I really don’t know what to say. Just sorta failing at life on this end. Things will look up eventually, and there are a handful of things on the backburner right now. Expect another ‘extras’ type-ish video soon and probably an outing from both DOD:S and TF2. Three new videos for sure within the next few months. It’s a battle of the will.
If you’re that anxious for anything, I do occasionally post some goofy finds and creations from other JS members on our Xanatos facebook page. If you like our kind of stuff and if you’re interested in my warped findings, become a fan:
What’s up everybody. It’s almost Holiday season and I’m going to be taking another hiatus for a short time as I’m moving out for a college semester starting in a week-ish. Don’t think I’ll have internet there for starters and it’s going to be occupying a vast majority of my time these next couple of weeks, and then after that it’ll be Christmas and New Years, so it’s a safe bet to say we won’t have anything in the works until after January.
We do have a couple of gems straight from Stev’s Youtube Channel though. I got a lot of silly flack for uploading two videos I made for my media production class with Jack and I on my personal channel, and since Stev and I appear in this one, we wanted to put it on his channel. Check it out:
And since we won’t probably be making anything video wise for a month (our last was the CS For Kids Extras video if you haven’t seen that one yet), I thought it would be cool for me to make little “for fun” blog-type posts.
Here are what I would say now are the top three machinimas that inspired me into the machinima making scene – all vastly different from each other. Only two different games though, as the majority of what I played back in the day was Counter-Strike and Battlefield, so naturally, my favorite pieces are from those engines. These videos have seemingly been forgotten as of late, too, as they are relics from the 2003-2005 period. Keep in mind that the links that follow are reuploads from another source – you can find higher quality direct download links probably by doing a little searching.
A clan in a competitive environment from CS1.6 back in 2005 makes it’s way up the ladder to only pull pranks and do outrageous maneuvers on opposing clans in actual league matches for reactionary purposes. The video essentially is highlights from the season in a music-video/replay like format, and is edited with special effects and music for extreme effect. Not technically a machinima, as the majority of footage in this video is from actual CAL-M CS1.6 league matches (the fact that this joke-clan made its way up the ladder just to pull stuff like this makes it even funnier and more real), but it’s just too damn well choreographed on the maker’s part for it not to be mentioned here. A hilarious outing, incredibly well edited and made, and just too damn interesting. Another CS1.6 video very much worth mentioning that goes hand in hand with this is one entitled MONSTROUS: Counter-Strike Gone Bad. If you’ve seen Pubmasters, but haven’t seen this, do so now. You’ll probably find it even funnier.
Back when the “Requiem for a Dream” music wasn’t so cliche, and back when seeing an effectively shot and edited piece from the Battlefield engine was a rarity (it still is, even with Battlefield 2’s replay features and onward). Very well put together action video about a U.S. group defending a small town from an impeding German force set to Clint Mansell’s music. It’s a bit long and a little too overdramatic with the music, however it goes without saying that it’s very effective. How the director was able to choreograph beginning-to-end action sequences is really impressive, and something that isn’t easy to pull off in an engine like Battlefield 1942 with virtual actors. Seriously. How many headaches did it give ‘em. I got horrible ones just doing half-assed, two day efforts on Source Mod Todd videos. BF’s engine would be a pain in the ass to make a video like this for. Mu’s hard work paid off for him though, as this video eventually got a spot on television.
This, in my opinion, is the grand-daddy of all grand-daddies. A clan made up of “noobs” wants to hang out with the “best of the best”, so by baiting them with a false pretense, they don’t exactly get what they hoped for.. Released right around the time that CS: Source debuted (even includes a scene that’s funny now just to see the old original Phoenix model), this has production quality unheard of for a CS1.6 video. Clan Wars is full of hilarious scenes and is simply worth watching solely for how well it was made. Even features an original soundtrack that’s superb. I miss directors like TFG. He really knew his shit and filmed in a setting that people like I can compare to. It takes mad balls to try and film something that isn’t a Source-SDK choreographed effort (which also takes mad balls), but rather, one that designs very clever sets, deals with in-game actors, and effectively uses the game engine to his advantage all the while pulling off shots that make you go, “how the fuck did he do that?” (especially at an extensive, entirely custom animated fight sequence near the end). For something like that to yield an amazing outcome is awesome to see. Be sure to check out TFG’s other work too – he made a few other excellent machinimas in Counter-Strike and even a couple documentaries. Back in the 2004 era, machinima had some prime fucking directors that were all in their twenties and early thirties. This elite machinima-making crowd eventually all moved on with their industry jobs. Then Youtube came along, and now it’s mainly just a bunch of kids.
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:
So Jack and I have been up to a couple of little for-fun video projects at our local college. They are fake little spots for a restaurant chain combined with the Beatles. Go ahead and check them out here, starring Paul Mccartney & John Lennon:
“A Hard Game’s Night” has been selected in the third group of films to be screened at the 2009 Machinima Expo, a huge machinima event that takes place online in Second Life, held by the greats Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Ingrid Moon, and Damien Valentine. The expo takes place Sunday, November 22. Check out the website at http://machiniplex.net/expo/ for more information and revisit it again later for information on where in Second Life it takes place.
Looks like we’ll be making at least a commentary/how-to style video next, alongside another project. Will let you know when those are underway.
I know we don’t have a very large following for our website and it’s decreasing even more due to our inactivity, but a few of you guys are still curious as to what the heck’s goin’ on. I didn’t see the point in making a post right away saying that our productions have come to a serious halt, but seeing as how it’s been some time, well, our production effort has been in a bit of a slump lately. A number of ideas are just not worth attempting, or I’m not comfortable with all the specifics within an idea, or something like that.
Looking back on a lot of our old videos, I can’t say I care for them too much, but at the time I thought they were something worth uploading, whether it be for a laugh or whatnot. I’ve never wanted to half-ass a project for the sake of having a video to upload on a regular basis, and I won’t start by doing that now. So I figure it’s best that we wait it out and take our time on videos. We’re still around, however, we’re just a bit occupied at the moment in real life and, more importantly, I think it’s best to wait for an idea that’s really worth going for (and that’s capable of being done) to start our next project.
Once we begin work on a brand new video, you’ll hear about it right away in a site post. So don’t worry about it, and don’t use words like Ringo here:
This past Thursday and Friday, Stev and I went and paid a visit to boris, had fun times, and even recorded a new (RL) video that’ll probably appear on STEV’s youtube channel fairly soon. Will keep you posted.
Not sure what’ll be next in the JS machinima department. I’m hoping to get a short in before we begin work on any projects requiring a major league effort and a lot of time. Will let you know what it ends up being.
I got an email this weekend that “A Hard Game’s Night” was accepted into the DragonCon Film Festival’s “comedy” segment in their machinima category. I’m thinking about going to Atlanta for the weekend of the festival (the first weekend in September) and attending if I can. The comedy machinima segment would be from 7pm to 8pm on Sunday, Sept. 6th. Cool stuff!
Also, two things to keep an eye out for – Nefarious Guy, creator of the film-noir/mob machinima “Clockwork”, is very near finishing the sequel to it entitled “Clockwise”. I had a whopping one-line cameo in the second half of Clockwork, and in Clockwise my character makes an appearance in a couple of big scenes at the beginning.
Second, I have another small voiceover role in a large-cast machinima short that Phil “Overman” Rice is working on. Both projects are looking great and i’ll definitely post about them when they’re released.
Our new Left 4 Dead short in the making is close to being completed. I have yet to talk to the machinima.com guys on a release date for it, but I see no reason for it to not be this week sometime. So without the double negative, yes, release SHOULD BE this week. It’s a bit different from what we’ve done in the past and we’ve entered new territory that we haven’t taken a stab at before regarding music (hint hint).
This video will also introduce another something NEVER BEFORE SEEN in a JS video – the use of the STAR WIPE transition. I know, incredible news. Oh, and we finally started recording our footage in widescreen 16:9 format to fill the whole Youtube frame. About damn time for that too.
I won’t spoil the other half of the concept not revealed in our last site post until we have our release post made. The video, again, is a short video. It honestly should’ve been created in a much faster time span, but recording footage in Left 4 Dead was the worst shit ever. You can probably imagine why. Ah well, still got it done, stay tuned this week!
Surprise impromptu video release – Source Mod Todd went to E3 this past week and reported live after going to the conferences! You probably have already seen it if you’ve been checking out our facebook page lately, but if not, you can check out the movie here. Has our typical style of humor. It’s an idea that originated from MrSentual.
The DOD:S vs Hidden extra bloopers compilation is still needing work, but you can expect that before we leave for Columbus, Ohio this coming June 12th-June 14th. A total of eight or nine JS people will be travelling there for a first ever actual group meetup. Sounds gay, doesn’t it? Yeah. But a lot of good stuff will probably come out of it. As far as our next project goes, that’ll be decided and will begin work on once we all come back from Columbus. See you then.
Mm3guy, who’s an admin over at Garrysmod.com, interviewed us last night for a website post. Myself, Stev, Crackbone, Boris, and DMGaina were apart of it, and MrSentual even showed up near the end.
Also if you’ve been checking the facebook page lately, you’ll see that I posted an older prank call video of Boris calling in Tom Green Live and reading guest Pamela Anderson a poem. Good times and reminiscent of when that show used to be funny (mainly because of people calling in pranking).
The next Source Wars episode “Day of Defeat Source vs The Hidden” begins its production soon, real soon!
Hey everybody. Gman Squad Episode 7 released a couple weeks ago in case you missed it – check it out here. Now that I’ve had a little downtime, it’s time to get started on the next couple of projects. First will be the second Source Wars Episode with Day of Defeat: Source versus The Hidden: Source. I didn’t understand why so many people in the comments for the first source wars video thought that the promo for it in CS vs GMOD was just a ruse, especially when we had an extensive preview for it at the end of the video. I know we had a joke near the start saying ‘last time we witnessed the Dystopia team CRUSH the Battlegrounds 2 team’, but that was just for laughs. Anyhow, we are going to be doing the DOD:S vs Hidden episode, although I can’t promise there will be a third Source Wars, at least not relatively soon after this is released. After this, we have something new & separate from our existing videos and series in mind.
Why not let us know in the page comments what you would like to see in this new Source Wars episode with DOD:S and The Hidden? Anything from characters/cameos, action ideas, topics of announcer debate, you name it.
It was both Stev and my birthday last Tuesday (the 14th). We’re not brothers, but we still share the exact same birthday. Wolfer, upon hearing of this, responded “What the fuck? What is this shithole?”
And finally, here’s something I put together the other night – a little montage with clips from past videos for fun as seen on our facebook fan page:
Stay tuned for more updates on the new Source Wars and more!
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