Back in June, I made a promise: I swore that if I won a certain Frost Park Chalk-Off, I’d use the prize – ten Spanish doubloon replicas and a Mayan calendar medallion – to make a pirate-themed video. Now, at last, the promise is fulfilled.

I shot Captain Manley and Shannancy’s Shanty back in June, shortly after winning the chalk-off, but due to some technical issues and hilarious continuity problems worse than any of those that made it into the final product, I haven’t had the opportunity to complete it until now.

The script was largely improvised, but the more impressive improvisation is all the props and lighting we managed to pull together with no planning or preproduction. Aside from the use of the doubloons and the calendar, there was nothing pre-planned about Shannancy’s Shanty; it was the spur-of-the-moment, “Hey, let’s shoot something right now” project.

So it’s really quite nice that we ended up with full costuming, controlled lighting and an amazing collection of props and set pieces that just happened to be lying around. Most of the credit for this goes to my roommates, Stuart and Kendra of Treefish Studio. The lighting rig, the props, the set dressing and most of the costuming comes courtesy of the random-yet-insanely-useful things they’ve accumulated.

Be sure to watch through the credits – I’m a big fan of the increasing trend in movies wherein something is inserted after the credit roll is done.

And don’t forget to check out Stuart’s nautically-themed art show at Amocat Cafe before it vanishes at the end of the month!

• Treefish Studio on Facebook
• Treefish Studio’s Works in Progress blog
• Treefish Studio’s Shameless Promotions and Other Notions blog
• Shannancy on YouTube
• Jeff Klein’s Norman Tweeter Productions
• Norman Tweeter Productions on YouTube
• Norman Tweeter Productions on Facebook
• Stuart M. Dempster on Facebook
• Kevin MacLeod’s royalty-free music
• fresco on freesound.org
• fastson on freesound.org
• Ryan Splint’s fonts
• GemFonts
• Northwest Territorial Mint