INTERVIEW WITH CONOR BRITAIN
You’ve produced a lot of real sports videos, what is the fun in making a spoof like this one?
To be honest that video was one of the first real cracks I took at the sporting world. I’ve watched a lot of dramatic ESPN shows and I knew I wanted to capture that aura and poke fun at it a little bit. I had heard about the monster golf phenomenon through the grapevine and it just seemed like a perfect segment for the [student produced television] show I was working on at the time. All the interviews were staged but improv for the most part. All the narration was scripted. It was a good early project in that in combined documentary techniques but also cinematic storytelling and real plot development and conflict.
How did the storyline for this segment evolve? Is it scripted?
It was basically I wrote down what I wanted the plot to be. Basically it’s a familiar storyline: guy get famous, runs into a problem, all of a sudden he’s at the bottom and has to work his way back up. That’s about as successful a story line as any. Part of why it worked so well is it was so over the top. It was fun applying dramatic rise and fall of conflict to this silly little thing, Monster Golf.
