Michael “Pickle Boy” Green and his father Charles “Angry Grampa” Green, are the stars of The Angry Grampa Show on YouTube. The premise of the show is that Pickle Boy pranks and records Angry Grampa in real time. Pickle Boy enlists family members and friends to make the pranks seem believable, and Angry Grampa falls for them every time.
The Walking Dead Prank is one of the more popular videos, and has garnered over 9 million views and counting. Pickle Boy utilizes many medium-close up shots and long-shots to tell the story (probably in fear of being physically hurt by Angry Grampa). He always sets up his video to the unanswered question: not if but when will Angry Grampa blow?
In the prank, Pickle Boy films Angry Grampa discussing the possibility of zombies (0:08-0:28), he connects that possibility to an actual disease which infected thousands of people around the world (0:30-0:45), plays a fake news cast to make the prank more believable (0:45-0:55), adds zombies (1:00-1:05), and delivers the most jarring wake up call in the history of mankind (1:18-1:35)
This video works on so many different levels. Pickle Boy, uses his creativity to antagonize Angry Grampa through his fears and what makes him angry. Angry Grampa is a great character, because he has raw emotion and is very gullible. Pickle Boy rarely edits the footage to get action/reaction shots, however, he is really good at using his surroundings to tell a funny story.
At first, I couldn’t get over the idea that “Angry Grandpa” would know he was being pranked. After all, “Pickle Boy,” who has pranked him many times before, is following him around with a cell phone during what is supposedly a zombie apocalypse. Yet,at a certain point, it didn’t matter. The Cloverfield approach gave it a fraction of realism just big enough for me to suspend disbelief and just smile at what I was seeing. That just goes to show how important style is to making a piece work.
OK, Pickle Boy did do a good job capturing this dad’s facial expression, with a lot of camera movements alongside the action shots, as well as the close-up shots, all of those have created a tension that we feel in the big-screen horror movies. Even though everything seems too fake for me to believe, Pickle Boy’s dad definitely fell for it, which made him the perfect character for it! But there’re so many moments that made me worried about those zombies, for example, I thought the dad was going to get the gun and blow up that zombie’s head in 3:09; and when he got into the car, I thought he was going to run over all of them. Anyways, like what Pickle Boy said, a good character, a good setting, and actors made this a successful prank.
Interesting! Pickle Boy got “angry grampa”, “The Walking Dead”, “zombies” and “humor” in his piece. This is no reason why people don’t like it! His video is for entertainment. If we laugh, he wins! 02:35, the Angry grandpa shouted to Pickle Boy and said “I TOLD YOU IT’S GONNA HAPPENED!” Hahaha, OMG, angry+grampa=He made it!