'The Tournament of International Table Tennis' was a final project for a film class I was taking back in 2006. My friends Wes, Alex and I were playing ping pong just about every day since we graduated high school, and I was a big fan of the 'mockumentary' genre made popular by Christopher Guest with films like "This is Spinal Tap" and "Best in Show". So we combined the two, and made a fake documentary about a ping pong tournament, which conveniently took place in our city of Louisville, KY.

I wrote the script, which was really more of a basic outline because I figured that ad libbing most of the lines would be funnier (turned out to be a great decision, because some of the stuff we came up with was way better than anything I could have written). The story was set, and we filmed the movie in a couple weeks, give or take a few days. We used the gym facilities at a local church (which is why you can see "Jesus is Lord" in the background) for the tournament scenes, and filmed most of the other scenes at my friend Dan's house.

The final product turned out pretty well, especially for a first ever project, but it still didn't really meet with my satisfaction just because of the extremely limited resources that I had. Time, money, and help were things that I was very short of, and I did almost everything by myself, which was much more exhausting than I was expecting. And it's probably why I haven't made a serious film since.

But enough talking. Maybe I should make a "Making of" video to explain this whole process. The teaser trailer, the actual trailer, as well as the entire movie (in 4 parts) can be found on youtube. I'll post links below, and some pictures to look through.

 

T.I.T.T. DVD Insert	VHS Cover (prop)	Promo Image

T.I.T.T. Teaser Trailer | T.I.T.T. Official Trailer

Full Movie: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4