So about a year and a half ago, Mike and I decided to enter a contest.  As Ruth Ann will readily tell you, I love my iPhone.  It's pretty, it's fancy and it's gadget-y.  I like it.  A lot.  One of the best-selling apps and one of my favorites is "I Am T-Pain".  The app lets you sing along to a music track and auto-tunes your voice to correct your pitch, so if you're remotely close to the right note, you sound decent.  The end result is that kind of robot-like warble that you hear people like the Black Eyed Peas and, of course T-Pain use.  And while you don't hear it as distinctly, so do all those over-produced kids on Glee, and most every candy pop artist you can name.

The company behind this great app (shout-out to Smule) put on a 10 week contest to have people use it to recreate a video for The Lonely Island's "I'm On a Boat".  New lyrics, theme, etc. were all encouraged.  There would be a $500 weekly winner, then a grand prize winner of $5000.  The grand prize also won a full-size replica of this:

(oh my)

A few weeks went by and I noticed that the entries were not super awesome.  And not very plentiful.  My brain calculated some odds, pitched the idea of making a video to Mike and it was on.  Our first task was a theme.  We needed new lyrics and wanted to keep them family friendly (the original version is hilarious, but not something you'd want to play for junior).  After some brainstorming, we settled on "I've Got a Wii".  Everybody knows about the Wii, and c'mon, that gave us just enough ground to make some snarky jokes but keep it PG.

I took a stab at some lyrics, Mike brought his A-game for some edits, verses, and refinements and Whammy!, we had our song.  We recorded the thing in three parts.  First we had just the instrumental track, then we put on headphones and spit hot fire (aka, rap track), then I went back in to lay down the auto-tuned track.  I wish we would have video'd this process, because it was hilarious.  Picture me with headphones on, listening to the track and Mike watching me blurt out the occasional "yeah" or "shawtaaaay" in an otherwise silent room.  It was pretty awesome.  Once we got our tracks, we sent everything to my brother to mix it up in the lab.  He blended everything perfectly, added some effects and sent back the final track.

Once we had the track, it was time for our shoot.  We had a rough plan/storyboard, recruited the acting services of our good pal N8, sorted out who would play which parts in the video and got to it.  We shot most everything in a long Sunday and just had a couple filler/reshoots to finish up.  Once we got everything shot, it was my turn to pull it all together.  Believe me, it took some work to cut out the bad, grab the best and piece it all together AND sync it up perfectly with the music track.  Needless to say, there are plenty of outtakes on the official bootleg DVD.

The final result?  This little guy, right here:

30,000 views (!) and counting...

We managed to win the weekly prize, but were beaten out by some stiff (and much more professional) competition for the grand prize.  We took our money and ran, right to a Brazillian steakhouse for a big evening of dinner and drinks for the whole team courtesy of some creativity and a $3 iPhone app.  Love it.