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:
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.
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).
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:
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:
A new video on STEV’S youtube page that includes a never-before-seen extended sequence to the “footrace” in Gman Squad Episode 2. An RL: The Game production. Starring Boris! Stev! Xanatos! Cookie Boy! Dragons! Wheelbarrows and more!
Also, MrSentual made a quick video edit and response to STEV’S new movie called “COOKIE REVENGE”. Check it out:
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.
Hi everyone. This has been one hell of a past few days. But before we get into a full-blown story, the video has been uploaded to my JsXanatos youtube account. A LOT of drama went into making this video (fiming choreographed sequences in Left 4 Dead didn’t help and recording a song for it), but that’s all behind us now.
A Hard Game’s Night – music video parody of The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night song and opening title sequencefrom the movie of the same name.
It’s our first actual video in a LONG time that’s been posted on JsXanatos. It was meant to be a Machinima.com release, however, the question of the song being a true, full-blown ‘parody’ was in question since it’s such a grey area. To be a true parody, it would have to “make fun of, comment on, or critique the original work.” This does not exactly do that, and how could you make fun of the Beatles? Despite the fact that the song sounds so different and has different lyrics, the idea that it does not make fun of the original does not make it a parody, supposedly. There was also a lot of quarreling over the song – hope you like what’s in the final product.
Secondly, something fucking CRAZY happened. The video was on the machinima.com channel for about twenty minutes before the decision was made to take it down from there, and on the exact same day, a video was uploaded to the popular ‘BarelyPolitical’ channel called “Left 4 Dead Beatles”. Two brand new videos uploaded on the exact same day (July 29th) by two different authors with ideas for the same concept, yet two totally different videos content wise. I couldn’t fucking believe it. Crazy!
On a site related note, the dead links in the Audio Downloads section are slowly but surely being all fixed.
Anyhow, my video has been uploaded to my personal youtube for everyone to see. Enjoy!
Hello everybody. A bit late of a site post and things have been quite lazy and easygoing lately, so it’s about time for a quick update.
A total of seven of us made it to Columbus, Ohio last weekend for a fun get-together of JS cast members. A number of people have asked, “why Ohio?” and there were a number of reasons for that. First, we’re pretty much all from the Midwest. Second, we had a couple people living in the area and therefore knew the area well, and third, and the one I am keen on mentioning is that of Boris and Crackbone – both who don’t live nearly as far from Columbus as most of us who actually went. I knew they’d be hard to get to come along for the fun, and sure enough, despite Columbus being a city relatively near them, neither of them showed up for the weekend. So yeah, they stood us up. Bleh! Really not much of a surprise. So over the weekend, it was myself, Stev, ConfusedWisdom, MetalLizard, MrSentual, HKSniper, and Nowhere who all showed up. You can check out pictures that four of us took here, some great stuff:
Unfortunately, I still haven’t gotten around to the DOD:S vs Hidden Source Wars bloopers because of all the laziness going on (Summer is fun), work, and moreso because I can’t personally find a decent way to present them as they are not very much like the last set of Source Wars bloopers. Eventually though, I will get around to it. Another reason for the delay is we recently switched hosting control from the website into our total control, but there were some side-effects because of that and some of our hosting content was lost. I’ll be working on getting that back up in a matter of time.
What’s next on the moviemaking agenda is a little unsure as of yet – I’ve got three ideas floating around, each of them difficult and unique in their own way, and I’m hoping to end up doing the shortest of the three (duration wise) that involves using Left 4 Dead…finally! Keep checking back for more word.
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!
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