Re: Season 15 South Park 720p Download
Eilal Pichardo
On August 5, 2021, Comedy Central announced that Parker and Stone signed a $900 million deal for extending the series to 30 seasons through 2027.[14] The deal also included a series of 14 films for Paramount+, which are released twice per year.[15] Parker and Stone later denied that the projects were films, and clarified that it was ViacomCBS (currently Paramount Global) which decided to advertise them as such.[16] Paramount+ advertises the projects as "exclusive events", and they are generally accepted to be television specials.[17][18]
Parker and Stone developed South Park from two animated short films, both titled The Spirit of Christmas, released in 1992 and 1995. The second short became one of the first Internet viral videos, leading to the series' production. The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation; the remainder of the series uses computer animation recalling the prior technique. Since the fourth season, episodes are generally written and produced during the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the lead writer and director.
Since its debut on August 13, 1997, 326 episodes of South Park have been broadcast. It debuted with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied, but it remains one of Comedy Central's longest-running programs. In August 2021, South Park was renewed through 2027, and a series of television specials was announced for Paramount+, the first two of which were released later that year.[2][3] In October 2019, it was announced that WarnerMedia acquired exclusive streaming rights to South Park starting in June 2020 for HBO Max.[4] The series' twenty-sixth season premiered on February 8, 2023.[5]
South Park centers around four boys: Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick. The boys live in the fictional small town of South Park, located within the real-life South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado,[7] approximately a one-hour drive from Denver.[8] The town is also home to an assortment of other characters, including students, families, elementary school staff, and other various residents.[9] Prominent settings include South Park Elementary, various neighborhoods and the surrounding mountain range, actual Colorado landmarks, and the businesses along the town's main street, all of which are based on the appearance of similar locations in Fairplay, Colorado.[7][9] As one of the few television programs set in the Mountain West region that takes place outside the urban core of Denver, South Park frequently features the unique culture of the region, including cattle ranchers, Old West theme parks, snowy climates, mountaineering, Mormons, real-life Colorado locations such as Casa Bonita and Cave of the Winds, and many other regionally specific characteristics.
Stan is portrayed as the everyman of the group,[10] described in official media as an "average, American 4th grader."[11] Kyle is Jewish, and his portrayal as one of the few such people in South Park is often dealt with satirically.[10] Stan is modeled after Parker, while Kyle is modeled after Stone. They are best friends, and their friendship, symbolically intended to reflect Parker and Stone's friendship,[12] is a common topic throughout the series. Cartman (as he is commonly referred to) is amoral and increasingly psychopathic, and is commonly portrayed as an antagonist. His staunch antisemitism has resulted in a progressive rivalry with Kyle.[10][13] Kenny, who comes from a poor family, tightly wears his parka hood to the point where it obscures most of his face and muffles his speech. During the first five seasons, Kenny died in almost every episode before reappearing in the next with no definite explanation. He was killed off in the fifth season episode "Kenny Dies", before being reintroduced in the sixth season finale, "Red Sleigh Down". Since then, Kenny is depicted as dying sporadically. During the first 58 episodes, the children were in the third grade. During the fourth season, they entered the fourth grade, where they have remained ever since.[14][15]
Parker and Stone insist that the show is still more about "kids being kids" and "what it's like to be in [elementary school] in America",[42] stating that the introduction of a more satirical element to the series was the result of the two adding more of a "moral center" to the show so that it would rely less on simply being crude and shocking in an attempt to maintain an audience.[37][38] While profane, Parker notes that there is still an "underlying sweetness" aspect to the child characters,[35] and Time described the boys as "sometimes cruel but with a core of innocence."[12] Usually, the boys or other characters pondered over what transpired during an episode and conveyed the important lesson taken from it with a short monologue. During earlier seasons, this speech commonly began with a variation of the phrase "You know, I've learned something today...".[43]
Except for the pilot episode, which was produced using cutout animation, all episodes of South Park are created with the use of software, primarily Autodesk Maya.[53] As opposed to the pilot, which took three months to complete,[54] and other animated sitcoms, which are traditionally hand-drawn by companies in South Korea in a process that takes roughly eight to nine months,[28][36] individual episodes of South Park take significantly less time to produce. Using computers as an animation method, the show's production staff were able to generate an episode in about three weeks during the first seasons.[55] Now, with a staff of about 70 people, episodes are typically completed in one week,[28][35][36] with some in as little as three to four days.[56][57][58] Nearly the entire production of an episode is accomplished within one set of offices, which were originally at a complex in Westwood, Los Angeles, California and are now part of South Park Studios in Culver City, California.[50][54] Parker and Stone have been the show's executive producers throughout its entire history.[59] Debbie Liebling, who was Senior Vice President of original programming and development for Comedy Central, also served as an executive producer during the show's first five seasons, coordinating the show's production efforts between South Park Studios and Comedy Central's headquarters in New York City.[60][61] During its early stages, finished episodes of South Park were hastily recorded to D-2 to be sent to Comedy Central for airing in just a few days' time.[62] Each episode used to cost $250,000.[63]
Scripts are not written before a season begins.[64] Production of an episode begins on a Thursday, with the show's writing consultants brainstorming with Parker and Stone. Former staff writers include Pam Brady, who has since written scripts for the films Hot Rod, Hamlet 2 and Team America: World Police (with Parker and Stone), and Nancy Pimental, who served as co-host of Win Ben Stein's Money and wrote the film The Sweetest Thing after her tenure with the show during its first three seasons.[65][66] Television producer and writer Norman Lear, an alleged idol of both Parker and Stone, served as a guest writing consultant for the season seven (2003) episodes "Cancelled" and "I'm a Little Bit Country".[64][67][68] During the 12th and 13th seasons, Saturday Night Live actor and writer Bill Hader served as a creative consultant and co-producer.[69][70][71]
Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show.[28] The schedule also allows South Park to both stay more topical and respond more quickly to specific current events than other satiric animated shows.[10][74] One of the earliest examples of this was in the season four (2000) episode "Quintuplets 2000", which references the United States Border Patrol's raid of a house during the Elián González affair, an event which occurred only four days before the episode originally aired.[75] The season nine (2005) episode "Best Friends Forever" references the Terri Schiavo case,[26][35] and originally aired in the midst of the controversy and less than 12 hours before she died.[36][76] A scene in the season seven (2003) finale "It's Christmas in Canada" references the discovery of dictator Saddam Hussein in a "spider hole" and his subsequent capture, which happened a mere three days prior to the episode airing.[77] The season 12 (2008) episode "About Last Night..." revolves around Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, and aired less than 24 hours after Obama was declared the winner, using segments of dialogue from Obama's real victory speech.[78]
On October 16, 2013, the show failed to meet their production deadline for the first time ever, after a power outage on October 15 at the production studio prevented the episode, season 17's "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers", from being finished in time. The episode was rescheduled to air a week later on October 23, 2013.[79]
When the show began using computers, the cardboard cutouts were scanned and re-drawn with CorelDRAW, then imported into PowerAnimator, which was used with SGI workstations to animate the characters.[51][54] The workstations were linked to a 54-processor render farm that could render 10 to 15 shots an hour.[51] Beginning with season five, the animators began using Maya instead of PowerAnimator.[83] As of 2012, the studio ran a 120-processor render farm that can produce 30 or more shots an hour.[51]
PowerAnimator and Maya are high-end programs mainly used for 3D computer graphics, while co-producer and former animation director Eric Stough notes that PowerAnimator was initially chosen because its features helped animators retain the show's "homemade" look.[54] PowerAnimator was also used for making some of the show's visual effects,[54] which are now created using Motion,[51] a newer graphics program created by Apple, Inc. for their Mac OS X operating system. The show's visual quality has improved in recent seasons,[10] though several other techniques are used to intentionally preserve the cheap cutout animation look.[28][55][84]
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