Felicia Day

I wanted to get this blog up before the finale on Tuesday so I can have a dedicated post next week about the season as a whole. And WHOAH has it been a whole season! I simply can’t believe that the finale is Tuesday!
EPISODE 10: FESTIVAL OF THE SEA

So, this season I set out to scale back a LOT.  Last season we went outdoors waay too often, had waaay too many actors, and it was really hard to accomplish on the budget.  So THIS season I tried to only let me crazy imagination out with the idea that we’d throw a huge party at Cheesybeards.  Generally, I didn’t REALLY accomplish that, haha, but living through this shoot, I was very happy that I kept my mind at least a WEE BIT under control.

This episode had SO MANY EXTRAS!  Thank you each and every person for coming out at 5:30am and joining us in making this episode a possibility.  I really hope everyone had a good time filming in that tiny room.  The production design and acting are just all soooo amazing, it’s my favorite of the season for sure.  SO MUCH IS GOING ON and it’s still under 8 minutes.  Really proud of that.

Because I had to learn the ukelele for it, Ollie’s song is really the highlight for me personally.  I did a rough draft of the lyrics, but I couldn’t really write it myself because I’m not really a composor, so I enlisted@paulandstorm, the dynamic nerd comedy duo, to help me with the final product.  They knocked it out of the park, and took all my gross ideas and made them 10x grosser!  We only hear a fraction of the lyrics in the show, but go over to their website, and for the small price of $1.00 you can download “The Pirate’s Feast” and hear the glory of pirate cannibalism go on and on and on.  SO GOOD!

Acting-wise, I love Fawkes’ comeuppance (we hired a real stunt guy for that throw!) and the way@wilw played it was just note-perfect:  Codex really didn’t know how to deal with the touch of sincerity he was showing her.  A special thanks to the other Axis members and@micheleboyd (Riley) for coming out to do their cameos.  I wanted to use them more, but it’s web video and there wasn’t room.  Next time!

Also, if you enjoyed the plot twist, we have the 8-bit Baby tee that Clara and Tink were selling over at our Jinx store with many other Guild styles, so check it out!

EPISODE 11: HOSTILE TAKEOVERS

While episode 10 was MY favorite, I’ve heard that the cast likes THIS episode the best. NOW I think it’s really really strong, but after I finished the script some of the funniest stuff wasn’t on the page, we came up with it later on the set and in editing, so the fact that it is a great episode has a lot to do with the performers and the actors and the collaboration of filmmaking in general.  Which is, of course, why the art form is so fun: It’s not all on the writer’s shoulders.  Most, but not all

I guess when I finished the script, I felt like episode 10 really would eclipse the story in this one, because it’s really a transitional one that ramps up into episode 12.  But the acting, especially Vork’s: His agony about the wedding, his insistence on going through with it, and the immense pride about the Guild Hall…Jeff Lewis was really running the gamut for this 6 minutes and he SOLD it.  Also, I forgot how funny it was going to be to physically see an in-game wedding from OUT of the wedding.  It really turned out as weird and dysfunctional as I thought it would be.

My favorite gag in the episode is Bladezz showing up with that crazy tan!  Several days before shooting I had just seen something about Jersey Shore (yes, I live under a nerd rock) and I was so appalled that people think those people are cool that I turned to the makeup woman, Jen, and said, “Can you use your airbrush to make Vince have a horrible tan? We need him douchier.”  Luckily she was totally into it.  And I really loved how, on the day, Sean and I had a deep discussion whether Vince’s hands/eyes should be tan.  I gave into Sean, left them untanned, which is actually funnier.  Bladezz is SUCH A DOUCHEBAG when he enters, Vince really nailed it, as he has done all season.

My favorite line of the episode is one of Zaboo’s:  “…I’m gonna replace my organs with clockwork and sell myself to a Steampunk museum!”  A lot of people said I should cut it out, but I insisted on keeping it, despite probably other people being right, and Sean, the director, totally sold it by making Zaboo wear that watch and try to gnaw on it.  That’s HIS watch BTW, so…real dedication there, haha.

And then the cliffhanger…wow.  It’s always the joke with me and Sean, “Hey!  What’s the VFX for this season’s script?”  Well, I decided EARLY on we’d see into the game, and stupidly I had NO TECHNICAL IDEA how that would happen.  So…thank you@gregaronowitz for building a 12 foot miniature for us that we could pull out and see…THAT.  There will be a special extra on the DVD about how that all happened, and I’ll talk more about it next week   Suffice it to say that no web series in history has had a professional artist create something like that.  We are truly the most blessed web series online.

OH another thing!  We have the ‘Team Cawkes” poster for sale over at Think Geek now!  It’s a big, glossy poster and proceeds go to Child’s Play charity, so nab one while you can!  If it says “backordered” that just means a few days delay, they’ve sold a ton more than they expected and just need to roll and box them!

Episode 8: BUSTED

The 2/3 Mark of the season! Wow, time has just FLOWN by, in-show and in-life! This ep is a real story turning point. Having Codex juggle the Fawkes storyline AND Cheesybeards was a fun challenge this year. Spacing out the story beats so they were clear and concise was tough, but finally in this episode we get the moment where her little deception blows up in her face, and Tink LOVES it. It’s SO her.

There are some great emotional beats from the actors in this episode. I love Zaboo’s turn about not being happy about Fawkes and Codex’s relationship status, therefore he’s ecstatic about himself?! Huh? I just think that’s such a Zaboo beat of strange emotion. And Vork running in with those green bean cans was sheer genius acting. He’s so tired and exasperated. Jeff really nailed it with the whole Avinashi storyline, it’s a lot to bounce back and forth between appreciation and adoration, so funny from the straight-laced Vork.

The face mask matching my Jinx shirt was a total coincidence, but when I saw it I was like, yeah, let’s go with it, I like seafoam blue, haha. And the wilted flowers in Fawkes’ hand are still really funny to me because they were literally stolen from someone’s yard in the neighborhood. That’s how The Guild rolls!

Favorite line from the ep: “Stop Trolling me in real life!”

EPISODE 9: Pirate Paddy

The Cheesybeards location has been SO FUN to shoot in. It almost feels like a sitcom to me style-wise, which is so fun to inject into the show. Not sure if you’ve stumbled upon it yet unless you’re a hardcore fan, but we have a cool little ARG going on for the location at cheesybeards.info, including a Yelp review page that they kindly helped us set up! Thanks to@egspoony and@briankameoka for overseeing all the elements.

Episode 9 is, I believe, director@seanbecker’s favorite episode, not the least reason is the Bladezz commercial. Oh boy. I remember in the script, all I had as a description was:

“Worst Commercial EVER. Bladezz as a pirate. Terrible lighting and camerawork, just awful in every way. Ends with “Taste My Pirate Paddy.”

I think that Sean handily succeeded in crafting something along those lines. Like, a LOT! My particular favorite part of the commercial is the callback to “Tennis Bladezz” from Season 1. If you check out episode 9 and freeze where Codex busts out the Finn Smulders pics, then you’ll see a totally tacky headshot of Bladezz in the tennis outfit. Did a lot of people notice that? Also, I was REALLY sick that day, so I didn’t really see what was going on as far as footage, so when it was cut together, the whole thing was completely new to me, so that was a rare moment when I was out of the loop and got to watch something from a VIEWER POV. So fun

My favorite ACTING moment in the episode is between Ollie and Bladezz when he says, “Can’t carve out anything if it’s his dominant hand. Eh?” OMG. When we rehearsed that, the way Vince delivered that line with his elbow jab…it was sheer glee and magic, and I cracked up EVERY TIME! The great thing is the way Frank responds as Ollie: He LOVES it despite being SO INSENSITIVE AND AWFUL! And thus, that whole relationship is defined in one tiny moment.

As a treat, below is an extended cut of the commercial, with a DENA cameo! Hope you enjoy!

<br/><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-bonus-clip-taste-my-pirate-patty/y0djzw3w?fg=sharenoembed');" href="http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-bonus-clip-taste-my-pirate-patty/y0djzw3w?fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Season 4 - Bonus Clip - Taste My Pirate Patty">Video: Season 4 &#8211; Bonus Clip &#8211; Taste My Pirate Patty</a>

I just read a really interesting blog entry by venerable tech guru Leo Laporte on his frustration with Google Buzz, and essentially how he discovered that all his effort and internet sharing were starting to live primarily with services like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz etc, where he didn’t actually OWN access to his data. It really hit home reading how he realized that he should be concentrating on sharing in places HE owns, so one day his life record doesn’t get erased because the company went out of business or chose to do things with his data he didn’t agree with. I feel like it’s a good reminder for all of us to have a place to store our thoughts that is permanent, thus my renewed effort to share more on this blog. Ok deep thought out, now to this week’s episode!

EPISODE 6: WEIRD RESPAWN

We are smack in the middle of the season, and I’m very pleased that we’ve encountered a plot twist: Zaboo’s mom! My goal this season, if I haven’t said it before, was to be much less linear than season 3, and take more turns with plot and character throughout. Web series seasons are a weird hybrid of TV shows and movies, so it’s really anyone’s definition of the “best” way to do it. I just decided to try something different this time, and I’m pretty pleased with the result.

I always intended to bring Viji back as Zaboo’s mom, but I was very paranoid about rehashing the same storyline of “oppressive mother trying to get her son back” so I struggled a while to figure out how best to portray her differently from Season 1.  I was kinda inspired by an encounter with someone who was a HUGE jerk to me years ago, but out of the blue approached me to apologize (I think it was an AA thing, but whatever, lol), and I was so conflicted about how to feel about it that I decided that something similar might be an interesting character approach for Avinashi: Why is she there? And Why is she so nice?! . Also I have to say, the button for the episode is soooooo funny to me, only because Fawkes showing up at the dinner was such a great surprise (and his “kissy face” line the most quoted of the ep, such a great delivery!), I really tried to work hard at misdirecting everyone that the Fawkes/Codex relationship was over, so hopefully at least it was a bit of a jarring moment to end on!

Another favorite thing of mine in this episode is the Ollie/dog video montage. Sean Becker put that together without my knowing about it beforehand, and all the little videos in the window are actually dogs from friends of the Guild! We all sent him videos of our dogs being cute and they made the cut (hope we had them sign release forms, haha.)

EPISODE 7: AWKWARD BIRTHDAY!

Oh Episode 7, you were so difficult to write. I have to say, this episode literally went through 8 rewrites, no joke. At one point, it was JUST Codex and Avinashi and Vork, another draft only had Zaboo and Avinashi and Codex, and another had no Codex entirely! What?! It was really because I couldn’t make up my mind how to resolve the Fawkes storyline for draft after draft, but when my producer Kim Evey gave me a single valuable note: “Fawkes has to be at the dinner”, I went, “AHA!” and strangely enough that helped solidify how I rewrote the whole Codex/Fawkes arc and found something I was really happy with. So, moral is, good notes=VERY VALUABLE!

I love how Sandeep played his discomfort during the scene, there’s just so much unspoken about how he wants to like his mom, but simply can’t trust her, and how mortified he is when she brings these awful things from his past up. The dynamic is really delightful, and I love the running gag that director Sean Becker added with Vork and the bread in the suitcase, it just never gets old!

In addition, the button to this episode is my favorite of the season (Episode 10 I think is my favorite OF the season, but we aren’t there yet ). The order of the episode was actually different from what we shot, the intention was actually to end on Vork and Avinashi’s beat of being nice to each other. The scene with Fawkes and Codex was BEFORE that, but it didn’t seem to work in the edit, grr.  Luckily I think I got the idea to flip them around, and we were able to end with that crazy fan shot that I didn’t even think we’d use in the end because it was too wacky for the middle of the episode, and is now my favorite thing ever!  ALSO, not to pat my own back, but I did that last line as an improv line. YES, I can do funny adlibs SOMETIMES (although it’s usually Zaboo getting the credit for that, rightly so ).

I am so sorry to be behind on my Guild episode commentary, the last several weeks has been a total whirlwind of travel, conventions, signings, and filming Eureka (another blog post on that soon enough! )  Looks like I’m 3 episodes overdue! So without FURTHER ado, I’ll dive in! (more…)