A few things. I had a FANTASTIC time at Farpoint Convention in Baltimore. I was so busy I only got to throw one snowball, but after being used to the giant cons like Comicon and Dragoncon, it was so fun meeting people in a smaller, more relaxed convention environment. I was so impressed, the organizers were stupendously welcoming, and I loved the fact that so many people had their kids involved in the convention. I also go to meet@osiramon, one of the Guild’s “Rejected Guild Applicants” from last season, which was a treat. Here we are at lunch:
Anyway, wonderful experience, I had a blast!
Biggest news in a while: Guild Season 3 DVD is out through Amazon CreateSpace today!
We added a lot of extra stuff to the DVD this season, it’s on 2 disks! It includes:
All the Season 3 episodes with “Play All” feature
2 commentary tracks
“Avatar” Video
BTS of “Avatar” Video, and cosplay segment on “How to Make Vork’s Sword”
“Axis of Anarchy” Interviews
“Rejected Guild Member” applications
And lots more!
It is Region-free and has optional English subtitling.
ALSO! You can order all the seasons in HD through AMAZON VOD for $6.99. Another way you can stream and enjoy the episodes. Please spread the word, we really appreciate it!!
And lastly, as a bonus to the DVD release,@GregAranowitz, the creator of the “Avatar” video weapons, filmed a “How to” video with ME in his studio on making Codex’s staff for his blog! It’s in three parts, the first part is up on his blog. You will quickly see I am not construction gifted, haha.
Well, what to say. I guess I’m surprised that director Sean Becker and DP John Schmidt survived this shoot. It was pretty insane to accomplish coverage of such complicated stuff and make sure it edited together properly and was fast and funny. In two days. They did an amazing job due to impeccable planning and storyboarding. We were lucky to have the local LA Zune House (a party location) to shoot in! Kim and I had attended a few parties there and thought “Wow, that’s a cool coincidence, can we pull some strings and not shoot in a janky cheap warehouse?!” Thank you all the Microsoft people it took to arrange it. Pretty much the best location to shoot at EVER since there was SOOOO much room. Production value through the nose that we couldn’t have accomplished any other way on our budget.
So the episodes. Two Guilds. Fifteen Actors. 20 Extras. What a nightmare, who thought of this storyline anyway?!?! Well, for episode 11 it is the finest frenzy we’ve ever done. I was determined to give everyone a grace note in one of these episodes, and I think everyone got wrapped up pretty well. There were, frankly, too many storylines going on this season, but out of necessity I made them work, because I couldn’t think of any other way to do the season. I think for season 4 there will be a more streamlined story on my writing part, but due to the chaotic nature of this season’s storyline I’m really happy with how it turned out.
An aside: I know when the episode goes up on any World of Warcraft site the main comment will be, “A PRIEST survives 2 on one with DPS characters?!? STUPID!” Well, whatever. Artistic license and this isn’t WOW. I always picture Codex running and hiding, and then stunning Tink and Fawkes a lot. I feel like she’d be good at evasion as a player.
It was a joke with me and Sean when I was writing the season, “What’s gonna be the Special Effect Shot in episode 12?” Well, I hadn’t planned one, but just because he was joking around I came up with the Codex/Cyd conversation. And I like it so much. They say you never change unless YOU want to change, and to get Cyd to grow a spine she looks inside herself. Or inside her monitor. Because, at heart, I believe we are a piece of our avatars online, whether actual or aspirational. Ok, I’ll stop being semi-deep now. Another reason was the costumes were expensive and it was another reason to use mine, LOL.
In episode 12 I also love…*SPOILER*
…the arc of Wil’s character and mine culminating into the season cliffhanger. When I wrote that down I giggled with GLEE. And coincidentally it was the first scene we shot, with a skeleton crew to prevent anyone knowing what would happen. Well, we always have a skeleton crew, but whatever. I wanted to keep it a big surprise. When I was planning the season I wanted to avoid a romance arc for Codex since she already did that with the stunt guy last season. I kept wanting to hook these two up though, I didn’t massage it to happen, I wrote it because it made sense. Every time I read the script through that transition from Zaboo and me to that last scene made me laugh. I’m so excited to see people reacting the same way! When I rewote the season (the MANY times) I kept trying to sprinkle sexual tension between them, but make it very subtle and not a give-away.
Another scene that I like is the Riley/Venom kiss. The line, “That’s a hell of a long kiss,” was so lame but made me and Sean laugh a lot, so we kept it in. Script-wise I originally planned that Riley grabbed and kissed ME, but as I was writing I felt like Riley’s nature and Venom’s nature would suit each other. I could see these two having a good relationship actually. Well, “good” is widely interpretable. Above all I wanted Zaboo to step up and get HIMSELF out of the mess of this relationship. I didn’t want Codex saving him, and I wanted that moment before Fawkes steps in between them at the very end to have a sense of possibility, because they’ve grown alone they might be able to be actual friends together. Oops.
What else, the cool conversation between Bruiser and Bladezz, Clara being pregnant, Zaboo’s hashtag #sweetburns, there are so many moments that we had so much fun with. All in all I’m so proud of the season, I feel like we stepped it up on every level. Our cast and crew this season were fantastic, thank you each and every one. And thanks to you guys for watching and commenting. It’s what we do this stuff for.
We have lots of DVD extras that are being processed now, S3 DVD to be early next year. I’m working on the comic (the art is looking AMAZING, so exciting) and hopefully I’ll have time for more blogging about non-Guild stuff for a bit. I know I need a bit of a creative break because I’ve been downloading history books of World War I and enrolling in trapeze classes. I guess the strange stuff I do to shake my creative boredom can only go to more inspiration!
Sorry this is quite late, I have been working straight for 2 weeks now almost, so my life got thrown into turmoil and I lost track of a LOT of stuff Cool thing is, I’ll be on an episode of Three Rivers and Lie to Me sometime in December (the 14th for Lie to Me, waiting on firm confirmation of that.) Really nice to have a job, and two back to back is a total record for me! I’ll do a blog entry dedicated to these jobs and my experiences when they air, so look out for it!
<br/><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=4995fdbf-3463-4810-a2f4-b8853c006fb1');" href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=4995fdbf-3463-4810-a2f4-b8853c006fb1" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 10: The Return!">Video: Season 3 – Episode 10: The Return!</a>
What can I say about these episodes? I love them! They’re really the best ones of the season, everything has built up in a way that leads to the very bottom and the very height of the Guild this season. I know people were getting impatient about the Knights of Good fighting back, so when Codex and Zaboo track down Valkerie and p’own him, it’s pretty damned satisfying. Hopefully for you too
For Episode 9 we have the highlight for me: the last, great scene in the office, OUTSIDE WORLD! Actually, last season Sandeep (Zaboo) pitched me the idea of Vork and Zaboo torturing someone by deleting his or her armor one piece at a time. It’s a pretty traumatic event for a gamer, those pieces are HARD EARNED! I didn’t find a place for it season 2, but for season 3, with revenge a theme, it was perfect. When I first did a draft of the script, I actually had Codex in on it, going crazy and deleting the character’s armor. But I backed away from that because I didn’t want her to violate her character so much, and with Riley’s treatment of Zaboo, it fell into place that his vengeance would get out of control as a repressed reaction to her treatment. @mikerose is one of the FUNNIEST people I know, and this scene is just fantastic because of him. A few of his adlibs like “You Tiny Monster…” and “Your breathe is hot…” still make me roll on the floor.
Oh, and I can’t skip over Vork’s triple take when I call him a “poo face” earlier in the ep. It’s the best reaction he’s ever given. He’s normally pretty stone-faced, but director Sean Becker gave him a note to just “go for it” and voila, comedy gold. I really want an animated GIF of him doing that, haha.
EP 10! My favorite ep! I can’t tell you how incredibly I love this episode. Jeff Lewis is at his height of hilarity here, the scene where he’s proud people hate him was so hard to get through because of his WEIRD hand gestures! I was biting my cheeks the whole time! In fact, the speech where he says “Evil must not stop us…” was cut from the script, but I loved my line after that “this is a techno song, right?” SOOO much I threw all that dialogue back at him right before we shot. Credit to him for learning and delivering.
An interesting comment was made on Twitter, about everything being made “ok” because a man came back and took over. I certainly didn’t mean that at ALL. The fact is, Codex is not a good leader. She will never be a good leader, especially in the time frame of 6 days in this season. That is how people ACTUALLY are. She’s BETTER than she was at the beginning, but to think that she realistically could take on the mantle of Guild Leader (and REPLACE Vork which I didn’t want her to do) against the Anarchists was such a stretch for me, and a direction I didn’t want to go in with the script. So, Vork comes back, after his big journey, and puts the Guild back together. Codex will get her moment, don’t worry.
Every scene in ep 10 is so good I find it hard to not talk about each one. Sir Loop a Lot was a last minute rewrite, I originally had it as a typical FPS game, but I was so bored with that idea, so I was like, “Let’s go the opposite way”. Sean, Kim Evey and I did all the Loop-A-Lot Voices, we had WAY too good a time doing it too, haha. And Vork’s dog monologue is my favorite thing I’ve ever written, it cracks me up so much. Clara being hit on by the kid’s, the thumping of the toys on her chest is such a funny touch, and we had SUCH a fun time improving in the scene at the door, you’ll see with the outtakes.
Lastly, I just want to give major kudos to director/editor Sean Becker for making the last sequence SO DAMNED COOL. I wrote in the script “slo-mo Reservoir Dog’s-Style montage” but had no visual concept of what that mean. With our tiny budget, stealing shots, he made a badass sequence of geekdom. We look cool, then not cool, then cool again. Our composor Eanon Patterson as always does an AMAZING job creating a song for us to fit the mood.
My wonderful producer@kimevey wrote this episode and I’m really proud of her, the first episode I relinquished writing control, and it’s so good! We did it old-school quick and dirty style, very few crew members, 4 hour shoot, and honestly it was almost more fun than filming a regular episode because there weren’t so many elements for me to be paranoid about. I could just sit back, do my part acting-wise and do the creative producing. Greg Benson (her husband and part of Season 1 director@mediocrefilms) directed, and he did a fab job, I really like the loose camera work and improv-ish style for the piece, it’s really really fun! And what can I say about performance: Baby Blake steals the show.
This episode is out of the timeline for the season, so we’ll be back with Episode 9 next week, tumbling down to the end of the season! Really hope you guys enjoy it, Ep 9 and particularly 10 are my favorite eps of the season.
On another note, a month or so back I filmed a short for NASA! (When they called my agent@georgeruiz the words “NASA” were barely out of his mouth before I said “YES PLEASE!”
I have to admit, my knowledge about Astronomy is not as much as the other areas (ignorance now demolished as I, while doing research to understand what I was saying, downloaded 20 books on my Kindle and bookmarked a dozen sites and now am on a huge hard Sci-Fi fiction kick. Thanks guys!) I obsessively memorized my lines because THAT WAS A LOT OF DIALOGUE!!!!!!!! It came out sooo good, and I’m so impressed that the script balanced comedy and education so well. I hope you enjoy it too!
Another reason was the costumes were expensive and it was another reason to use mine, LOL. 
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
YouTube
delicious
Friend Feed
Last FM
MySpace