Janus Syndicate

To break the near five-month slump we’ve had in terms of not uploading/releasing anything to Machinima.com (not counting A Hard Game’s Night or my college shorts), I’ve put together an 8-minute video that acts as an accessory video to our most popular viral hit, Counter-Strike For Kids, called Counter-Strike For Kids: Extras.

WATCH:
Youtube

In this video, there’s an introduction from the cast members, the original video with commentary by STEV and Xanatos, behind the scenes of the Extreme Gore segment, and some extra footage that wasn’t included in the original cut.

Here’s the “headspack” addon referred to in the video:
http://www.garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=13971

Now, we could’ve talked on and on about the production of this video for hours, and we didn’t get through shit in this video, quite honestly. I guess for the sake of comedy, and the fact that we are limited in what we can all fit in during eight minutes of video. So now, to add to that, I present to you, a lengthy writeup with some trivia regarding CS For Kids and its production!:

A WRITEUP ON CS FOR KIDS – BACKSTORY & TRIVIA:

The idea behind Counter-Strike For Kids was inspired by none other than a Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job sketch. Particularly, the Lazy Horse Mattress scene with Will Forte.

What I originally was going to do was make a Source Mod Todd type video in which he pitches the kid-friendly mod for Counter Strike, and randomly throughout his commercial, there are very abrupt, quick, shocking cuts of extreme gore segments in CS:S perhaps done by an outside source as Todd reacts in frustration to what’s being inserted – basically, what you see in the extreme gore segment now, but randomly placed throughout the video. Personally, I think what the video is now was the better choice as it suits the mainstream more. What do you think, what would you have liked to see more?

But the real frontrunner of the format in which CS For Kids is in now was coined by MrSentual, who wrote a number of the lines in the “Extreme Gore” segment and had the idea for “calling within the next fifteen minutes, throwing in…” The rest is history.

After I pitched the idea to STEV, that’s when (as mentioned in the video) we went and got some food at Wendy’s, which isn’t the nicest place in our area as it seems to be run behind the counter by an ex-con lineup. He wrote down the lines for the first segment in which he voices, the whole “Tired of having your kids…” bit. The recording of the eight year old kid saying “weel gun” was actually from a YTMND I had found ages ago, originally saved by someone I knew during my old CS days in CAL. We incorporated it around Stev’s bit.

So now we had a beginning and an end. Now for the middle. Thinking about it a bit too much, and looking for ideas on a format, having the concept of what essentially is a list of bulleted items came to me after watching the T’IRD sketch from Tim and Eric Awesome Show (you could say I’m a fan of Tim and Eric Awesome Show).  And then I was able to write the middle portion, including all the jokes like the poorly made cut-ins like “<BIRTHDAY PARTY> has been planned.” and “GOING TO PUT THE <BIRTHDAY CAKE> AT <BILLY’S HOUSE>”.

Back to the beginning of the video, the first thing that was edited was the flash transition between the Counter-Strike screenshot and the photoshopped screenshot that made them all clowns holding nerf guns and pookeyballs. All the skins that you see after that were found on FPSBanana.com (MrSentual made the skin for Stev’s character, the nerf guns, etc).  No, CS For Kids is not a real mod. We just skinned the shit out of Counter-Strike Source, in both segments.

Yes, the puppy exploded. It’s a HE Grenade replacement. Kid friendly. Now, onto the actual interesting stuff.

The giant pistol pulled out during that final battle sequence in the “FOR KIDS” segment was completely an accident. I downloaded it particularly for the Extreme Gore segment, and didn’t mean to expose it in that last shot of the Kids segment, but I later thought it was pretty funny that amidst all the kid friendly weapons to pull out the most insane fucking pistol and kept the shot in the final cut.

The exteme gore segment was made mostly in Garrysmod. The CS shots were zombie skins and I downloaded a blood pack to make things extra gory. ONE THING I DON’T THINK A SINGLE SOUL NOTICED IN THE EXTREME GORE SEGMENT is that the majority of the text is REPLACED via a .txt file edit in the game files. Next time you watch it, try to read what’s on the BUY MENU (my favorite is what is in place of the “machine guns”) and what new text pops up when the person plants/defuses the bomb. The text is probably way too hard to read in the original upload because the quality got dumbed down, but maybe on machinima.com or on this Extras video which has better quality.

All the exploding terrorists and guys who get their heads shot off were shots contrived in Garrysmod. I was happy with doing the voiceovers for this segment, as a number of the lines were improvised on the spot and fit very well.

Now, onto Crackbone’s recording. In all honesty, I should have ended the video right at the end of the Extreme Gore segment, but I had this mentality back then that just having a two minute video is cheating the viewers out of content. So I made a silly choice by adding two sequences – Crackbone’s testimony, and the George Lopez sketch. Completely out of place. The idea for crackbone’s testimony began when I recorded him transmitting in ventrilo yelling in response to a video he was watching of a snapping turtle attacking, ripping apart, and eating live mice. And we adapted the scene around that. Fit fairly well. All that footage I had the misfortune of having to film myself in GMOD, so there were a lot of key binds I had to hit in succession all the while framing a shot and recording at the same time. Total pain in the ass.

Lastly is our controversial George Lopez segment. This should not have been in the movie. A friend of ours made a silly little video in CS1.6 that basically involved his buddy go around a map yelling what you hear in the video. For some reason, we all found it hilarious. So, to fill the gap more, I asked the guy if we could use the audio from his video and he agreed. We reshot the sketch in CS:S. Upon making the first final render of the video, Wolfer had the great idea of putting a cheesy George Lopez head over the head of the CS Guerilla Warfare model’s face for the entire bit and shorten it up some (we originally had the scene run a little longer). I was skeptical at first, but Wolfer was 110% right in his idea making that scene better. Just seeing the Guerilla model would’ve been gimmicky and pointless, so thanks Wolfer for saving that bit. It also helped me think of the liquify face which I’m proud of. The George Lopez scene really shouldn’t be in the video anyway in my opinion, but hot soup! The original upload of CS For Kids from Summer of 2008 is currently far surpassing 7 million views and is the #2 most viewed video on the Machinima.com Youtube Channel (first being Master Chief sucks at Halo 3).

Anyway, that’s all. Hope you enjoy everybody.

TL;DR OMGOSH WHENS GMAN SQUAD 8 COMEING OUT???

-Xanatos

Hi everybody. I suppose it’s senseless to apologize for the lack of productivity. It’s been…what..5 or 6 months since we’ve had a Machinima.com release? Yeah, a lot of junk has been going on with the ideas we’ve tossed around not working, and not to mention real life being a major hinder.

But we’re still here. And we’ve got a new video on the way. It’s going to be a special bonus video about our most popular video, CS For Kids, to get us jumpstarted back into the swing of things. In this one large overall piece, you’ll get an introduction with comments by the cast, a version of CS For Kids with commentary by Stev and Xanatos, a tutorial-like segment showing how the Extreme Gore sequence was built, and some extra footage. All in one video.

It’s fucking crazy that CS For Kids is almost the #1 most viewed video on Machinima.com’s Youtube page. It’s currently the second most seen video on their channel with a viewcount of well over 7-million. How this happened is pure viral chance, and help from partner promotion. I suppose people must like it, too. This is basically why we thought it’d be appropriate to make a sort-of addendum video to the original with everything stated prior. Will keep you updated, I’m hoping this release goes smooth.

Oh hey. The Janus Syndicate, as a group, turns exactly four years old on the 19th (We formed on that day in 2005). Time flies.

Also, to address the fanboys: YES, THE GMAN SQUAD WILL EVENTUALLY CONTINUE. IT’S JUST ON HIATUS RIGHT NOW FOR MANY REASONS (one being that we got a lot of unnecessary flack for Episode 7, I suppose we’ll talk in detail about this incredibly bizarre series at a later date). Episode 7 wasn’t the last. That’s why at the end it said “To be continued”. Source Wars fits this same category but is even lower on the priority level. Source Mod Todd is probably said and done. Just for the record. Ok, see you soon. Leave some interesting comments.

-Xanatos

Oh, and here’s what Gerald did to me this past Halloween: