Taking Over The World With The Original Villain Network
THE DARKOWL CHRONICLES #137: "A strange transformation, a sneaky break-in, secret plans, and a soft-core porno shoot! It's all here in this recently unearthed clip from the archives of the Original Villains' BARON DARKOWL"
Daylight Intruder is just one of many episodic soap-opera filmlets from the online TV-network: ORIGINAL VILLAIN NETWORK; the brainchild of Sucklord featuring varied supervillains stomping the urban jungle - i had a long chat with SL himself about the genesis and future of OVN.
/// CLICK HERE TO READ [*NSFW ahead - language and situations]
TOYSREVIL: What Is OVN?
SUCKLORD: OVN is the ORIGINAL VILLAIN NETWORK, an online TV network that features shows made by supervillains, about supervillains, for supervillains. (although anyone can watch). The network features dramatic series, comedic shorts, soap operas, music videos and talk shows. All in in regularly updated "webisode" length installments. (2-6 minutes).
TRE: how did original villain network come about? how did it all start? and whom did it start with?
SL: The project started with myself, the Sucklord, in an effort to further advance my vision of the world and give another dimension to the ideas and tastes that I began to explore in my toys and music. I teamed up with The Crystal Pharoah, my partner from the BAND OF THE LOST mixtape project, and BARON DARKOWL, one of the Guys I used to perform with in the old Lord of the Rings Rap group, The LORDS OF THE RHYMES.
TRE: how long has the series been in production?
SL: we started shooting in November of 2006 and the first trailer first aired in February of 2007. We have 12 videos up now, but the best ones are yet to come.
[Editor: peep their Revver or YouTube channel]
TRE: what was the intention then? is it still the same now? or has it morphed into a beast of it's own?
SL: It is still very much the same. Our methods are improving but the goal is the same: TAKE OVER THE WORLD
TRE: LOL - why do you guys do it?
SL: It just seemed like the right time to get into it. We all have a lot of talents and love to be creative. This thing is an outlet for our acting, writing, music, toys, construction, editing, etc. When YouTube came up and suddenly every asshole in the world was a filmmaker, it just seemed to me that if you were an artist or had anything to say or promote, you were foolish not to take advantage of the accessibility of the tools to get your ideas across. I can't be a fool. Besides that it's really fun.
TRE: FUN is GOOD! LOL - who does what? who films, who directs, who edits, who does the special effects etc - who writes? ("supplicate"? LOL)
SL: We all kind of trade off. I'm pretty much the producer of the project. I get everything and everybody together and take it all from A to B to C. I do the editing and the posting. The Crystal Pharoah does all the music. Darkowl does writing and we all all kind of trade off on the filming. usually the guy who's not in the scene runs the camera. Sometimes we just set up the camera on the tripod and all jump in front of it and go for it. Once in a while my Girlfriend, Spooky Booty will do some After Effects for us.
TRE: which came first: the toys or the villains?
SL: Well the toys did, pretty much. I have been making little supervillain figures for a while, and gave them back stories and stuff. Some of my female bootleg figures have popped up in the shows Like Spooky Booty, Mary Paper$, and Crimson Suicide. The Sucklord 66 is in it too. But we also created some new guys who are yet to become toys. Vectar the Intolerable, The Crystal Pharoah, and Baron Darkowl were created for this project.
SL: As those who have seen my other work know, a lot of my Art work draws heavily from STAR WARS. That's been great for me, but I also feel that I am moving past that phase of my career. I feel I can only go so much further riffing on SW. That's why I named the project ORIGINAL Villains. It's time to make up my own original characters and stop doing so much derivative work. Don't get me wrong, that Blinging Boba Fett character is in the show, but we are gonna something interesting and metaphorical happen to him in the upcoming year.
TRE: who is/are your fav villain(s) out of the whole dastardly lot that plagues the universe?
SL: I have quite a few, Boba Fett of course, The Green Goblin, Dr. DOOM, MF Doom, Megatron, (not that bullshit from the movie, but the classic), Cobra Commander, Tony Soprano. But overall I like the Villains in general.
TRE: Villains are more fun, IMHO
SL: There is so much that never gets explored with so many two dimensional bad guys. Good Vs Evil and the hero's journey are such well trod stories and they always end the same. What I am looking to explore is a world without heroes. What we have here is a bunch of bad guys with no good guy to get in the way. Once you remove that dynamic from the classic comic book and make the villain the protagonist, you have a completely different, and in my opinion, more interesting world to tell new stories. That's why I love the SOPRANOS so much. It is so different that any other type of crime drama or what have you cuz there is no line that divides the good guys from the bad guys, the cops and the robbers. In the Sopranos, all the main characters are bad guys and you are made to identify with them. It's a world of complete moral relativity. I love Star Wars, but the moral absolutes that underpin it only give you one real story to tell. In a world of conflicted bad guys, you can go on forever exploring the contradictions that comprise human nature. Of course OVN is a Looooooong way from being the Sopranos.
SL: So far if you watch what we have it is all pretty silly and not that deep at all. But We are working on making it more rich from a storytelling point of view. And the Villain-as-protagonist will be the underlying concept.
TRE: "world without heroes" = tres cool (then you'd dig Mark Millar's WANTED comic, IMHO) ... i reckon in all hero-tales, tis the villains that defines the superhero (in so far as story-telling, IMHO) .. who is the audience's fav villain in OVN thus far? (based on feedback)
SL: Not sure. Thus far most of the viewers are still trying to understand what we are doing. the project is still finding it's voice. thus far we still don't really know who the characters are. We only get some superficial glimpses. But they are fleshing themselves out as we go along. We'll see who emerges as favorites.
TRE: and how did you actually start filming for OVN? a cosmic convergence of galactic-destiny at work? or a dastardly master plan for universal domination? (after meticulous planning, of coz)
SL: We just all decided to do this one day and I set it off. At first it was really tough because I am a control freak and I am used to being a solo act. I bought the camera and started the website without the other guys and I pretty much railroaded it into existence. I stepped on a few toes and just did it my way with, I admit now, some mixed results. For a while there it was just not gelling and I was losing the confidence of my partners. It's only just recently that we started getting more comfortable with our roles and the next phase of this project is going to be a lot more cohesive. (I hope)
TRE: who are the OVN? (im reading their bios now) - did you have to cast them, or were they friends whom you've convinced and/or dragged to be on the show?
SL: Everybody is a friend. If you get close to me you get roped into it.
Everyone that gets brought into it gets to put their own stamp on who they play. Nobody is a professional actor. The way I see it, we all play just exaggerated versions of ourselves. Being an original villain means you can act on your most selfish instincts and be the worst version of yourself. A lot of the upcoming stories will start to explore all the conflicts and petty mistrust and manipulations that have taken place in our actual relationships, just in a much more hyperized way.
TRE: this is a legit-question - who makes the costumes? how has the costume-quality improved thru time? becoz im seeing pretty snazzy outfits there :)
SL: I do most of the costuming. I'm kind of the most hands-on guy in the group. I have a shop where I make my toys and that's where a lot of the prop making happens. I also got this Puerto Rican tailor in the Lower Eastside that sews some of the capes. But even though I do a lot of the execution, the design of the costumes come from the people wearing them. As far as the quality goes, it's still pretty low budget. A lot of the stuff we wear are just recycled and kit-bashed Halloween costumes.
TRE: DIY is cool, if not i reckon it might loose some of it's "indie-appeal" (if i may) ... will their true identities be ever revealed? (except for softporn-director Darkowl in this ep)
SL: Not sure, But in the case of Darkowl, That is his TRUE identity. If any of the villains ever appear as a civilian, that's just a disguise.
TRE: if budget was not an issue, what would THE scene you would want to cature on celluloid?
SL: It wouldn't be just a scene. It would be a whole movie or HBO series. I don't want to give out the idea in too much detail, but involves a pretty original vision of a futuristic New York City
TRE: dammit now that's what i'd love to see! and would there ever be a DVD-boxset of OVN? do you want to?
SL: yeah, I want to go all out with the merchandising, toys, video games. Dvds and other formats of packaging the movies. That won't happen for a while. So far we only have about 40 minutes of content. I would want to have at lest 3 hours of material before it was a DVD
TRE: 40-minutes = nice ... one day you should have a OVN-marathon session with an entire audience of folks dressed as villains! like a villain-society meet! (and everyone could also watch Who Wants To Be A Superhero and pelt them with eggs etc LOL) - what does the future hold for OVN?
SL: More development. This whole first year was really just about learning. Learning how to shoot, how to edit. A lot of it was done on the fly and improvised. The quality varies. Some of it I love, some falls a little short. The next year will be the same as far as just getting a new episode up every 2 weeks, but I hope to see a lot of growth in the writing and production value. I Love the raw, do it yourself feel, I wouldn't want it to get too slick. but I want the storytelling to get better. I want it to be more accessible to people, and I want to just keep doing new shows.
"Road To Ruin" (part 4 of 5):
SL: I want it to appear in more people's blogs and get a lot more exposure, but I want to keep all the ownership and production in house. The year after that I will want to consider selling the show, or moving it to TV or some bigger online network. But for now I want to just keep developing it and build a bigger audience. It takes a long time to conquer the world, but I'm a patient man...
TOYSREVIL: patience and fortitude wineth the day, IMHO - cheers for your time and trouble, SL and ny best wishes for a smooth production (and world domination) :)
Sucklord600 Commercial:
Daylight Intruder is just one of many episodic soap-opera filmlets from the online TV-network: ORIGINAL VILLAIN NETWORK; the brainchild of Sucklord featuring varied supervillains stomping the urban jungle - i had a long chat with SL himself about the genesis and future of OVN.
/// CLICK HERE TO READ [*NSFW ahead - language and situations]
TOYSREVIL: What Is OVN?SUCKLORD: OVN is the ORIGINAL VILLAIN NETWORK, an online TV network that features shows made by supervillains, about supervillains, for supervillains. (although anyone can watch). The network features dramatic series, comedic shorts, soap operas, music videos and talk shows. All in in regularly updated "webisode" length installments. (2-6 minutes).
TRE: how did original villain network come about? how did it all start? and whom did it start with?
SL: The project started with myself, the Sucklord, in an effort to further advance my vision of the world and give another dimension to the ideas and tastes that I began to explore in my toys and music. I teamed up with The Crystal Pharoah, my partner from the BAND OF THE LOST mixtape project, and BARON DARKOWL, one of the Guys I used to perform with in the old Lord of the Rings Rap group, The LORDS OF THE RHYMES.
TRE: how long has the series been in production?
SL: we started shooting in November of 2006 and the first trailer first aired in February of 2007. We have 12 videos up now, but the best ones are yet to come.
[Editor: peep their Revver or YouTube channel]
TRE: what was the intention then? is it still the same now? or has it morphed into a beast of it's own?
SL: It is still very much the same. Our methods are improving but the goal is the same: TAKE OVER THE WORLD
TRE: LOL - why do you guys do it?
SL: It just seemed like the right time to get into it. We all have a lot of talents and love to be creative. This thing is an outlet for our acting, writing, music, toys, construction, editing, etc. When YouTube came up and suddenly every asshole in the world was a filmmaker, it just seemed to me that if you were an artist or had anything to say or promote, you were foolish not to take advantage of the accessibility of the tools to get your ideas across. I can't be a fool. Besides that it's really fun.
TRE: FUN is GOOD! LOL - who does what? who films, who directs, who edits, who does the special effects etc - who writes? ("supplicate"? LOL)
SL: We all kind of trade off. I'm pretty much the producer of the project. I get everything and everybody together and take it all from A to B to C. I do the editing and the posting. The Crystal Pharoah does all the music. Darkowl does writing and we all all kind of trade off on the filming. usually the guy who's not in the scene runs the camera. Sometimes we just set up the camera on the tripod and all jump in front of it and go for it. Once in a while my Girlfriend, Spooky Booty will do some After Effects for us.
TRE: which came first: the toys or the villains?
SL: Well the toys did, pretty much. I have been making little supervillain figures for a while, and gave them back stories and stuff. Some of my female bootleg figures have popped up in the shows Like Spooky Booty, Mary Paper$, and Crimson Suicide. The Sucklord 66 is in it too. But we also created some new guys who are yet to become toys. Vectar the Intolerable, The Crystal Pharoah, and Baron Darkowl were created for this project.
SL: As those who have seen my other work know, a lot of my Art work draws heavily from STAR WARS. That's been great for me, but I also feel that I am moving past that phase of my career. I feel I can only go so much further riffing on SW. That's why I named the project ORIGINAL Villains. It's time to make up my own original characters and stop doing so much derivative work. Don't get me wrong, that Blinging Boba Fett character is in the show, but we are gonna something interesting and metaphorical happen to him in the upcoming year.
TRE: who is/are your fav villain(s) out of the whole dastardly lot that plagues the universe?
SL: I have quite a few, Boba Fett of course, The Green Goblin, Dr. DOOM, MF Doom, Megatron, (not that bullshit from the movie, but the classic), Cobra Commander, Tony Soprano. But overall I like the Villains in general.
TRE: Villains are more fun, IMHO
SL: There is so much that never gets explored with so many two dimensional bad guys. Good Vs Evil and the hero's journey are such well trod stories and they always end the same. What I am looking to explore is a world without heroes. What we have here is a bunch of bad guys with no good guy to get in the way. Once you remove that dynamic from the classic comic book and make the villain the protagonist, you have a completely different, and in my opinion, more interesting world to tell new stories. That's why I love the SOPRANOS so much. It is so different that any other type of crime drama or what have you cuz there is no line that divides the good guys from the bad guys, the cops and the robbers. In the Sopranos, all the main characters are bad guys and you are made to identify with them. It's a world of complete moral relativity. I love Star Wars, but the moral absolutes that underpin it only give you one real story to tell. In a world of conflicted bad guys, you can go on forever exploring the contradictions that comprise human nature. Of course OVN is a Looooooong way from being the Sopranos.
SL: So far if you watch what we have it is all pretty silly and not that deep at all. But We are working on making it more rich from a storytelling point of view. And the Villain-as-protagonist will be the underlying concept.
TRE: "world without heroes" = tres cool (then you'd dig Mark Millar's WANTED comic, IMHO) ... i reckon in all hero-tales, tis the villains that defines the superhero (in so far as story-telling, IMHO) .. who is the audience's fav villain in OVN thus far? (based on feedback)
SL: Not sure. Thus far most of the viewers are still trying to understand what we are doing. the project is still finding it's voice. thus far we still don't really know who the characters are. We only get some superficial glimpses. But they are fleshing themselves out as we go along. We'll see who emerges as favorites.
TRE: and how did you actually start filming for OVN? a cosmic convergence of galactic-destiny at work? or a dastardly master plan for universal domination? (after meticulous planning, of coz)
SL: We just all decided to do this one day and I set it off. At first it was really tough because I am a control freak and I am used to being a solo act. I bought the camera and started the website without the other guys and I pretty much railroaded it into existence. I stepped on a few toes and just did it my way with, I admit now, some mixed results. For a while there it was just not gelling and I was losing the confidence of my partners. It's only just recently that we started getting more comfortable with our roles and the next phase of this project is going to be a lot more cohesive. (I hope)
TRE: who are the OVN? (im reading their bios now) - did you have to cast them, or were they friends whom you've convinced and/or dragged to be on the show?
SL: Everybody is a friend. If you get close to me you get roped into it.
Everyone that gets brought into it gets to put their own stamp on who they play. Nobody is a professional actor. The way I see it, we all play just exaggerated versions of ourselves. Being an original villain means you can act on your most selfish instincts and be the worst version of yourself. A lot of the upcoming stories will start to explore all the conflicts and petty mistrust and manipulations that have taken place in our actual relationships, just in a much more hyperized way.
TRE: this is a legit-question - who makes the costumes? how has the costume-quality improved thru time? becoz im seeing pretty snazzy outfits there :)
SL: I do most of the costuming. I'm kind of the most hands-on guy in the group. I have a shop where I make my toys and that's where a lot of the prop making happens. I also got this Puerto Rican tailor in the Lower Eastside that sews some of the capes. But even though I do a lot of the execution, the design of the costumes come from the people wearing them. As far as the quality goes, it's still pretty low budget. A lot of the stuff we wear are just recycled and kit-bashed Halloween costumes.
TRE: DIY is cool, if not i reckon it might loose some of it's "indie-appeal" (if i may) ... will their true identities be ever revealed? (except for softporn-director Darkowl in this ep)
SL: Not sure, But in the case of Darkowl, That is his TRUE identity. If any of the villains ever appear as a civilian, that's just a disguise.
TRE: if budget was not an issue, what would THE scene you would want to cature on celluloid?
SL: It wouldn't be just a scene. It would be a whole movie or HBO series. I don't want to give out the idea in too much detail, but involves a pretty original vision of a futuristic New York City
TRE: dammit now that's what i'd love to see! and would there ever be a DVD-boxset of OVN? do you want to?
SL: yeah, I want to go all out with the merchandising, toys, video games. Dvds and other formats of packaging the movies. That won't happen for a while. So far we only have about 40 minutes of content. I would want to have at lest 3 hours of material before it was a DVD
TRE: 40-minutes = nice ... one day you should have a OVN-marathon session with an entire audience of folks dressed as villains! like a villain-society meet! (and everyone could also watch Who Wants To Be A Superhero and pelt them with eggs etc LOL) - what does the future hold for OVN?
SL: More development. This whole first year was really just about learning. Learning how to shoot, how to edit. A lot of it was done on the fly and improvised. The quality varies. Some of it I love, some falls a little short. The next year will be the same as far as just getting a new episode up every 2 weeks, but I hope to see a lot of growth in the writing and production value. I Love the raw, do it yourself feel, I wouldn't want it to get too slick. but I want the storytelling to get better. I want it to be more accessible to people, and I want to just keep doing new shows.
SL: I want it to appear in more people's blogs and get a lot more exposure, but I want to keep all the ownership and production in house. The year after that I will want to consider selling the show, or moving it to TV or some bigger online network. But for now I want to just keep developing it and build a bigger audience. It takes a long time to conquer the world, but I'm a patient man...
TOYSREVIL: patience and fortitude wineth the day, IMHO - cheers for your time and trouble, SL and ny best wishes for a smooth production (and world domination) :)
