Monday, October 31, 2011

6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park

In 1997, Trey Parker and Matt Stone created the television series "South Park", the acclaimed series about four young boys in a small Colorado mountain town that has since set the bar for crudity and excellence in animated satire. The pilot episode, made with cardboard cut-outs, took months to finish with just a few frames taking hours to craft. Since the improvement of technology, the show has been drawn on computers and to maintain freshness, work on each episode begins only a week before it is to air. In this documentary, Parker and Stone take us through the making of an episode (15.1 HUMANCENTiPAD) and the arduous creative process, as well as the history of their professional partnership. The documentary serves to be self-promotional not only for the show, but also for the duo's distinguished Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon". Still, as a fan of the show, I found it intriguing to see how, under incredible duress, it all comes together.