but now lives in one of the many expanding urbanizations around Tijuana with his wife and son, an aspiring wrestler, making his living by crafting hand-made masks and uniforms for other wrestlers.
The Electric Duck
The Electric Duck, as he’s known in the local San Diego surfing subculture, is a legendary surfer from the 1970’s hey-day beach culture, who was known for his duck-like love of the water (spending six to eight hours a day surfing), his stamina at braving the difficult Tijuana Sloughs – a wave-break about 1/2 a mile out from the Imperial Beach shoreline -, and for his ability to do most of this while being “electric”, i.e. juiced on LSD.
Serge Dedina & Family
Serge Dedina, the founder and director of Wildcoast, the local Imperial Beach non-profit dedicated to preserving and saving the San Diego and Tijuana coastline from environmental degradation, grew up surfing the local beaches. He now continues the tradition with his sons, although the beaches are closed more than half of the year for health reasons.
Jesus & Family
One day, while on a location shoot on 7th Avenue, David Milch went up to an older Mexican man who had been watching the production for a few days from inside an old truck parked in the yard of his house. The man said that God had told him to save the world, and he knew that Milch was part of the plan. His name was Jesus – Jesus Beltran.
Kevin & Kirby
Kevin and Kerby, two teens with attitude from Imperial Beach, could often be found hanging out with the older Resentments, skateboards in hand, ready to rock out, drink and belong.
Rosa Adams
Rosa Adams was a polio survivor and a correspondence bride, wooed through letters mailed by her husband (through an organization) to come to the United States to marry him. She now lives in Imperial Beach with her family and sells Avon products.
Mike McCoy
Mike McCoy, a legendary Imperial Beach veterinarian, now sports what could be called an Old Testament prophet aesthetics to advocate for more humane ways of living and co-exisitng with nature like cultivating one’s own garden, to protect endangered species and to to think in a more evolved way about impact on the environment.
Ray & Choppers
Ray, a decorated veteran pilot, spends his days with his buddies at the local VFW, telling stories and drinking some brewskies; he spends his nights with his wife at their home bordering (he can touch the metal fence from his porch) the edge of a large Naval base where helicopter’s do daily training exercises from 9am to 6pm.
Georgie Family
Georgie is in elementary school and has Cerebral Palsy. His family, the Alvorado’s, live in Imperial Beach and have made their family their priority. Theirs is a story of dedication and love for their children.
Hot Rod
Clinton wears a black Stetson, a white wife beater, and a goatee. He has lived in the same house for the last 33 years, has a passion for turning old cars into hot rods, and dating younger women (although they do turn soft and fat over time).
Ben Wildcoast at TJ River
Ben, one of Serge Dedina’s Wildcoast activists, takes us on a tour of the US-Mexico border to see the human and environmental cost of this no-man’s land.
Ye Old Plank
Ye Old Plank, the atmospheric bar that anchors the short commercial stretch along the beach-side road in Imperial Beach, is a haven to local characters, allowing for factions that might never be seen in daylight together (gays and skinheads, for example) to hang out in relative peace and enjoy the drafts on tap.
Behind the Scenes
Ostrick and Pozzi were often called to set by Milch to document the rehearsal – and his explanations to the cast and crew – of key scenes, as in the “Dream Sequence Scene” speech and the “Stinkweed Parade finale” sequence speech.
Working in tandem with production on many of their JFC New Media projects, Ostrick and Pozzi also took opportunities to document the creation of the show from the small moments (like being on the beach during the filming of the pilot , see Beach Crew) to seeing Milch in action giving notes during a scene at a liquor store.
BTS Beach Crew
BTS Convenience Store
Making The Wave
Here we document the creation of the emblematic Wave Car that Milch funded for the character of Erlemeyer, “the Chemist” who returns Mitch from Mexico; it also appears in the parade sequence. The Wave Car – perhaps representing the theme of the show that life is a series of waves of energy rather than of separate and alienated particles – was the re-creation of his surfing hey-day vehicle by the Commander, an acquaintance of Executive Producer Kem Nunn.