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.

“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!

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….

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….

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.

It should first be noted that the title for this series has changed. The reason, Recovery 1 was already the title of a RvB series of machinima. While this naming was completely harmless in nature with no intention of plagiarizing RvB, as I had seen the series before I felt compeled to change the title. I had a feeling when I named the series that it was a little too easy thinking of the name, but when I did an initial check of the RvB site, I didn’t see any reference to it visible to me, so I went ahead with it. That said the new title was derived before the first episode was released and I hope to move forward with the series as scheduled.

To be honest when I released the promo for this series, I knew I had “borrowed,” one or two ideas from another popular series, but it was primarily because I felt it fit in the joke. The bit in question was something that hadn’t been used in several years, and I thought it was funny enough to reuse….if you don’t like it then you obviously haven’t watched many comedians and other shows who do the same thing with the same storylines over and over, while trying to add their own comedic spin. Machinima to me is Machinima, and while most people would be content to call anything anybody else does after the awesomeness that is RvB and Arby n The Chief stealing from them….they really shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Most Machinima directors need to start somewhere…and most will go with what they know and what they actually enjoy themselves. It takes a while to develop one’s own style. Some things work…some don’t, and to all who continue to blast others video’s with this continuous mantra…if you don’t like it….DON’T WATCH IT. To all who think Machinima has become FAIL or crap….DON’T WATCH IT!

Vote with your feet…er mouse….er browser. Better yet…develop your own story….take your own time and make something you want to watch and submit it to the world. Hopefully you’re successful and re-energize the genre, taking it in a fantastic new direction. If you do…congratulations…you’ve accomplished what all of us are attempting to do….if you don’t perhaps you’ll have a better understanding of what I’m talking about. I myself, as I’ve said before, don’t do this for personal gain. I don’t give out my real name, nor will I for any machinima (If you’re clever enough you know who I am by now anyways). I do this for the pure fun of it, it’s a hobby. To everyone who did enjoy my video and left encouragement thank you very much it was well received…or those who didn’t as well as any constructive criticism that actually made a valid point. Thanks again for watching, I hope to continue to produce stuff that you’ll enjoy.

Ok, rant over…now it begins. Act 2, Season 2, Time Waste 2….whatever you call it, it has released today, and I do hope you enjoy it.

Anyways, I primarily made this promo, to get back into the swing of things and to get everyone (hopefully) back in the machinima/tango squad mood….if they were to begin with. Yeah……anyways I hope you enjoy. The second act of Tango Squad, Recovery “Team”, officially premieres in February. I hope to have at least one “thing” a month to release so that you don’t get too bored with me.

Anyways, Enjoy! I’ll update the link when it hit’s the web. Till next time……..

EDIT: I’ve been told that the promo will finally be up tomorrow. If you’ve been paying attention the folks at Machinima.com have been swamped all week with tons of video’s from the holiday rush. Again, I’ll update the links when it’s live.

EDIT 2: It’s finally up…check it out here.

Edit 3: FYI I’ve changed the act’s title. More on that when I release Episode 1. Till then….

Man….the things to do at the beginning of a year.
So much time and so little to do….wait, strike that reverse it…thank you!

The Glue:
Welcome to 2010, the first release of the year is fast approaching and with self imposed deadlines in place, I’m working as effectively as I can to make sure that the 2010 season starts off on schedule. With all the goings on recently, it’s been rather hard to get a fair bit of work done for MYP, but now that I have clear time in my schedule, I’m moving forward steadily. As such, I thought I would highlight a few cool bits as my final behind the scenes piece and for the start of the 2010 season.

First, I thought I’d give you a small update on my new production space. As I mentioned previously, I’ve moved to a new residence and a major side benefit of this new residence is the fact that there are spare rooms for use as exclusive studio space, and sound stage space. While I may not be using said sound stage space at present, I do have plans for it in the near future. In the meantime, however, I’ve moved into and finished setting up my studio space, and am hard at work producing new shorts for the 2010 season. I’m a little behind at present, but I thought I’d still give you a little glimpse at the new digs and a few new materials that I’ve obtained in this transition. Do enjoy the pictures, but note that some of the production studio is still under construction.

I mentioned previously that I’d gotten some new toys during the holidays…and these new toys were currently in use for production purposes. While producing Tango Squad last year, I noted that the vocal quality I was getting out of my dubbing was quite below bar for what I wanted. At the time I used it because there was no time to properly research and obtain something else, but during the hiatus I made the time and decided to invest in an item that will likely be used not only for dubbing sessions, but also quite possibly for on-location shoots, as well as a couple of new ideas I have coming down the pipe. I selected the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder by Zoom as pictured (Luckily, this product had just had a price drop). It features 24-bit/96 kHz linear PCM recording in WAV format, and, while not only having on board audio direction mikes it has the ability to plug in XLR and 1/4″ input jacks, allowing it to function as a portable recording studio should one have the need for such things (I may eventually). Having used it now for several long dubbing sessions I can comfortably say that it is a vast improvement, and you can all look forward to improved vocal clarity in the upcoming episodes.

We continue on a tour of my new holiday toys with the item that most plagued me during production during the last year. Now you may ask yourself, what else could he say, well I would pose the question back to you, what are the two things a filmmaker must have in order for his story to be shown without distraction. Good audio (including the score and dubbing) and good video. Anything that is lower quality immediately takes your audience out of the experience. Because of this during the hiatus, I sought to improve the video quality to the best it could possibly be, and keep my budget in a reasonable range to not go broke. After reading several reviews, I decided on the Blackmagic Intensity Pro (Which had also just conveniently come down in price). The Intensity Pro fully supports NTSC, PAL and HD video via HDMI, component, composite or S-Video inputs. It also supports Adobe Premiere CS4 for capture and integration, which I currently use to edit. I’ve also read that it supports Final Cut, as well as several other video apps. After installation, it worked like a dream, the capture quality was MUCH better, as I began capturing at 1080i from my 360 and was able to get some really quality footage. It should be noted though, that it did cause a major hair pulling out event last night, as when I went back to mess with the footage in the time line, the audio captured wouldn’t playback through my built in video card. After several hours of research and fiddling, I was finally able to figure out that the problem lied with the edit sequence within Premiere and when switched to another HD sequence all audio worked properly, so disaster averted. All in all, I’m VERY pleased with the new toys and will be pushing them hard to get the 2010 episodes out on time.

Now that you’ve seen a glimpse of my new digs, onto the more pressing matters, like actually producing something with these new resources for 2010. I’m pleased to say that I have, what I hope, is a fun lineup for 2010. I’ve tossed an turned a few times, trying to decide the actual order of release for the two series in question, whether to release them concurrently, the new one first, etc. I’ve finally decided on a set lineup for the year, which I will effectively announce when I release the promo later in the month. I do hope you enjoy. I again must apologize for leaving everyone in a lurch during the last half of 2009. My poor planning left me with nothing and forced me to go on hiatus while I plotted my 2010 season. Hopefully, 2010 should streamline itself into 2011 and we won’t have this problem again (assuming I don’t get writers block).

Well, that’s it kiddies. This should be the last production update you receive until I’m actually ready to release something this year. That’s not to say I won’t give small tidbit updates via twitter (I still say that twitter is useful, if not used over obsessively, for getting quick news blurbs out when you don’t want to write a whole article), so if you want to stay apprised of all the current goings on, you can check the twitter feed on the front page to the right of the glue here, or if you’re really OCD, you can subscribe to my twitter account and follow all the quick ramblings from there. Anyways see all of you on the other side of the new year.

Till next time…

Not to get you to involved in my life, but I’ve been hinting at a major development that effects MYP and me, and today I can reveal that, yes, it is a new place. What does this mean for MYP? It means that MYP gets it’s own studio space, FINALLY!!!. Plus, there’s even a little extra room for a sound stage in case I need it. I may shoot some more pics later once things settle down, and it may end up resulting in some new film shorts. For now, I’m ecstatic and just trying to settle down after the move. I may end up having to beg for forgiveness if I delay the Machinima release because of production delays, but I am doing my best.

Anyways, just thought I’d announce the new location. Production is still running ok…I’m going to be taking a large bulk of time here in a week and won’t be stopping production till it’s really done (Aside from…you know celebrating Christmas). I’m still re-cabling and setting things up correctly to make sure I’m ready to roll forward, but it should be pretty cool.

As far as removing my old work from the web, I will be doing that before the end of the year, so again if you want to watch it one more time…now’s your chance. I should have more of an update before the end of the year, so stay tuned.

The Glue:
Wow things sure are slow on the site, but that’s to be expected when I won’t have anything to show till the new season.  There hasn’t been too much to write or twitter lately because of various reasons (school being one of them). For now I thought I would post a little something to show that I am not dead (rather you could consider my absence a brief “hiatus”), in fact I am very much working for next year.

I know that anyone who still checks this site, or my YouTube page is probably actually concerned when I’ll release something new and is still interested in what I’m doing. To those of you whom this applies to, “Thank You.” I don’t expect everyone to share this view. I know as well as anyone, that in the current climate of internet popularity (which I’m still sure I’ve never had), you’re only as good as your next project. With that I’d like to first say that I am indeed working on a couple of projects that I intend to start releasing starting in January (somewhere in there).  And after a long break from my last release, I hope to be able to produce a steady stream of decent content with only a few minor hiccups along the way. That being said, I thought I’d take a bit of time to give you a bit of behind the scenes content of what’s happening with MYP.

The 2010 season for MYP, I’m happy to let slip, will be featuring the second act to my first machinima series: Tango Squad. I tinkered around with the thought of leaving this as a brief introductory series to introduce myself to machinima and work on technique. While I did learn a lot, during my brainstorming, I was able to develop a whole series of stories that span at least three acts. The first of these, act one, was guard duty. It was simple, and I tried to do several things with it, humor and serious wise. Act 2 will feature Tango Squad as they continue where we left them last…trying to recover the item they were guarding. I can’t promise that it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but I’m rather proud of where I’m taking the series as a whole, and hope that people will enjoy it. Act 3, is tentatively scheduled for 2011 and will be the finale of the series. I may do a one shot here or there based on it, but otherwise, that’s all I have planned for Tango Squad.

But wait, the fun doesn’t stop there. While Tango Squad was being released, I noticed that several of the comments, yes I read them occasionally (even if they are discouraging at times *shrugs*), were very disappointed that the machinima was “just another Halo Machinima” or simply stated, “why can’t there be machinima from another game, Halo’s been done to death?” I thought about this for a while, and soon after wards scrapped a Halo script that I had been writing (and wasn’t too happy with) and started working on something else. As such, I am also developing yet another machinima that is not made from the Halo 3 engine, that I hope the masses will enjoy. I don’t want to say what it is just yet, but hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the bulk of my released work next year is going to be Machinima. No particular reason why, except that it’s the medium I’ve chosen to work in for a bit while I let a few other ideas stew and work on others that will take a bit longer than normal to produce. As you can see, now that I’ve gotten the scripting done, I have to actually shoot the game play prior to editing (side note: yes I know I don’t show my face in shots…there’s a reason for this, though I suppose if you’re relatively clever you can deduce who I am and what I look like). During that time I usually record the voice work and then proceed to primary editing. It does take a bit of time, but it’s usually worth it in the end. While it is only a standard procedure for most productions and I suppose if there is enough interest I’ll elaborate further. Though if you’re truly interested in how this is done in further detail, or just want more pointers, might I recommend digitalph33rs guide to making machinima? It’s fairly straightforward and offers several good tips for your machinima work.

Being on “Hiatus” has given me a little more time to think and work on what I hope will be an excellent season for MYP. Truthfully the hiatus was only necessary due to poor planning on my part, but with every problem one experiences, one also learns. As you can see, there is some work being done and I should have more to say on the subject soon. To everyone who is still staying with me during this “hiatus” I want to assure you that I am working very hard to ensure that I won’t need to go on Hiatus again for quite a while. Anyways, I’ll try to post more if I have some time or there is enough interest, but either way you should expect the next major announcement to be the 2010 Season starting, and a few promos being released *crosses his fingers*.

Till next time…..