BIG BRAIN TEST: a Napkin Films dedication to Ben Gleib (1:30, EDM rap-game-show with seven peanut gallery comics)

Watch on YouTube, 1:30, CC BY 4.0.

"Sir. Your name is a dog hat."
The Host, addressing the Doberman Governor on the BIG BRAIN TEST

Ninety seconds of stick-figure game-show comedy dedicated to Ben Gleib. Three contestants take a televised brain-teaser hosted by a warm-roast comedian. Plan 9 the bunny says RING when asked how many sides a triangle has. The Doberman Governor confidently answers eight. Der Gouverneur, the Bavarian philosophical clone, says all polygons sleep inside the triangle. The host considers each answer. Each answer is wrong. The buzzer fires three times. The host says it is beautiful, wrong, but beautiful. We chant BRAIN TEST and move on.

This is a love letter to a particular kind of hosting craft. Ben Gleib's Idiotest had a tone that I have not seen since: warm but cutting, fast conversational mock-incredulity, kind roasts that felt like the friend who has already forgiven you. The contestants were the smart-dumb friends he kept rooting for. Plan 9 needed that energy.

The premise

Three contestants on three lit podiums. The bunny on the blue. OG Bobby (in his Doberman Governor get-up, throne-room flashback wardrobe) on the red. Der Gouverneur, the Bavarian philosophical clone with an Alpine hat and a white feather, on the gold. Behind them, a row of audience silhouettes. Above them, a marquee-bulb sign reading BIG BRAIN TEST that blinks in alternation. To the upper right, a host booth with a pulsing ON AIR tag. In the corners of the bottom of frame, three peanut gallery silhouettes: a tall narrow head with tiny glasses, a round head with a raised fist, a short wide head with a tilted antenna.

Two more comics speak from the void offstage. Comic Herzog (a Sam-voice Herzogian narrator) drops "In the face of the triangle, we all dissolve." Comic Grandma (a Rachel-voice wholesome matriarch) asks, with sincere confusion, "Oh hello dear. Is that the rabbit?"

There is a Stranger-Things-mellow alien transmission pre-roll, five seconds of black field, sparse stars, a drifting glow dot, and the title "TRANSMISSION 9 / incoming from Planet 9." There is a Plan 9 sign-off in a Xhosa-Zulu mashup, "Hamba kahle. Plan 9 ngiyabonga." Stay well, go well, thank you, ish. The eleven_v3 multilingual model pronounces it approximately. That is part of the bit.

The chapters

Chapter	Frames	Beat
Alien pre-roll	0 to 60	black, stars, glow dot, TRANSMISSION 9
Welcome	60 to 240	host meta-bit, Dry interrupts, Plan 9 reports in, Grandma joins
Round one	240 to 630	triangle Q, three wrong, three buzzers, host roasts each
Chorus	630 to 752	"Don't be the idiot. BRAIN TEST!"
Round two	752 to 978	trains, Why Chicago, Plan 9 flips the format, DING
Outro buildup	978 to 1014	host loses it kindly, slow clap
Xhosa-Zulu farewell	1014 to 1080	Hamba kahle, fanfare, dedication card

The voices

Eight personas, all ElevenLabs. Five new this film: the host, Comic Dry, Comic Loud, Comic Chaos, Comic Herzog, Comic Grandma. (Plan 9, OG Bobby, Der Gouverneur, and Karen carry over from earlier films.)

Stage. Plan 9 Bunny carries the arc from confused contestant to thesis-bearer; he is the one who breaks the format with "What if the question is the idiot?" OG Bobby Johnson is in his Doberman Governor visual from THE KEYS TO POWER, defending his name with "Yo. The hat IS the look." Der Gouverneur is the Bavarian Joshua Ayson IVC clone, philosophical-wrong then philosophical-right at the close. The Host is the comedic stand-in that points at Ben Gleib's energy: Antoni's voice tuned to speed 1.18, stability 0.32, style 0.72, default emotion sarcastic. Fast conversational, warm under the wit, mock-incredulous on each wrong answer.

Peanut gallery in the corners. Comic Dry is Brian's calm British male, deadpan academic, interrupting from the audience with the actual correct answer ("Three.") that the host immediately shushes ("Sir. From the audience. Please."). Comic Loud is Daniel pushed hot, boisterous heckler ("EIGHT?!" / "WE LOVE IT!"). Comic Chaos is Lily, sharp Gen-Z absurdist ("Ring is a vibe.").

Off-stage from the void. Comic Herzog is Sam, slow soft documentary narrator, treats every absurd moment with cosmic gravity ("In the face of the triangle, we all dissolve."). Comic Grandma is Rachel, wholesome confused matriarch ("Oh hello dear. Is that the rabbit?").

Karen carries the chorus chant: "Don't be the idiot. BRAIN TEST!"

The sound: 128 BPM F-minor hip-hop EDM

ChipForge bed. i-VI-iv-V (Fm-Db-Bbm-C) four-bar cycle. Seven channels: kick_deep, snare_tight, hat_crisp and hat_open_shimmer, bass_growl sub, lead_bright stab, pad_lush, pulse_arp. Twelve four-bar patterns sequenced as INTRO times 2, VERSE times 3, CHORUS, VERSE times 3, CHORUS, OUTRO times 2. The intro patterns drop the drums and keep just pad, sub, and a sparse ding lead. The chorus patterns drop a four-on-floor with chord stabs an octave up. The outro strips back to pad and sub with one bell ding per bar, fading to F.

Seven SFX cues, all synthed at runtime in sound/composer.py:

• alien_arrival (5.5s, warm sub at D2 with ethereal D5/A5 tremolo pad and an ascending D4 F#4 A4 D5 arpeggio with bell decay), used as the cold open.
• gameshow_buzzer (0.55s, descending minor third 196 Hz down to 156 Hz, square wave plus sub sine, slow vibrato), fired on every wrong answer.
• gameshow_ding (0.7s, C5 fundamental with 2.4x and 4.8x inharmonic bell partials, sharp attack and 4.5/s exponential decay), used ironically on Plan 9's flip ("the question is the idiot").
• slow_clap_sfx on the host concession.
• fanfare_sting on the Xhosa-Zulu farewell.

Bookends are part of the SFX layer. The alien pre-roll plays under the title cards. The fanfare lands as Plan 9 closes the film. No other cues fire during the show body because we want the voice to carry.

The look

Stick-figure game-show stage in PIL, 854 by 480 at 12 fps. Three contestant podiums lit blue, red, gold, with three score-bulbs each that light up as wrong answers stack. By the end of Round 2 every contestant's bulbs are lit. The marquee sign overhead has a row of bulbs that alternate every four frames. The host booth window in the upper right has a pulsing ON AIR tag that strobes red when the host is mid-line. Audience silhouettes in the back row, three peanut-gallery silhouettes in the bottom corners.

Speaker-cut camera. Soft 1.3x push to the host booth when he speaks, 1.4x to the active contestant's podium, 1.6x tight crop to whichever peanut-gallery silhouette is talking. The Karen chorus is a wide 1.05x with a small frame-shake on every BRAIN TEST. The outro adds a 2.35 letterbox for cinema feel.

Subtle sitcom-laugh-sign style gag flashes pulse in the top-left during host running gags: SIR. / DOG HAT / POETRY / TRAINS? / GENUINELY / AGAIN. Each lasts about 18 frames, fades in over 4 frames, fades out over 4, wobbles a couple pixels horizontally. They draw on top of the cropped frame so they remain visible regardless of the speaker push.

The arcs (everyone is going somewhere)

Plan 9's arc. From confused ("Three! Four! Wait, RING?") to questioning back ("Why CHICAGO though?") to thesis ("Smart was the trap. Funny was the way."). He closes the film with the Xhosa-Zulu farewell.

OG Bobby's arc. Confidently wrong ("Eight. Octagon energy.") then defends his name when the host roasts him ("Yo. The hat IS the look."). Pays off at "Plot twist on the platform!" when he joins Plan 9's flip.

Der Gouverneur's arc. Poetic wrong ("All polygons sleep inside the triangle.") which the host calls "poetry, wrong but poetry." Becomes philosophical-right at the close. The Bavarian philosophical clone has been carrying the thesis of every film he is in, and this one is the same: heroes laugh at themselves.

The Host's arc. Roasts at the start, loses control in Round 2, ends grateful ("Plan 9. You taught me.") on a fanfare. The roasts get softer through the film. By the time he says "OK. You broke my show. Again." he is in on the joke.

Comic Dry's arc. Planted helper from the audience who keeps interrupting with technically correct unhelpful information. Pays off late with "He's done this." when Plan 9 questions the question.

Captions are gone

The earlier cuts of this film had subtitle captions for every voice line. They were distracting. The audio carries it. The peanut gallery silhouettes carry the layering. The marquee-bulb sign and the podium labels carry the orientation. The Xhosa-Zulu farewell lands without translation by design. If you want to know what it says, the description below tells you. The film itself trusts you.

Why Ben Gleib

Idiotest aired on GSN from 2014 to 2017. Ben Gleib hosted three seasons. The format was deceptively simple: contestants are shown a puzzle that looks obvious and asked the question that makes it not obvious. The fun was always in the hosting. Gleib had a way of treating wrong answers like he had been hoping you would say that. He made smart look fun. Specifically: he made smart-dumb look fun. He made it look like the friend who is brilliant and also says RING when asked about triangles.

Plan 9 needed that energy. The Plan 9 universe runs on smart-dumb. Cyborg bunny who learns by failing. Doberman governor whose hat is a transformer. Bavarian philosopher who sleeps inside the triangle. The whole catalogue wanted a host that would take their wrongness seriously enough to roast it kindly. This film is the audition Ben Gleib never asked for.

If he ever wants to come spit a verse, the booth is open.

Credits

Dedicated to Ben Gleib. Written, directed, composed, animated, voiced, and produced by Joshua Ayson in collaboration with AI. Made by Organic Arts LLC.

This film is a tribute. Ben Gleib's hosting on Idiotest is the spiritual reference point. No audio, footage, or likeness was sampled or cloned. The host voice is a stand-in shaped to point at his energy. Comedy as cover letter.

Stack

Animation in Python with PIL. Music composed in ChipForge with numpy synthesis, no samples. Voice generated through ElevenLabs personas, with a Bavarian IVC clone for Der Gouverneur. Mix muxed through ffmpeg with a stem-preserving ducker and a layered game-show SFX track. Bookend SFX synthed at runtime. No GPU. No stock footage. No licensed instrument samples.

Watch BIG BRAIN TEST on YouTube. The film is Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Remix it, repost it, drop it into your own thing. Credit Napkin Films and Organic Arts LLC and link CC BY 4.0. Engine code (Napkin Films, ChipForge) is GPL-3.0-or-later. ElevenLabs voice audio is licensed content and is not redistributed.

Full license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/