Marooned: Delays Unleashed

That's right. The force isn't the only thing unleashed this time around (though the unleashing of the force has had it's contribution to the unleashing of delays, respectively). We're almost done, there have just been a few set backs, and they keep piling up. My new goal is Wednesday. I'm hoping to have it all done by Wednesday. You should be glad that Fable 2 and Fallout 3 aren't coming out sooner, 'cause man, we'd have more delays if that were the case. It's gonna be a busy Fall, that's for sure. I had 4 games on pre-order, 3 now, and still just a few episodes to go before the finale, and then it'll be like 5 months before we post new episodes.

Next up, recording! I just wish we had a pair of small-diaphragm condenser mics, though. Monday, if all goes well, we're going to be going into the studio (aka my living room) for our "credits song." Sadly, all we have are dynamic mics, which are good for vocals, guitars, and drums, but not cymbals. The highs don't come through as clear. It'll sound ok, but I'm really picky about this stuff. Either way, I'm excited to get this thing recorded and hear a semi-polished recording of it. Then I'll need to redo the guitars, since the existing track is pretty sloppy, but still on beat, which is all that matters for a scratch track. I still want to go in and add at least some ambient guitars in some parts, just to make it a little more interesting. KISS (keep it simple, stupid) only works so far. I like the technical aspect of things. Anyway. I think that's it. I'm gonna go find that black lightsaber. God bless!

-PLAYLIST-

Underoath - Lost in the Sound of Separation
Norma Jean - Antimother
Beloved - Failure On
As Cities Burn - Come Now Sleep

GRAAAAH!

You will understand what that means soon enough. :-) We've got all the voices done in 9, just a matter of acting out the scenes in the game. A vast improvement, in my opinion, from the original version. We're pretty stoked to see the final episode. The season finale is coming up, also, and we're even more stoked to get the last few episodes done and get started on the second season. It will be grand, I say!

This isn't an official announcement or anything, but we're looking to start up a second series here. The format is in the works, but we've at least got a starter idea for now. I'm not going to release any details as of now, but I will say that (as far as I know) no one will be able to say we're ripping anyone else off, and that it won't be in Halo or remotely Halo related. That's about all I got. Just a quick blurb. And I realize that my playlist doesn't have a lot of variation, but that's ok. I'm gonna post it anyway.

-PLAYLIST-

Underoath - Lost in the Sound of Separation
Norma Jean - Antimother
Hillsong United - All of the Above

The Results are In: He's Dead Jim!(?)

So I did a test today, not quite as extensive as I plan to. I captured about 30 seconds in Gears of War (I hadn't played it before and thought I might as well try it out, since I loaned someone else my copy of Halo 3--hopefully not to my regret--and decided I don't like Gears of War), one on composite video and one on s-video. Again, it wasn't a very extensive test, but from what I could tell, the difference was minimal at best. Right now, I'm trying to decide whether I want to bother going to an HD capture card/device, or just a get a better quality SD device. It's hard to say. Going to HD really would be for my own personal purposes, since there really isn't a website that allows HD to be uploaded. I think Vimeo kind of does, but as I don't really have any HD footage to test, it's a moot point right now.

Episode 9 looks to be the last episode (hopefully) edited in Avid Liquid, as I'm going to make the switch to Adobe Premier Pro CS3 afterwards, maybe. I might just wait for Season 2 just to get familiar with it (since all the episodes from here on out will probably take a while, it probably won't matter that much either way). Machinima.com finally got around to posting episodes 6-8 on their You Tube channel, which is nice since now we get our several thousand views per episode again. Anyway, that's it for now. Blah blah.

Deleted Scenes

So we've got our first draft ready of 9, but we've made the decision that it's a little too uneventful, at least for the first chunk. Therefore we are revamping some of that, giving private Gregory a bit more face time ... sort of. The man who's died 3 times is making a come back, but to what end? You shall see!

Other than that, I'm doing an experiment (which cost me roughly $17.00), to see if an S-Video cable will make that much of a difference over composite (which is what I've been using up to this point). Supposedly, the color separation is better, as well as the widescreen resolution. Composite, from my understanding, can only do 640x480 interlaced (aka 480i), a 4:3 resolution, but can do 16:9 if it's stretched. Thus, the horizontal resolution would be a bit pixelated and rough. S-Video, on the other hand, is supposed to do full 16:9 aspect ratio, meaning instead of 640x480, it's 854x480 (or possibly 720x480, and I'm too lazy to do the math, but I'm going to assume that it's 16:10, but I could be wrong about that). Anyway, I have yet to test if S-Video will actually look better when captured, but I'll probably be using it next time around. So yeah. I'm sure I've just bored all zero people who have just read this (so technically, I haven't bored anyone and everyone who's read this is interested!). That's it.

-THE PLAYLIST OF DESTINY (and not fate)-

Underoath - Lost in the Sound of Separation
Thrice - Vheissu
Oh, Sleeper - When I Am God

Goin' Streaking

So we seem to have had a streak of crap this last week and a half, making 9 that much further off. First, my 360 died, then one of our actors got sick, then Ryan (also one of our voices) had some problems with his neck for a couple days, making him pretty much stuck at home, and in the midst of that I got sick (not that I had any lines, but it made me tired enough to not bother working on anything). As far as I can tell, things are looking up, though. I got my box to send my Xbox off to Microsoft today, and if I can figure out the weird foam stuff, I'll ship it out to them tomorrow. Plus, Underoath's new album, Lost in the Sound of Separation, came out a couple days ago, and it's rad, and everyone should buy it.
Episode 9 is already to be edited and captured (ie it's all filmed), so we're anywhere from 5-7 days away from completion (depending on circumstances, once again). No major updates, just that it's on its way and will be here within a week. Anyway, that's my shpeal for the day. God bless!

-SR. EL PLAYLISTO-

Underoath - Lost in the Sound of Separation