and ohhh the adventure continues…
The Glue:
I thought I’d take a little time to explain a little of my thought process regarding my recent push to Live action as well as what the future of MYP may or may not be. Working on any Live action film or short is something that really fell to the wayside for me over the past year or two (or three if memory serves me) and only just VERY recently has it come back to the forefront of my mind. Every since I stopped producing video’s for an old group that I worked with, I gradually moved away from live action, and into something that was more feasible for me to work with in my present situation. When it came down to it I had several reasons why I went almost exclusively Machinima. (Not all of them good I’m sure)
- I work…and work necessitates that priorities be allocated to it for the majority of my time.
- I still go to school…it’s grad school, but that still soaks up a good portion of my time during the year. (I’d like to finish eventually you know)
- The friends I have…have lives, and can’t always be used in what I work on if their schedules won’t allow for it. Seeing as…
- Live Action requires so much more work and time dedication, with scheduling, setting up equipment, and other unforeseen items that vary depending on the story you’re trying to tell. Machinima only requires that I have the hardware components of a Gamer and Editor. It’s like the producers wet dream, especially if it can be successful in telling similar stories.
None of these arguments haven’t been used in the past…and I’ll be the first to admit, Yes, it’s lazy. But I decided that it was the best thing for me at the time. In a way it still is, but I recently came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t just exclusively rely on it. That’s why I hit myself on the head when I became very unhappy with the direction my series was taking from earlier writing. I had been noticing for quite a while an interesting trend with machinima…even without being a part of it’s community for very long.
- It’s Limited: Yes, there are some game engines that are great for building and filming great machinima…but that’s just it…everyone and their dog is doing it now (I mean look at me).
- Everything is apparently a re-hash: There’s a lot of argument among the machinima diehards regarding what makes a machinima good…and that most everyone is simply copying someone else…even if the story is completely different…if one element is used it’s apparently full on theft and the directory should be bashed for it…though truthfully they’d probably bash even if it wasn’t as not everyone likes the same things (great thing about freewill and tastes).
- Filming generally game play and making commentary is becoming the primary source for most views as most viewers apparently don’t wish to appreciate the hard work put into many of the video’s made. The reasoning for this is logical as game play video’s will get more exposure because they are much easier to make, and there are a crap load of them.
- It’s becoming quite stale…in most respects unless you already have a tried and true formula that fans like…and even that becomes stale after a while.
Now, I know this is a large complaint…and I’ve always said that I make videos because I feel like it and for the viewers…but it does end up wearing on you after a while. I mean just pop on to any machinima message board and they’ll start complaining about the politics of the whole thing. That’s one thing I can’t really stand too much of…talking politics. It’s good every so often…but it gives me a headache and I’d rather put my time to other more constructive uses.
Because of all this, I decided to take a break from it all to rehash the script. When I did, I remembered how much fun it was to actually work on live action film. It was then that I started to write and brainstorm a new idea. I worked through it for quite a bit and finally started the planning and production. I found that it was fun…and that I missed it. that’s why I decided that…I will now be focusing more on live action shorts for now. I will also be experimenting with other types of visual effects and churning out a few new things as they become of interest to me. This will allow me to hone my skills further and to continue to tell the stories that I want to tell. Hopefully, I’ll have time for it all..but that’s what’s great about this…I want to and now can fully take my time to do things the right way and give the quality I want to give. As these live action shorts are not Machinima, they will not be seen via distribution on Machinima.com. Instead I’m independently releasing it in my own channel and various other outlets (VEOH) to give it more exposure. I still may do machinima…but it will likely be very rare..and will probably focus on finishing up the story I started with Tango Squad.
I do hope I’ve piqued your interest enough to give it a chance. But most of all I do hope that you enjoy. I’ll let you know when I have more, in the meantime check twitter on the right…it’ll let you know more till I have an actual official announcement to make.
admin MYP 2010 Season Film, Live, Machinima, mithrandiryod, Production
“I can tell you….running in 100 degree heat in a suit…..sucks!”
The Glue:
This may come as a shock to some people, but I do have a private life (*GASP* no way!). Sometimes a private life can interfere and take time away from what you love to do to do what you need to do. Namely a job or a family can seriously hamper any time you are able to put into your hobbies (But I’m of course preaching to the choir for a lot of people). Case in point however, my life. Recently several things occurred that forced me to take a step back (sorta a combination of work, me not liking where my current series was going, wanting to re-write the said series, and…oh….personal matters). Needless to say I took some time away to re-assess and get my feet back under me. I also needed to decide what I wanted to do, both with my hobby and with my personal life.
Now you may ask yourself, “wait a minute…weren’t you working on some super secret project or something that you’ve been leading us on about?” In fact, I have. Recently I decided to ask the woman of my dreams to put up with me for…oh the rest of our lives making our relationship the indefinite kind (For those of you not following, it means that I decided to ask someone to marry me). But how to actually propose? This was a question I had pondered for quite a while. I started developing all sorts of schemes, started trying various means to figure out what would be the perfect way for me to ask while still staying true to myself and not doing something overdone by so many others. The answer came to me while I was bored and writing. I decided that I’d write a live action short and ask her to marry me in it. Kinda corny I know…but I like the idea, plus it let me get back into the swing of live action shorts…which I’ve come to think is better suited for me anyways…but more on that later in another post.
Now something you should know about my bride to be, she loves the eighties…and well…originally I wrote the short to be a movie trailer spoof. Eventually due to casting issues, and a few other misgivings on what I was doing, I decided to scrap the original idea and went back to the drawing board (though I may revisit it later), re-writing the entire thing. It ended up as a minor spoof of a quite popular eighties movie that was one of my childhood favorites (and I’m sure many of yours). It may not be entirely original…but I like it and I believe it served it’s purpose as Sera (I’m using her handle just as I use mine, though again I’m sure if you’re relatively clever you know who she is) loved it and said YES…we’re currently planning our wedding for a later date.
Therefore, I am now releasing this officially (You Can Find the Link to the Right)….as it is now no longer just the secret project…it’s the project that will likely change my whole life forever….though we’ll see how that all goes. I do hope you enjoy, it has been a while!
admin MYP 2010 Season Back to the Future, Life, Marriage, Proposal
The Glue:
Just FYI…it’s going to be a while, before I have something new to release, so take that into account. So far…the Hiatus continues. I’ve been using the time to re-write a few things, as well as start some planning on some newer projects. If you’ve been following my mini updates (twitter) you know that I’ve also been doing some work on a pro-bono project, that I felt was a decent change of pace from my normal production schedule.
Speaking of production schedules…I don’t have one…not right now at least. I have several ideas going, but to be honest, only two strikes me as any good, and I’m pursuing them currently (Only in the planning and testing stages mind you). Recently I’ve started thinking, especially after watching a few pieces that were absolutely inspiring, that I’m not where I currently want to be in my work. True, I have some elements that I do like…but it’s not as interesting as it was. I want to continue to grow, to expand my skills and to create things that I truly am proud of. Tango Squad, for all I’m unhappy with, is honestly a good story in my mind. Granted it may have borrowed a little heavily from my influences…but for being my first real work it was good experience. I do plan to finish it, but with what’s currently going on in my life (creatively and socially), I’m going to give it a bit of space and make sure I’m truly happy with it before I finish it. I know I’ve said this over and over, I just felt I needed to say it again.
That’s not to say you won’t see something new from me in the near future, but I’m going to scale back releases for items that I’m truly happy with and try to spend more time with each individual project to make it something that doesn’t fail completely. For those of you who’ve followed me up until now I thank you for your continued support, and feel bad for asking you to wait even longer…I understand if you don’t really want to.
Anyways that’s it…I won’t be posting again till I have something more to say, release, or announce. As always for little bitty updates you can follow me on Twitter ——————)
Till next time….
admin MYP 2010 Season Production, Tango Squad
The Glue:
Ok, this is to let you know that episode 2 has officially released and is available on the net. You can find the link in the sidebar to the right. Now that that is finished, the series is officially on hiatus until I can fix this script. I’ve made a bit of progress on it, but I’m not happy with releasing it yet. Hopefully the hiatus won’t last too long.
I had some time to reflect since I decided on the hiatus (man I take a lot of these), and thought it might be useful to work on a few different projects for now. In the meantime, I’ve written a few other things that I hope to release in the coming months in Tango Squads place. It’ll be slow going, because what I’ve written involves a lot of new work and tweaking to make it right. Hopefully it won’t take me too long and I’ll have something quality soon. For those of you mourning the demise of TS fear not. Tango Squad will return one day, but not till I’m happy with it.
Anyways, for what it’s worth, I hope you enjoy Episode 2: Custom Features. It may be the last one for a little while….
admin MYP 2010 Season Bungie, Halo, Machinima, Recovery Team, Tango Squad
The Glue:
Ugh…I know you’re going to hate me for this…or maybe not who knows. I’ve officially decided that as of now Tango Squad as a series is on Hiatus. I’ve already finished episode 2…as sucky as it is, so I’ll go ahead an release that, but afterward the hiatus goes into effect. I’m really starting to not like the direction that I initially wrote. It’s gotten to where it’s really painful for me to produce, as I wrote these episodes at least half a year ago and thought they were funny then…not so much anymore. It really has been fun to learn from this machinima (at least initially), but for the time being it must go away as it is sucking my will to live, as well as any creativity that I may have at the present time. In truth, it may or may not be a long hiatus (I don’t like to leave things unfinished forever), but you should know that I won’t be bringing it back until I’m absolutely happy with the story as it should be. That means that I’ll likely be re-writing the rest of the act and re-tooling everything preparing for act 3 when I hope to do the series true justice. What that means for you the viewer is that when I do bring it back, it will, hopefully, be much more cohesive and better written. But more on that later when I have more time to talk about it. Until then I have a few other things coming down the pipe soon to take its place for a while. But for now I’m going to take a break for a couple of months and make sure that I’m happy with a few one shots and possibly a new series that I’m doing. Hope you’ve enjoyed, but for now I’m going to shelve it and come back to it later!
Stay tuned though, I should have something new in the coming months (and I mean new as in not Halo related if I can work it).
FYI: Don’t message or e-mail me complaining about or trying to stop me from doing this. My minds made up. If it’s honestly not up to my standard I’m not going to release it.
admin MYP 2010 Season Bungie, Halo, Hiatus, Machinima, Recovery Team, Tango Squad
