Web Video / 5 Second Films

Wasting your time, but not very much.^note Yeah, right.

— 5SF Motto

5 Second Films (or 5SF) is a website run by a group of actors and writers that regularly produce short films. These short films last exactly five seconds (8 seconds, if you count the title card and 'The End'. But don't pay attention to that). The subject of said films are almost completely random, with only a few subjects and characters referenced more than once.

Their website can be found here. In addition, they have a YouTube channel; useful, since it has some of their earlier videos that are no longer accessible on their main site.

The troupe began pre-production for a 5400-second feature-length adaptation of Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 with the opening of a Kickstarter campaign. Production started in September 2013 and is planned for completion around Summer 2014. First Teaser Second Teaser

Not to be confused with Five Second Movies.

Compare Vine, a social media website which ran on a similar concept using six-second video clips.

---

These films provide examples of:

• All There in the Manual: The descriptions for most of the videos usually give backstories or epilogues to the films. The Halloween ones are particularly detailed, with each reading like a short horror story.
• April Fools' Day: As an April Fool's prank in 2009, the team took out most of their preceding content and replaced it with an... interesting web animation called "Telekats".
• As Himself: The actors usually play themselves; notable recurring roles include Jon Worley as a sleazy/demonic spokesman of the same name, and Paul Prado as Pauly P, a Cloudcuckoolander fitness instructor.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Parodied in-universe in Truman Capote's Children's Hour.
• Artifact Title: Sometimes, they fit a bit more content into the episodes by continuing the audio into the ending frame.
• The Baby Trap: Parodied in "The One". A guy and girl are about to do the deed, and she asks him if he's sure that she's the one for him. He reassures her, and is then shown poking holes in his condom while whispering that he's gonna make her "the one". Still quite creepy.
• Banana Peel: Subverted in "Paul Vs. Banana". Paul doesn't slip on the banana peel lying on the street, but instead gets hit by a car driven by a giant banana.
• Bedmate Reveal: Spoofed in Wolfman's Hangover. After a night out on the town as his wolf self, he wakes up next to an actual bitch.
• The Cameo:
  • Andrew W.K. on Never Gonna Drink Again and Free Hug.
  • Here, it's Juliette Lewis!
  • ...and Patton Oswalt! ...Twice! No, make that three times!
  • ...and "Weird Al" Yankovic! ...Again! And again!
  • ...and Andrew WK! ...Again! ...And again!
    • how 'bout one that combines Oswalt, Yankovic, and WK?
  • .. and Peter Stormare!
  • ...and James Urbaniak!
  • ...and Freddie Wong!
  • ...and Greg Sestero!
  • ...and Stan Lee!
  • ...and Dick Van Dyke!
• Carnivore Confusion: Bringing Home The Bacon. A man brings home some bacon for his wife, but it's revealed that they're both pig people.
• Cat Girl: Kelsey Cat, the star of several consecutive shorts, is one of these. She's said to be a human, but for whatever reason she chooses to only communicate in meows and run around on all fours, alongside other feline behaviors.
• Ceiling Cling: The modus operandi of Ceiling-Crawler.
• Crashing Dreams: In the video "And The Winner Is...", Michael Rousselet dreams that he wins the Academy Award, only to be dumbfounded when he's handed a golden steering wheel. Then it's shown that he fell asleep behind the wheel before crashing his car.
• Dead Artists Are Better: Parodied and invoked in "Art Lover". A client asks a painter if his art has any value, and the replies replies "no". The client then kills the artist so the paintings' prizes will sky-rocket.
• Deconstruction: The usual festivities of Cinco de Mayo (and shutting the fuck up) have sunk our poor friends into alcoholism and the inability to get on the wagon. GET HELP
• Domestic Abuse: Little White Lie, where a man is outraged by his son-in-law giving his daughter a hickey, but is unperturbed when she explains it as a bruise because he beats his own wife.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: A guy thinks it's awesome in Police Line because the suspect had large breasts.
• Downer Ending: The premises behind all the videos in the Bummer Week.
• Earth All Along: Inverted; Earth is actually the Moon.
• Energy Weapon: Laser Test where the researchers gathered to view the effects of a new laser instead get into an argument about what noise it should make, much to the deep disappointment of the only scientist dedicated to sciencing.
  The Board of Highly Scientific Review & Science, as you can no doubt imagine, went on to publish several papers based on Dr. Firenzi’s findings, the most prominent of which were titled “Zhoo! Zhoo! Zhoo! And the Neurotechnological Capabilities Therein” by Dr. Sandoval, and “Pew, Pew: A Rebuffing of Dr. Sandoval’s Hasty Assertions,” by Dr. Gunn. Dr. Firenzi himself disappeared from the eye of the medical world and has yet to resurface, after several long years.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The mugger's reaction to the boyfriend parkouring away in Quick Moves.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: According to the video descriptions, Paul in Paul Vs. Banana, the homeless guy in Streak Free Shine and everybody living in New York in West People Problems. Subverted in Sunday Morning Strut, the very next day's film, which explains that "Death is a construct, waiting to be escaped."
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Inverted in The Day Before Yesterday When Everything Was OK and There Weren't Any Zombies.
• Exact Words: "Nobody's Driving". They're driving, but nobody's at the wheel.
• Eyeless Face: The poolboy in "The Pool Boy".
• Eye Scream:
  • Johnny Quickdeath Goes Scissorjogging
  • And My eyes are killing me.
• Face Death with Dignity: Richards in Grown Men Are Talking
  Dufresne Sr.: RICHARDS! Did you kill my boy?
  Richards: Yes - and I accept the consequences.
  [Dufresne Sr. hurls a throwing knife into Richards' forehead]
  Richards: ...Thank you.
  Collapses into his chair, still holding his cigar and whiskey glass
• Fan Disservice: "The Pool Boy" starts off with a pool boy looking at a blonde girl in red massaging herself and licking her lips seductively at him. Then he takes off his glasses, revealing that he has no eyes, and says "What's goin' on?"
• Fatal Family Photo: Parodied with a unique twist in 5 Second Films's "Girl Back Home". The soldier pulls out the picture of his girlfriend and is instantly shot. By his girlfriend. "I told him I look fat in that picture!".
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Quite a few of these; prominent examples include Vote Responsibly and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it newspaper front page in Meanwhile, In Kansas...
  • In Grown Men Are Talking a sign by the door reads "Animal Clothing Company", which explains the sweatered cat.
• Funeral Cut: In one video, a dumbass teenager (the kind you'd expect to run with scissors) boasts that he'll "live forever", which immediately cuts to a gravestone. It turns out he and his friends are just running around the graveyard.
• Future Loser: Harry Potter: Jaded Washout, depressive Future Fatass, and involved in fantasy football.
• Gag Dub: Ending to a Bad Teen Romantic Comedy.
• Gamebooks: From the episode of the same name:
  "Will you: Lead the galactic rebellion, or Make a sandwich?"
• Gender Bender: Don't cross the streams.
• Gender-Inverted Trope: Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is a Slasher Movie... with a bunch of guys in skimpy outfits having a sleepover and providing Fanservice and a girl as the psychotic killer. It highlights the misogyny that the genre has often been accused of.
• Genuine Human Hide: First Date Jitters.
  Kelsey: I had a really great time tonight, but uhm... are your walls made of skin?
  Brian: ...Yes.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: At the end of Fortune Cookies.
• Groin Attack: The result of a crabwalker meeting a highkicker.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: A Message From the Future.
  This, in turn, led to a very testy argument between Ben and Peter that only got angrier and loudier and gunnier, until Peter shot his gun in self-defense. The cops came almost as fast as the fire trucks. Unsure of where to hide his murder weapon in a house full of suspicious bric-a-brac, Peter realized he wasn't limited to just Where, but When. Knowing he shouldn't disrupt the time-space continuum too much, he bought himself a few minutes time by zipping back to just before he and Ben got in that argument, gun in hand. This, in turn, led to a very testy argument between Ben and Peter that only got angrier and loudier and gunnier, until Peter shot his gun in self-defense.
• Guy on Guy Is Hot: At the end of What Girls Do In There.
• Halloween Episode: The videos coming out around Halloween are typically Horror-themed.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Kelsey, according to Kelsey's Maternal Instincts.
• Hearing Voices: This is the audio gag in the sixth consecutive Ending to a Bad Teen Romantic Comedy.
  Kill her. Kill her. Jesus Christ. Kill them all.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": Cockpit.
  • HAHA COCK 200 DEAD
  • The description reveals Serial Escalation: it turns out that this very trope is the cause of several grievous injuries and fatalities.
• Hollywood Atheist: Parodied in The Artist spoof "The Atheist", in which the main character declares that there is no God after his dog dies and is immediately overtaken by nihilistic despair.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Never Switch a Switcher.
• Idea Bulb: Exploited in Resourcefulness, where the lightbulb itself is used as an improvised weapon.
• Imagine the Audience Naked: Invoked in Jon Worley Gives a Speech. This turns out to be a bad idea for Worley.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • Stuffed.
  • And in a more mindscrewy way, 3D Food.
• Indian Burial Ground: Apparently, the used car in The Used Car was built on one. It also has a stuck tape.
• Infomercial: Jon Worley hawks some interesting products: Chop-Wow, Flip-a-Baby, and his own... special cleaning services.
• Jackass Genie: Shazaam: The Lazy Genie.
  • Also present in The Changeling.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Parodied in Forgotten Hero. A soldier drops his grenade, and he jumps on it to save the rest of the squad... except he was the only person in the vicinity.
  Soldier 2: Who did he save!?
  Soldier 3: ... Nobody.
• Jump Scare: Untitled has one...by the Nesquik Bunny.
• Killer Rabbit: Meeps? ... MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPS!!!
  • Grants?
• Killer Teddy Bear: In "Secret Admirer", Kelsey finds out that she has a secret admirer who sends her a stuffed teddy bear to sleep with... but it turns out that the bear is in fact the admirer.
• Kill Sat: Death Ray From Space. It doesn't do much.
• "Knock Knock" Joke: In "The Plagiarist", a street mugger accosts various people to steal their jokes. The first guy only has a "Knock, knock"-type joke... unfortunately.
  Robber: Gimme all your jokes!
  Guy: Uh... "knock, knock".
  Robber: [Dramatic Gun Cock] Who's there...?
• Lame Pun Reaction: In "Meatball Sub", the subway train is literally a Meatball bread from Subway, the food chain. Michael Rouselet is appalled at the pun, and decides to leave.
• Late to the Punchline: Brian Finally Gets Mike's Joke.
• Leatherman: The Fabulous Four
• Left the Background Music On: Guaranteed Distraction.
• Le Parkour: In Quick Moves, a guy and his girlfriend are held up by a robber. He then reveals to his relieved girlfriend that he knows parkour, and then uses it to get away himself.
  Robber: What an asshole!
• Little Bit Beastly: In Blind Date and Bringing Home The Bacon
• Logging onto the Fourth Wall: The website seen during "The Reckoning of Cinco de Mayo" was an actual site you could go onto.
• Mad Doctor: The Brilliant Dr. Eye:
  Doctor: "This man is going into shock. Quick, get him ten cc's of-"
  Dr. Eye: "NO! GIVE HIM AIDS!"
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Don't Cross The Streams.
• Mind Screw: Many, but prominent examples include Never Switch a Switcher, The Gift That Keeps on Giving, and Masters of the Viewniverse.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kelsey Gunn and Olivia Taylor Dudley play these roles often.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Dealbreaker Jones".
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Brian Firenzi tends to take on the more unnerving roles.
• Nine out of Ten Doctors Agree: Parodied. "Nine out of ten scientists agree... guns are dangerous." The nine scientists then use their guns to hunt down and kill the tenth one who disagreed.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; there's loads of Brians.
• The One That Got Away: Cynthia Onethat Gotaway, to be precise (Obituary).
• Or Was It a Dream?: Dream Therapy.
• Overly Long Gag: Over a few episodes, called The Gift That Keeps on Giving.
• Overly Long Name: The pianist from Big in Japan is called "BoywhowillonedayplaythepianowithwhatIhopetobeamighty Johnson", his father's name is "Youngboywhoshallharnessthepowerofhisingeniousballsacktocommandeerthesaxophone Johnson" and HIS father is called... Reggie Johnson, "who could fuck a bassoon real good."
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Ceiling-Crawler is able to hide from the authorities by simply crawling on the floor instead.
• Pick Up Babes With Babes: Parodied with a Gender-Inverted Example. Olivia with a baby suddenly gets all the guys to be interested in her, while the usual stereotype is for a man to run for the hills.
• Police Lineup: Played with three times.
• Prison Rape: The punchline of Gettin' Laid. Apparently the fastest way to get laid is to assault a cop and get horizontal with some convicts.
• Private Eye Monologue: The Big Creep, and subverted in The Big Drip.
• Product Placement: The New 911. With a bloodied hand gripping the phone:
  "Thanks for calling 911, brought to you by Budweiser, the king of beers! And Emergency. And Hush Puppies. And-" * thud*
• "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: "The Early Bird Killer", in which the presumably eponymous serial killer comes to kill a girl in the shower. The twist is that she had already been killed by another serial killer, who is currently taking a shower in her place.
• Puff of Logic: Five Second Films gives us an example in the form of a mailman working on the wrong day.
• Punny Name: Invoked (in a rather awesome fashion) in The Ballad of Truck Thunders. Subverted in the video description:
  His brother, always one to try and copy Truck’s genius with wordplay, had his name legally changed to “Ama Pan,” but never found the chance to have his last name spoken first in any setting. Plus, he lost his Halen tape anyway.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Self-Hatred
• Black Comedy Rape: Lampshaded/Parodied in The Plagiarist.
  • WE'RE GONNA GET LAID!!
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: They do compilations.
• Rated M for Manly: Grown Men Are Talking.
• Real Is Brown: It's not WW2. It's HBO.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: One of the actors broke his hand and needed a cast; this became a theme in a few of the films.
• Reality Warper: The Changeling
• Recurring Character: Johnny Quickdeath, Tony & Joey, Officer Sminkle, Elliot ZANDERFLEX! and Renegade Pervert. Maybe the Nesquik bunny.
• Recycled In Space: Inverted; Hipster Spaceship came before Hipster Submarine.
• Ret-Gone: Morning After Pill.
• Retraux: Boss Greedwell's Deathbed Wish, Flarby's Secret Weapon
• Robot Dog: "Robodog, walk."
  bark
• Running Gag: SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. Then shutting up the fuck up for 4/20 and Christmas. Then it dies. And comes back from the grave.
• Russian Reversal: One sketch has a shady man in a white van offering children to candy, who tell him "We're not supposed to take children from strangers!"
• Russian Roulette: I USE SIX BULLETS.
• See You in Hell: Used literally in Woolthorp v. Pendergrast.
  Woolthorp: I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL, PENDERGRAST!
  [Woolthorp and Pendergrast shoot each other]
  Later, in Hell...
  Woolthorp: Pendergrast!
  Pendergrast: Woolthorp!
• Serial Killer:
  • The guy in Post-Interaction Smile Reduction Quantifier turns out to be one based on how much his fake smile recedes.
  • There are two of them in The Early Bird Killer.
  • Dude Bro Party Massacre features a deformed, knife-wielding girl killing a bunch of guys in the vein of a Slasher Movie.
• Shark Man: In Keeping You Safe, a group of friends are attacked by a pack of hyperintelligent shark people. They are saved by Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East.
• Shout-Out: Weird Owl has a random Fight Club homage in the end.
• Skyward Scream: They're a fan of this. See: The Warden's Toupee, "Boarding School", Bowzer, and Dealbreaker Jones:
  "Damn you Dealbreaker Jones, that wasn't part of the DEAAAALLLLL!"
• Slasher Movie: Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is a parody of this sort of film that inverts the typical genders.
• Solid Gold Poop: 24k Golden Labrador. Turns out it's only gold-plated.
• Spiders Are Scary: Inverted; every spider fears Juliette Lewis.
• Spit Take: Morning Read. Multiple spit-takes, no less.
• Stalker with a Crush: Secret Admirer, where the "admirer" is a large, stuffed teddy bear.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Setting the Mood, starring a man with a radio antenna sticking out the top of his head. Lampshaded in the description:
  His favorite band is…wait for it...wait for it...__________________ (guess)
  • The Brilliant Dr. Eye is one as well. ^note My eyes are killing me.
• Stopped Clock: The Broken Clocks sketch is about the titular store, which sells these.
• Stylistic Suck: The Telekats shorts.
• Suicide Dare:
  • The inventor of time travel and his friend/roommate commits suicide after many time travelers arrive in his/their home and convince him to.
  • Ask a Lobster:
  "Hey lobster. How do I make money off the internet?"
  "Oh, oh. Kill yourself."
• Take That!:
  • 5SF seems to take a few potshots at hipsters: see the aforementioned Hipster Submarine and Hipster Spaceship, as well as Hipster Superman:
  "Hi, I'm Hipster Superman. You probably haven't heard of me, I'm pretty obscure."
  • And then there's Everyday Dubstep, which features Paul being cursed by a hipster Sadako. "Before you die, you see the empty scenester hype."
  • Week 151 is "5 Second Films: Special Edition", where the team has taken pot shot after pot shot at George Lucas and his "improvements" of the original Star Wars trilogy, either adding in needless CGI to classic videos, bowlderizing some of the more vulgar ones, or editing them in ways that are completely missing the point and ruining the original joke. Brian looks like George Lucas, sitting in his director's seat the whole time in front of nothing but green screens, and having a constant cup of coffee in his hand, along with a Suspiciously Similar Song version of the Star Wars opening playing after each video, and in the last one they used footage and sound clips from Episode III (Darth Vader's NO! scene)
  • Paul Ryan's Workout Plan for America mocked both you-know-who and "trickle-down economics".
  • The description of The Popular Girl's Graduation Speech explains that, despite the popular girl managing to rise above her teenage pregnancy to a six-figure job, her baby grew up to be a hateful piece of shit, because her mom wouldn't stop listening to late-period Bon Jovi.
  • Buttroxx.com as seen in "The Reckoning of Cinco de Mayo" is a parody of other news sites like Buzzfeed, it gets more obvious if you check out the other categories in the About section.
• Tempting Fate: Subverted in Forever Young.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Brian discovers the horrifying truth in My Grunge Band's Playing at a Coffee Shop: he's actually from the 90s!
• Too Dumb to Live: The Midas Touch, Forgotten Hero, Wrap It Up, and predictably, Johnny Quickdeath.
• Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: Mocked by You Need the Twist-O-Matic
  Anouncer: All hard to open [Beat] if you're retarded.
• Took a Level in Badass: Little Ben: Monster Hunter. The day that Ben saw his father be killed by a monster was when he knew he would grow up into a badass monster hunter with Perma-Stubble.
• The Trickster: The Changeling
• Trigger Phrase: Paul Was In The C.I.A. & The Bluebird Legacy
• Unfortunate Implications: invoked "Chinese New Year". The Asian Girl is wearing a straw hat and speaks with Asian Speekee Engrish and Japanese Ranguage. The guy to her left even notes how racist it is.
• Violence Is Disturbing: A video has a Cat Fight with the two women rolling around scratching at each other as the male onlookers cheer and hoot excitedly. When one of the girls gouges the other's eyes out, they suddenly stop laughing (except one guy).
• Visual Pun: Drafty, The Heart Thief, Engaging The Enemy, and Meatball Sub.
• Vorpal Pillow: Fastest Feathers In The West.
• Vulgar Humor:
  • Jackpot. Also counts as Squick: the sound effect...
  • Gettin' Laid.
  • The fourth installation of Cinco de Mayo.
  • Suggestion Box tells of the dangers that happen to fans of this type of humor.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Parodied in Coming of Age.
  "Eric married that lifeguard. Brian never came back from Vietnam. And Gorlac enslaved us all."
• Wondrous Ladies Room: What Girls Do In There
• World of Ham: Grown Men Are Talking, a take-off on Fifties advertising.
• You Look Familiar: They have only a few actors, but man are they diverse!
• You Monster!: In "Lemons", a sentient lemon accidentally kills another lemon. He decides to process the carcass as lemon juice. This gets said, word-for-word, as the response he gets from the horrified neighbors when the cops arrest him.

---

"Brian, should we take a break from TV Tropes?"

"SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!"

[Mariachi music plays during a Binge Montage]