Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

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Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager
ChadVader.jpg
Chad Vader Promotional Image
Genre Comedy
Created by Aaron Yonda
Matt Sloan
Developed by Aaron Yonda
Matt Sloan
Directed by Aaron Yonda
Matt Sloan
Creative director(s) Matt Sloan
Presented by Aaron Yonda
Starring Aaron Yonda
Matt Sloan
Brad Knight
Christina LaVicka
Paul Guse
Craig Johnson
Rob Matsushita
Voices of Matt Sloan
Narrated by Matt Sloan
Theme music composer John Williams
Opening theme The Imperial March
Ending theme The Imperial March
Composer(s) Andrew Yonda
John Lee
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 4
No. of episodes 38 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Matt Sloan
Producer(s) Courtney Collins
Production location(s) Madison, Wisconsin
Editor(s) Matt Sloan
Aaron Yonda
Camera setup Tona Williams
Running time 4–11 minutes
Production company(s) Blame Society Productions
Release
Original network Channel 101
Blip
YouTube
Ustream
Hulu
Picture format YouTube/Hulu/Ustream video players
Audio format YouTube/Hulu/Ustream video players
First shown in 2006-present
Original release June 25, 2006 (2006-06-25) –
December 11, 2012 (2012-12-11)
Chronology
Related shows Star Wars
External links
[blamesociety.net Website]

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager is an American comedy fan web series created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, who wrote, directed and appeared in the series, which parodied Star Wars. The show's central character is Chad Vader, the day-shift manager at the fictional supermarket Empire Market, who clashes with his customers and employees. Initially produced for Channel 101, the project was canceled after only two episodes were released. However, Yonda and Sloan decided to continue the story and the project achieved significant popularity following its airing on YouTube. It is largely filmed in Madison, Wisconsin at Willy Street Cooperative.[1] The show has received several awards, including an Official Star Wars Fan Film Award.

Production

Filming style and locations

The "Empire Market" scenes were filmed on location at Willy Street Co-op, Madison, Wisconsin.[2]

Series overview

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See also: List of Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager episodes

The first season follows Chad and his interactions with his co-workers. He admires his boss Randy, acquires Jeremy as an apprentice, hazes Lloyd and dates Clarissa. After troubles with Clint, Chad is moved to the night shift, where he meets Weird Jimmy, before quitting his job at Empire Market. After unsuccessfully working briefly at a number of jobs, he returns to Empire Market to re-ally with his coworkers and battle Clint to reclaim the day shift manager position.

In the second season, Empire Market is bought out by Red Leader Foods, a large corporation. Maggie McCall arrives as the corporate liaison for the new owners. After failure on the new laser checkout system, Randy is demoted to night shift manager, where he becomes mentally unstable, and Maggie becomes the acting general manager. The series also introduces another love interest for Chad, Maggie's assistant Libby and a minor antagonist, Sean Banditson. The season focuses on Chad's misuse of Jeremy and Maggie's attempts to ally with Jeremy. Afterward, Jeremy and Chad duel, leading to the accidental death of Weird Jimmy. After the battle, Chad and Jeremy reconcile.

The third season begins with the trial promotion of employees to general manager for a day. After the employees' failures, Maggie trials Clint as manager-for-a-day, where he pressures Randy to ally with him. New employee Damien Nightshayde allies with Chad and Jeremy, while a dead Jimmy, in Jeremy's visions, tells Jeremy a prophecy. Randy claims an unspecified plan is in motion. Later, former store owner Champion J. Pepper returns to the store and is the manager-for-a-day. He appears to do nothing, although a bit more than Tony. Later, Randy is seen crazier than ever. In the ending of the episode, Baby Cookie is seen ticking behind products. Soon, it is finally Chad's turn to be manager-for-a-day although Maggie has already decided that the best manager is Clint. To compensate, Chad goes to challenge Clint for a duel to the death and they initially duel in the back room, before moving towards the front of the store due to product damage to continue their duel. Soon, Chad surrenders and Jeremy and Damien throw a small net at Clint. Clint is irritated. However, soon after, Jeremy found a Baby Cookie bomb behind the shelf, and the timer indicates six minutes until detonation. Clint, Chad, Jeremy, and Damien race to find the other five bombs before the store blows up. When the sixth and final bomb is found, it turns out to be in the surveillance assailant. Damien grabs the bomb and is killed when it blows up in the parking lot. Seeing the explosion, Champion J. Pepper comes in and exercises a clause in the original sales agreement with Red Leader Foods that allows him to reacquire the store. He hires Maggie as the night manager, and promotes Chad to general manager. Jeremy, however, feels guilty about causing the death of Jimmy and Damien, and goes on leave.

The fourth season opens up with Chad as the general manager of Empire Market. Weird Jimmy's brother Johnny enters the store to pick up his brother's stuff. When he reminisces about Jimmy, Jimmy possesses him, and ultimately becomes the janitor for the store again. Jeremy then stumbles into the store in tattered clothing. Jeremy reveals that after he left the store, he played Skyrim for 3 days straight. He then wandered around the homeless district for food when Ben the Ghost appeared and told Jeremy to return to the store. Chad rehires Jeremy and it is revealed that Chad bribed Ben to tell Jeremy to come back to the store. Later, it's Chad's birthday and he and his co-workers celebrate. Chad tells of how his interview went where apparently Randy has heard of Chad and quickly hires him and tells him how great he is. Then, Brian Krause appears. Before he was on Charmed, he worked at the store. He was at Chad's interview and apparently when Randy told Chad about how he needs references from his previous job at Olive Garden, Chad got on his knees and started begging for the job so Randy decides to hire him. Brian then continues to tell the rest of the co-workers about Chad's first day on the job.

In the second 5 episode arc of the season Chad Vader locates his "dark soul half" and begins to become a much more harsh and increasingly unstable manager. He promotes the night shift manager—Maggie—to be his deputy. He isolates his girlfriend, Michelle, by giving her a written warning for being ten minutes late, and fires a popular stockboy for writing a critical song entitled "Chad Vader Makes Me Cry".

An inspection by Champion J Pepper shows the store falling in disarray with a homeless man sleeping in an aisle, and Chad trying to sell free samples. Champion discovers a generator problem which has so far been ignored by Chad Vader and urges Jeremy to take action. Chad's relationship with Michelle falls apart due to his unkindness and dictatorial attitude, however Chad mostly blames Michelle for this breakdown and convinces himself to push the store all the harder—even after Champion attempted to talk him down.

Chad's unpopularity grows to such an extent that he has to call imperial trooper to patrol the store and puts all employees on "indefinite overtime". Chad degrades into Jabba the Hutt, having Weird Jimmy dance for him, and orders Michelle to be his girlfriend again. She declines and then quits.

Finally Jeremy decides to enlist Weird Jimmy in helping him repair the generator. It is revealed that Maggie was behind the entire generator malfunction in an attempt to become General Manager again. Chad Vader is revived from his deathbed by Hal Thompson, and realizes the extent of what he did. In a speech before the store he promises raises and bonuses before stepping back down to Day Shift Manager. In terms of his successor, he made it clear that he would recommend Jeremy due to his efforts to save the store.

Cast and characters

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Main article: List of Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager characters
Yonda in character as Chad Vader at YouTube Live in 2008

Chad Vader (Aaron Yonda/voiced by Matt Sloan) is the show's central character. He is the day shift manager of Empire Market. Sometimes using lines lifted from the Star Wars films (the main source of humor being Chad going about day-to-day life while retaining a behavior befitting of a Sith lord), Chad's main goal is to crush Empire Market's competition and help make the store dominate the food retailing industry. However, as Season 2 progresses along and Chad follows Randy's orders to "ditch" the Star Wars attitude and become more normal and the new leader announces that everyone has a chance to be General Manager, his main goal morphs into a great ambition to become General Manager (which he succeeds in the end of Season 3). While he has inappropriate and rocky relationships with most of his co-workers, most notably Clint Shermer, he has better ones with others, such as Jeremy, whom he adopts as his apprentice. Chad implies in the second episode that he is Darth Vader's younger, less successful brother, and that Darth gave Chad a life support suit and helmet similar to his own after Chad accidentally rode his bicycle into a volcano. This fact is mentioned explicitly on the Blame Society website (www.blamesociety.net). Though he uses a red Sith lightsaber as a weapon to threaten opponents and shoplifters, he may not be a Sith; he is never referred to as "Darth", the title given to all members of the Sith order. He is, however, referred to as "Lord Vader" by some characters. Chad had lost touch with his family when they moved to Tatooine without him. LucasArts was impressed by Sloan, and eventually this led to him becoming the new voice actor for Darth Vader. His voice appears in the games Empire at War: Forces of Corruption,[3][4] Soulcalibur IV, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.[5] It is also noted that in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, if the player kills 12 Stormtroopers as Darth Vader during the introduction sequence, they will receive an achievement entitled "Worst Day Shift Manager Ever".

Awards and honors

  • Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda were awarded the George Lucas Selects award for The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards 2007, presented at Star Wars Celebration IV, for their work on Chad Vader. George Lucas personally selected the short movie as the best fan movie of the year. The annual competition is hosted by AtomFilms.[6]
  • Chad Vader appeared on the cover of Isthmus Magazine, January 25, 2007.[7]
  • Clips from episodes 1 and 4 appeared on the October 11, 2006 episode of ABC's Good Morning America.[8]
  • Matt Sloan was selected to be the voice of Darth Vader in the video games Soul Calibur IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel.

Distribution

The first episode of Season 2 was released on the internet on February 1, 2009 and subsequent episodes have been periodically released. Season 3 started being released on the internet from early 2010.

It started being broadcast on Blip since April 2010.

The series also has a DVD, which contains all 8 of the first season episodes, and one for season 2's ten episodes. Released on DVD in Fall 2008, Season 1.5 features the collection of "Chad Vader Training Videos" and other material created after the release of the Season 1 DVD. Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager has been translated into at least 6 languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese, Hebrew and Lingua Franca Nova.

Other media

The titular character of Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager has appeared outside of the web series.

A spin-off web series, Empire Market Training Videos was produced in 2008. In the webisodes, Chad covers issues of customer satisfaction, custodial duties, the importance of the dress code, the perils of shoplifting and patrolling in a series of in-universe training videos teaching the potential employee of Empire Market. It retained many characters from the main series.

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Chad Vader | Willy Street Co-op
  3. ↑ Blame Society Productions Bios - Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan - Creators of Chad Vader
  4. ↑ Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager at the Internet Movie Database
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Atom: Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge
  7. ↑ http://www.blamesociety.net/press/Isthmus-2007-01-25.pdf
  8. ↑ http://www.blamesociety.net/press/WisconsinStateJournal-2006-10-11.pdf
  9. ↑ RiffTrax RoundTable - Index[dead link]
  10. ↑ RiffTrax RoundTable - Index[dead link]
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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