Steven Ho's Blog – Deconstructing Fighting and Stunts for your enjoyment

It’s been a minute since I’ve directed and am supa excited to be doing the Asian Conan music video for Petree and Funny or Die and IMC fans.

Recording and shooting LaBamba on Thursday and a couple more pick up shots here and there and we’ll be ready to edit.

Here’s an early look at some images from the shoot…

Big ups to Conan and the entire staff!

The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien earned its first and only Emmy nomination this morning.

Conan will compete against ‘The Colbert Report,’ ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘Real Time With Bill Maher’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’ in the Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series category.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien was also nominated in the following three categories: Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series; Outstanding Art Direction For Variety, Music Or Nonfiction Programming; and Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series.

I had a contest on my Facebook Page for one of the shinai swords used in on one of my stunt segments with Conan on the former Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Pierre Bernard and Alison Flierl were kind enough to select the winner from our three finalists (Heidi McCarthy from Chi Town, Tiina Niukkanen from Helsinki, and Sara Iha from New Mexico).

And the winner is…

History of the sword…

Click image to see Conan stunt segments

Youtube is restricted for housing the NBC/Universal stunt segments with Conan (from the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien episodes).  But I was able to upload them at Funny or Die for now….and btw….we’re working on ideas for Asian Conan, episode 2.

CONAN STUNTS ON FUNNY OR DIE

“Asian Conan” went live today on Funny or Die (FOD) and Pierre Bernard (bad guy pimp) gives a Tour de force.

Big ups to everyone at FOD – especially Mike Farah, Brad Schultz, Josh Simpson, Adam McKay, and Will Farrell for making this happen and for putting their energy into this as if it were Avatar 2.

And of course, HUGE appreciation to everyone who showed up on the production day to lend a hand as talent, background talent, crew, stunts, and moral support – it was a long day and I know in the end there are just snippets of random and non-descript background activity that made the final cut, but the story really couldn’t have been told without you.

[If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can click here to red a little Asian Conan history]

WARNING: The following video contains explicit language, violent content, bad string-dancing, and intended sexiness. The funny gods promised us a budget to make the sequel in exchange for hits and comments…so please feel free to share, blog, and spread the word.

ASIAN CONAN UPDATE.  Here’s a screen capture from the last edit session with Brad Schultz and Josh Simpson from Funny or Die (FOD).  We’re just about there with a final cut and the boys are now focusing all next week on Sound Design and Special Effects (love me some slo-mo bullets). FOD has been pretty amazing in the energy and resources they’re putting into this – they’ve been treating this project more like a short film production than a quick sketch….so thanks for your patience everyone.  It’ll be up soon.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, this is probably a pretty weird post for you to read.  If you’d like, you can click to a background history of Asian Conan here.

If you’re not familiar with FOD, it’s the online comedy site founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.  Most recently they released the all-star Presidential Reunion directed by Ron Howard and starring Will Ferrell, Jim Carrey, Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, Fred Armison, Maya Rudolph, Dana Carvey, and Darrell Hammond.

Here are a couple of my other favorite FOD Exclusives:

Forehead Tittaes with Marion Cotillard

Between Two Ferns with Zack Galifianakis and Natalie Portman

Acting with James Franco: Sense Memory

Rachel Bilson’s deleted sex scene with Adam Scott

Hopefully I didn’t show it, but this was a seriously extremely stressful moment for me.  For my appearances on former Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Conan and I didn’t spend much rehearsal on our opening stunt bits and interaction so it would all be organic and fresh for the actual taping.

But the “main stunt” would always require rehearsal for obvious safety and insurance reasons. Rehearsal would start around 3pm and the actual taping would go at 5pm.  So it’s all pretty run and gun after lunch with no cushion for error.

On this particular episode our “main stunt” was sliding Conan on his butt with the use of a high-powered wench pulling him through a cornucopia of funny props that Conan had specified (picket fence, chicken coop, guys walking with mirror, and giant bowling pin).  As usual, I ran through this with my stunt crew the night before and everything was completely copacetic.

However, on the actual day we ran into major computer problems.  The wench is operated by a laptop…and the laptop kept freezing on us.  Of course this didn’t happen until Conan and his entire staff of writers and producers showed up for rehearsal…along with cameras rolling.

But Coco kept his cool and no one really freaked out (on the outside at least) although there was a very solid chance that the bit was about to be canceled. We got it to work once in rehearsal….and left it at that.

I assured everyone that we’d have the system figured out by showtime, and Conan and company decided to keep it on the books.  But literally until the moment that I yelled action on the actual show, I had no idea if it was going to work or not.

Here’s some rare behind the scenes footage that Aaron Bleyaert had put up on his Tonight Show blog.  There’s also footage somewhere in a hardrive of Aaron wearing a football helmet and me spin kicking him in the head…I hope that didn’t end up in NBC possession because Aaron sacrificed his neck for that shot.

You can also catch more behind the scenes on the ConanVids youtube channel.  Not sure how long they’ll be up there for…so get em while they’re hot.

I’ll work on getting the actual show footage up here or on my Facebook page shortly.

Great seeing Andy Richter this morning on Live! with Regis and Kelly, where Andy was subbing for Regis Philbin who was on vacation.

Kelly didn’t beat around the bush with questions about NBC and Jay Leno…and Andy certainly did not hesitate to give straight answers.  Here’s a clip if you missed it:

I AM CONAN Facebook Contest Rules:

Post a picture of yourself (or friend or family member) as Conan on www.facebook.com/IlikeStevenHo. The image doesn’t have to be a direct impersonation, it can also be your personal version of CoCo.  So in other words, don’t stress about looking like Conan…focus on capturing the spirit of #imwithcoco.

It’s as important is to be creative with your location and scenario.  Photoshopping is not prohibited, but keep in mind that a “grassroots” spirit is encouraged and will be rewarded in the Finals.

ROUND ONE:

All posted photos will be stored under “fan photos” of www.facebook.com/IlikeStevenHo. The top 3 images that have the most “likes” by April 1st, 5pm Pacific time will be entered into the Finals. So it’s best to post your pic up as soon as you can to give yourselves time to get those “like” votes.

THE FINALS:

Later that month (date TBD, based on judges availabilities) a panel of Conan-insider judges will subjectively deem one winner. We’ll do our best to put up a vid of the process and results.

THE PRIZE:

The winner will get a sword from this Conan stunt segment:

VOTE:

If you’re not competitive type and prefer lurking instead, feel free to vote for your favorite.  Join Steven’s Facebook Fan Page and vote for your favorite pictures under “Fan Photos.”

If you missed this crazy stunt episode and want to check it out, here it is below in HD:

Thank you in advance for playing nicely – we reserve the right to disqualify mean people and inappropriate submissions at our sole discretion.