Anatomy of a Viral Sensation: 'Too Many Cooks'
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Anatomy of a Viral Sensation: 'Too Many Cooks' 11.20.2014 With its spot-on imitation of a Full House-style sitcom opening and pitch-perfect send-up to programming tropes ranging from Law & Order-style crime drama to G.I. Joe-style kids cartoons, it's perhaps not surprising to learn that some of the lead creators behind the viral Adult Swim sensation Too Many Cooks hail from the realm of promo. Writer/director Casper Kelly got his start in the business crafting promos for Cartoon Network, where he made :15, :30, :60 and longer spots ranging from cut-together show clips to original animated and live-action skits intended to be reflective of the network's brand. Ambitious and inventive from the get-go, his flair for offbeat genre mash-ups manifested early on, as evidenced by this brand spot featuring Fred Flintstone and friends in the Cartoon Network parking lot. As Kelly began finding his groove, a project merging Scooby Doo and The Blair Witch Project began to emerge. Written as several individual promos, the spots inserted Scooby and the gang's cartoon shenanigans over live-action footage that perfectly mimicked the latter horror film's grainy, documentary style. Eventually, the spots were edited together into a cohesive 10-minute whole, and the entirety of The Scooby Doo Project wound up airing as Cartoon Network programming, winning Kelly an Annie Award for excellence in animation along the way. Kelly described his years at Cartoon Network as "basically a mini-film school where one got paid to learn writing, scene construction, editing, sound design, and so forth. And those of us there had a lot of enthusiasm and pride for what the others were doing, but we also wanted to top each other in a fun way. It was the right mix of competitive and supportive." One of those competitive supporters was Ashley Kohler, who produced The Scooby Doo Project and would eventually become director of production, on-air and program production at Cartoon Network. Her early collaboration with Kelly served as a showcase for her uniquely nimble gifts on the technical side of animation and visual effects, which he summed up with a simple question: "Do you know how hard it was to track animation into wildly moving handheld camera footage with late '90s technology? But she made it happen." As Kelly began increasingly writing and creating television series over promos, and Kohler moved on to co-found her own animation and broadcast design studio, Awesome, Incorporated, the two artists would continue to work together. Transitioning to Adult Swim, Kelly wrote on animated series like Squidbillies and co-created the channel's Flash-animated buddy cop spoof Stroker and Hoop. He transitioned deeper into live action, creating Season 1 of Adult Swim's Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, a demonic office comedy. Awesome, Inc. was all set to produce visual elements for Season 2 of the show, but it got delayed, and the Kohler's studio suddenly found itself all dressed up, ready to work on the next Kelly production, but with nowhere to go. Fortunately, Kelly had another project for them to pivot toward - a slightly more under-the-radar passion piece he had been working on for Adult Swim's no-man's-land of a 4:00 am block, where the network had been airing surreal fake infomercials for seemingly no other reason than the fun of it. Kelly's planned foray into that space wasn't in the style of an infomercial but rather as cheesy mid-'80s-to-mid-'90s multi-camera sitcoms. Still, if the goal of the slot was to mess with the minds of whoever happened to stumble across it, his idea, Too Many Cooks, would fit the bill. What transpired has in the last two weeks become a piece of Internet lore, though to lump Too Many Cooks in with other "viral" videos feels like a cheapening of its nightmarishly comedic genius, and the level of care and expertise that went into its production. As it morphed from its initial concept of an endless opening title sequence into something much more devious, Awesome, Inc. found themselves working on everything from traditional animation to the retro-space-age 3D modeling on display during the short's riff on Battlestar Galactica. Hearkening back to Kohler's days tying animation to grainy live-action footage in The Scooby Doo Project, they even animated the credits themselves to stick with people as they ran, jumped, tussled and hid behind closet doors, eventually twisting the words themselves into weird humanoid creatures. It all adds up to a treasure trove of visuals and set pieces that rewards repeat viewings. During a first go-around, for instance, one might overlook the moment when the tone is about to transition from comically unsettling to full-blown nightmare, and featured player Katie Adkins is innocently brushing her hair. Keeping with the title sequence motif, we are treated to another freeze frame, Adkins grinning goofily at the camera with the "oh hello, I didn't realize you were standing there watching me" attitude so heavily favored by openings to sitcoms of that era. But in this world, as the freeze frame lingers for a little too long, our serial killer emerges in the bedroom behind the unmoving Katie… whose eyes proceed to dart wildly in her head, tracking his advancement toward her while the rest of her remains frozen. It's the subtlest of visual trickery that required four different composited takes to pull off, capped off by animating Adkins' eyes to make them roll convincingly in their frozen sockets. The impact is sublimely unnerving, bringing the viewer into Adkins' shoes and forcing you to feel the terror of impending doom with no ability to do anything about it. Throughout it all, the disturbingly catchy yet malleable Too Many Cooks theme song winds through everything like a snake, morphing through different styles as seamlessly as the visual action does. Michael Kohler, a composer who has worked on the music for Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell and other TV productions and promos (he also happens to be Ashley Kohler's husband) wrote the theme, which was subsequently adapted to different styles throughout the short by composer Shawn Coleman. Modeling it after The Facts of Life's chirpy opening number, Kohler told Brief that upon seeing the lyrics Kelly had in mind for the theme, the melody came to him immediately. "Composing doesn't always work this way, but when I read Casper's lyrics, I immediately sang the line 'Too Many Cooks' and it was instantly the ear worm that we have now," Michael Kohler said. "I had that melody stuck in my head for two weeks while I tracked a demo version of the rest of the main song. I couldn't stop it. I called [singers] Patty Mack and Michael Magno in to test a vocal pass, and I'm not going to lie, it felt good to plant it in someone else's brain for a little while." It's hard to think of a better metaphor for the effectiveness of Too Many Cooks as a whole, which feels like some kind of alien sent to worm into your brain and plant itself there, where it will proceed to take over and control you. Like with any great work, it's hard to define the magical amalgamation of elements that creates that unforgettable feeling, but one thing is clear: From concept to visuals to music, Kelly and his team had a deep understanding of promo elements ranging from title design to packaging. Executing those familiar elements perfectly then twisting them profoundly creates a dreamlike state in which we are on the fringes of reality, where that reality can very quickly become a nightmare..