Mithrandiryod Productions

The Glue:
Just wanted to let you guys officially know, if you keep up with this page, that TS: RT: Episode 1 is now available on the net. I began writing for this season back during my hiatus in the fall, and it’s taken a bit of doing, but we’re finally back on track for the next act of Tango Squad. Recovery Team, is the middle part of the Tango Squad saga, and while it may not necessarily be an actual saga, being that the first two acts comprised 6 episodes each, I’m doing my best to set up the big final act for next season. I do hope you enjoy the little bits I put into the story and don’t get too bogged down on what you think or don’t think somebody may have done first.

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.

admin MYP 2010 Season Bungie, Halo, Machinima, Microsoft, Red vs Blue, Tango Squad, XBOX 360

The Glue:
Finally……after all this time, it’s good to finally release something. As you may have already realized the first release of the year is the promo for TS Recovery “Team”. Normally I would think this is sort of a cop out, however I tried to put a little more thought into this, and…not to tip my hand, but there may be a bit more story to tell here…..possibly maybe later in the year (but you didn’t hear that from me).

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….

admin MYP 2010 Season Bungie, Halo, Machinima, MYP, Tango Squad

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…

admin MYP 2010 Season, The Glue Machinima, MYP, Tango Squad

The Glue:

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.

admin The Glue Halo, Machinima, MYP, Studio, Tango Squad, XBOX

We’re working on it we’re working on it….

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…..

admin The Glue MYP, Production, The Glue, XBOX 360