Mithrandiryod Productions

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

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

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