Duncen Willoughby

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Ep. 5 - How To Parody Ancient Aliens

Duncen Willoughby

This resource is provided free of charge to help you create your own Ancient Aliens-style parody for educational purposes. It is meant to supplement the video below which is hosted on my popular YouTube channel DWSmarter. 

Have fun!

Parodying Ancient Aliens is fairly simple. All you have to do is follow the steps I've outlined below. This will get you to through the opening title card. The rest of the show is a similar rinse-recycle-repeat methodology with a longer duration for each beat.

The rest of this page is split into these sections:

  1. Outline of the Opening 2 Minutes. This is the resource I use in my video.

  2. Transcript of the Opening 2 Minutes. This helps to see how little is said, but how powerfully it can be said. We

Outline of the Opening Two minutes

The Hook

  1. A series of active, present tense phrases.

  2. Explain the mystery as a standard world view but end with an Alternative View.

  3. Introduce a Talking Head who reiterates the narrator’s questions.

  4. Continue Narrator’s line of Questioning.

  5. Statement of Belief from a talking head.

  6. End with an Intriguing Possibility.

Opening Titles

  1. A fact about people’s belief.

  2. “What if it were true?”

  3. Exploration of new questions: If-then

  4. Who What Where When Why?

 

Transcript of Opening Two-Minutes

Ancient Aliens Transcript.txt (Screenshots from .docx version):

Comments:

  • Paragraph 1: This is a great screenwriting technique. Using active visuals in your writing. ""Mega-machines cutting through solid rock." could have been phrased "We see mega-machines cutting through solid rock." or "Solid rock is cut by mega-machines." But structuring it with the subject DOING something to an OBJECT helps minimize words while providing just enough to create the visual.

  • By the end of this paragraph we're wondering how these images connect. This is also a good screenwriting technique. Juxtaposition -- or placing next to each other -- of images. The theory is that humans create meaning when there are a series of images shown. The classic example comes from Richard Attenborough's nature documentaries. It goes something like: A gazelle chewing on grass. The eyes of a lion on the prowl. A snap as the gazelle's head pop up. The lion launches into action. The gazelle bolts away. The lion jumps onto a lioness and starts to make love to it. The gazelle nudges the bum of it's calf. Everyone lives happily ever after. Notice how meaning was added because of the juxtaposition of images.

  • Paragraph 2: But... Or.. ??? Before even providing us with what it's supposed to mean they add "But" to make you doubt the normal world view, and prep the "Or" for the alternative.

  • Next the Talking Head adds an air of authority to the coming series of questions.

  • Notice how many questions are posed. And they all build off each other, so deep that at some point your brain starts assume the earlier as fact in order to process the later questions. This is a very persuasive technique in sales and conversation. The next time you say, "Pass the salt," and your husband says, "We don't have salt!" Come back with, "I know, but what if we did." "Well we dont!" "And it we did, where might the salt be?" "Right here, next to the pepper.....Oh." "Pass the salt please." "Yes dear."

  • Other powerful keywords to use, especially on yourself, is the "Could..." frame. A lot of times we get caught in a pattern of "I can't do that..." or "That's not possible..." but if we step back and pose a better question, we can discover new options for ourselves. Instead of saying, "DID ancient man possess knowledge far beyond own our technology?" which often leads people to say Yes or No, try "COULD..." which most people are reluctant to deny. The COULD frame forces your brain to find a possible answer to the question as opposed to a possible truth statement about the question. In the COULD frame your brain searches for a NEW WAY. In the DID frame, your brain searches for PAST EXPERIENCE. Next time you get stuck thinking I can't do that. Try saying If I COULD do that, HOW might I do it?

  • Similarly, the WHAT IF? frame also challenges you to explore NEW possibilities. You temporarily try out a new reality. It's often a lot fun and can be powerful in your own life too. WHAT IF I could shoot a movie? How might I do that?

  • Begging the Questions. A lot of these questions use a trick or logical fallacy called "Begging the Question" which essentially forces you to answer the question it's posing in the affirmative. Look up the fallacy for more information.

  • Finally the Second Questions, help to assume the first as fact or truth so your brain can properly interpret the new question. "And if so..." Is a soft and simple way of getting you to go with an idea even if it's not proven to be fact yet.

Beyond the First Two Minutes

The format of the next sections loosely looks like this:

  1. Explore an Exotic Locale. In this section we get to travel the world from home and learn something new as we're transitioned slowly into the more opinionated statements of the talking heads. We always open with a LOCATION. LOCATION DETAILS. WHAT happened there or WHY it's going to be important.

    1. ex: PUMA PUMKU. 105 miles west of the Andes. Scientists uncover a stone rock with mysterious markings.

  2. Then we transition to talking heads who reinterpret facts with their own opinions.

  3. We explore the new ideas using the talking heads.

  4. Rinse repeat recycle on a given theme for the episode.

  5. End the show with a restatement of the opening hook, but now using the visuals and stories that they've presented over the last 45 minutes.

Production Value (and Resources)

Production Value is the Hollywood industry term that describes how well something was put together. It can be amazing special effects, sets, editing, etc. Anything that adds perceived value to the audio-visual experience of the film. Ancient Aliens has incredible production value. Here are some production tricks that they use to achive a final product that awes and wonders.

  1. Fast montage editing. They have extremely short kinetic clips of stock footage and transition from one to the next as soon as the visual is registered in your head. They use high quality footage, and high quality transition (blur-blowout and zoom blurs and technological wireframing).

  2. Voice Talent. Go study the way the narrator works. Listen to his words as you read them and you'll notice a first-class speech style that lends gravity and allure to the words. Notice how he pauses on key words or transitions. And for your own parody, try using FIVERR.com to have an adult male with a deep voice lend gravity to your scene.

  3. Music. They use top notch, mysterious and generally "epic" style music to make the episodes more fun and engaging. We used several FREE Creative Commons music tracks. Mostly from Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech and some from YouTube's Audio Library. Here's a list of resources used:

Other Examples

Here's another DWSmarter video showing how to use the Ancient Aliens production style to shine light on making people's beliefs more credible by posing them as questions instead of statements.

Enjoy!     Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBdRQ8sX4xc