WATCH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRdJleJ64ec
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:
WATCH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdy0r_f7jkQ
-Xanatos
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.
ALBUM:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=101460&id=48999482881
(Left-to-Right:) Boris, STEV, Xanatos
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.
He’s got a great trailer posted for it, check it out, coming soon!:
CLOCKWISE trailer by NefariousGuy
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.
Hot soup,
-Xanatos
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.
Check it out here:
YOUTUBE:
A Hard Game’s Night – Left 4 Dead (HD)
A Hard Game’s Night – music video parody of The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night song and opening title sequence from 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!
-Xanatos
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:
ALBUM LINK:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87555&id=48999482881
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.
-Xanatos
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.
WATCH:
Youtube.com
Machinima.com
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.
-Xanatos
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.
Check it out here:
http://www.garrysmod.com/?dont_buff_my_pylon=1236
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!
-Xanatos
Hi everyone, it’s spring break time for most of us in college, and I’m headed off to Naples, Florida for the week. Going to see for the second time Phil Rice aka Overman while I’m there, last time was at the NYC Machinima Fest, really looking forward to it. Upcoming machinima projects will begin when I get back next Saturday…and that will be none other than…
Gman Squad Episode 7 – “Boris and Clyde”
Xanatos and Wolfer taken hostage! New “Gman Show” sequence! Crackbone’s fate! Boris and Clyde’s run-and-gun adventures on Half-Life 2′s Coast! New prank and more!
Production on the new video will begin upon everyone’s return from break. We wanted to make something else before we progressed onto making the next second episode of Source Wars (which it’s great to see how positive everyone is reacting to the CS vs GMOD episode, thank you all for your great comments) so up next is Gman Squad Episode 7. Also check out our machinima.com made Facebook page – become a fan if you’d like, I’m quite fond of our goofy profile description. See you later!
-Xanatos
(1/26 edit – Stev and I are going to Royal Oak, MI tonight – it’s just north of Detroit – for TIM AND ERIC AWESOME TOUR at the Royal Oak Music Theatre! If you’re in the area, come meet us out in front of the door, at the front of the stage, or at Tania’s Pizza. I’ll be wearing a beaver boys hat. It looks like the show is sold out.)
Hello everyone and it’s time to finally unveil what we’ve mentioned in a number of videos’ credits now – the first ever Gman Squad community contest, filled with fun, trivia, karaoke, and an obstacle course. The winner of the contest will get their very own slot in the group and in upcoming videos. I’ll have to get this out of the way right now, but, don’t do the signup steps for this community contest unless you are totally fine with being humiliated and are cool with singing – you need a microphone and an installed copy of Half-Life Deathmatch Source. The songs we have for karaoke are a tad bit embarassing, to put it lightly. Your singing will be judged in REAL TIME by the likes of judges made up of Gman Squad cast members – which may include myself, STEV, boris, Clyde, Crackbone, DMGaina, Gerald, Zimbabwe, Bulgey, Darkvile, and more. This is your chance to interact with us in character and partake in trivia and an obstacle course! All of it will be just for fun and it’ll be our first chance at finally providing something really interactive for a handful of players.
To officially sign up, you will need to fill out a questionnaire form and email it to thegmansquad[at]gmail.com. If we like it, we will invite you to a special Gman Squad initiation steam group which you will need to accept to be considered officially apart of the contest. The deadline for emailing us your questionairre is MONDAY, JANUARY 26th at 11:59 P.M. So one week from this post. You will be notified if you were accepted via email no later than Tuesday. If you don’t get a response to your email sent, then you were not accepted – sorry in advance. The contestants will be listed as ‘members’ in the steam group and judges will be listed as ‘administrators’. The actual initiations will be conducted at any time from Tuesday, January 27th on until we have gotten through at least 10 contestants. Basically, when there are three or four of us online, we will look up in the steam group to see which of the contestants if any are online, message them if they are ready for their go at it, and then if they are able at the moment to do it, we will provide them with the HLDM:S game server information, custom map, karaoke files, password, and go from there. This will be a spur of the moment, casual type deal. We will IM the accepted contestants when ready – so future contestants, be ready at any moment!
CLICK HERE FOR THE QUESTIONNAIRE FORM
Enjoy and please do consider signing up if you have a mic, HLDM:S, and a decent sense of humor! All are welcome to give it a try!
And on a separate note, check out the videos other JS members have been creating lately (mostly non machinima) -
by STEV - RE: Facts for Zombie Attack! (Part 1) & (Part 2)
Q&A With Stev 2
RL Mod Todd 3 “Camping Adventures”
by HKSniper – Arma Cooperative with Crackbone (Video 1), (Video 2), (Video 3)
GTA 4 “Most Intelligent Conversation”, “Random Clip”, & “Strange Glitch”
by Gerald - Age of Chivarly videos with HKSniper and Darkvile “Foreigner”, “Darkvile’s Question”, & “Missionary Missions”
by DMGaina - Adventures of Soapy, Pt. 1 starring Gerald
-Xanatos
LONG POST AAAHHH! Hi everybody, time for a lengthy recap of this year’s Machinima Festival at Eyebeam in New York City, which was the first one I’ve been to. So many awesome people were there that I got to meet in person for the first time and everyone had lots of fun, meeting new people like I did and/or reuniting again with people they saw at previous festivals. I’d say about 50-100 people were in attendance throughout Saturday. That’s me in the middle of the top-left picture on the student panel that I don’t think went too well, but moving on. Sorry in advance for the pictures that are blurry or have poor lighting, my camera is outdated, but the content is still there. Also, pretty much all of my indoor pictures were of the PANEL area ONLY. Eyebeam (where the fest took place) was not that small, and in fact, it had a very large theatre area and a whole area behind of where you see the angle for all the pictures. Seems people think Eyebeam was just one room from the pictures that I took..I snapped pictures of the theatre and TV setup but they are even poorer than some of these, but i’ll be uploading them to the album linked below anyway soon. With that aside, let’s go!
On Friday there was the “Meet and Greet” impromptu setup at Eyebeam. I met Freidrich Kirschner (Festival Director), Paul Marino (Jesus of Machinima), Lenny Correa (Festival Co-director), Two guys from As the Hamster Wheel Turns were there, two lead cinematic designers at BioWare for Mass Effect came later in the evening who were both fascinating to listen to, Sam “Zuckerman” Midwood (This American Hero) arrived later, Freidrich was there all day working his ass off, staff members from MovieStorm arrived, Annie OK, Chris Burke, and more. Apart from that, Friday was fairly quiet, so a good majority of us went to a nearby diner.
Top Row, L-to-R: Ken Thain (BioWare), Seth Webber (ATHWT), Kevin Cianek (Xanatos), Armando Troisi (BioWare) Bottom Row, L-to-R: Friedrich Kirschner, Sam Midwood (This American Hero), Kevin Nuut (ATHWT)
I stayed with Nefarious Guy (Clockwork). His great family kept me well fed pretty much all weekend and gave me a roof to sleep under. Thanks a million. Then came the festival on Saturday! What a turnout too, not a small or very large one, which I think suited very well. It began with a nice introduction from Paul Marino (“Thinking Machinima”, Still Seeing Breen), and then came the panels and screenings for the rest of the day. It was pretty hard to turn away from. Unfortunately, the panel I was in did not go the best in my opinion, but the rest of the panels made up for it. So in the end, Nefarious and I ended up being there for a total of over 12 hours on Saturday along with many of the other attendees. Man, did I meet a lot of sweet people. I’m going to presume that many of you reading this are a part of my youtube audience and therefore are not familiar with too many people outside of the Source Machinima community. I’ll tell you, check these guys out right away, these are people I met in person for the first time, many of them remembered me for one or two things in the past but weren’t aware of my later videos, anyway, here we go! FYI – I jump a bit out of order.
-The Ill Clan (made up with the talents of Frank Dellario, Kerria Seabrooke, Paul Janicola, and more) This is a group pro at machinima. Literally. They’re the creators of the former TrashTalk and other historic machinimas including Apartment Huntin, Hardly Workin, etc, and even were apart of an episode of CSI: NY. They’ve been around for ten+ years and are all sweet as hell. The trio took part in a number of panels this year and blew me away with their minisode of their new series Tiny Nation. Check this out. It was definitely one of the top highlights for me in the festival. Made in Second Life, it only bares resemblance to it in about two or three shots. I was hoping to also meet Matt Domaniani, “Ill Will” of TrashTalk, whom I even once showed him around in Garrysmod long ago, but he couldn’t attend the festival due to real life matters. But meeting the other three was incredibly rewarding, as they sure remembered when I submitted clips of our first larger-scale rough, machinima video “Lol Another Day 2″ and they used it in the episode entitled “New Game Roundup”. Paul Janicola even sang the chorus of the spies song at the end too. So it was pretty cool, I’ll have to email them some of the stuff I’ve done since they only were familiar with that old piece, and it’s cool because they weren’t aware that i’ve stuck with the scene since and continued productivity, so everything was a bit of a surprise. Also, to show how Ill clan also has future-seeing powers, they once did a live episode of Trashtalk that included Johnathon Coulton as a special guest. This was before Portal was ever conceived, so he was not nearly as well known back then as he is now. Pretty funny for those of us who followed Trashtalk and learned of Coulton that way or another, and then saw his popularity explode due to his credits song in Portal. The cool guys knew him before that.
Panel with Seth Webber and Kevin Nuut of ATHWT (LEFT), and Paul Janicola and Kerria Seabrooke of The Ill Clan (RIGHT), moderated by Freidrich Kirschner (CENTER). The Ill Clan duo premiered their hilarious minisode of TINY NATION – Click here to watch.
-Phil Rice (Male Restroom Etiquette, Apology) and Ricky Grove (Voice actor in Jill’s Song & more, actor). Two of Machinima’s kings, in the flesh! Creators of what is definitely the best machinima podcast around, they also were apart of a panel on sound, which was both hilarious and incredibly informative. When the recording for this panel gets up, i’ll post it, as it’s great. All panels and the awards were filmed and should be online soon. What an honor to see them there.
Panel with Ricky Grove (LEFT) and Phil “Overman” Rice (RIGHT) on the importance of sound. A sample of Ricky’s advice from one slide: “Read the fucking script.” Huge honor to hear something in style of the Overcast podcast live.
-Robert Stonemann and Zachariah Scott of Lit Fuse Films. Zach and I didn’t talk a whole lot, and Steinmann came down with a pretty bad headache at the fest, but him and I later talked for a while after the awards ceremony. Was cool seeing each other there for the first time, only Nefarious and I kept bailing from the fest at different intervals than they did so we didn’t see each other a whole lot. Congrats to them and their music composer, Lars, for picking up a “Best Music” win with Ignus Solus. It’s a shame Smooth Few Films didn’t come in order to have a true Source machinimator gathering.
Panel with Zachariah Scott of Lit Fuse (RIGHT), with Michael filming it (LEFT). The moderator of this panel called Jill’s Song “Emochinima”. Zach’s response: “That hurts.” Zach and I seemed to get the short end of the stick with panels, as I was paired up with a schoolkids organization and he was paired up with two Halo kids who kept saying shit like “Oh..you know, we film our stuff on Xbox live, and uh, kids are kids…” Are you kidding me? Zach pretty much cleaned their clocks, though. Rob had to sit out of this panel due to his feeling ill.
-Ben Grussi, aka zs|gamemaster. #1 Machinima Aficionado. He’s in a number of the pictures taken with my camera.
Awkward picture with Ben in the background. To the left of the picture is Ricky Grove. A fun fact about Ricky is that he was the character Duke Henry the Red in the Sam Raimi Film “Army of Darkness”.
-Chris Burke of This Spartan Life. Met him on Friday and he was at the fest on Saturday with the entire TSL crew. He’s a kickass dude, who with his team picked up a win for Best Series. Congrats!
Chris Burke (LEFT) of This Spartan Life and Frank Dellario (RIGHT) of The Ill Clan
-Matt Kelland (UK) and Johnnie Ingram of Moviestorm. Matt remembered me from ages ago when I made one of my very first videos in 2004 called “Battlefield Stuntacular” and he emailed me asking for a writeup on it in his book on Machinima. Since then, I contacted him a few months ago for the first time in ages, showing him HL2 Anxiety & Nightmare, which he included in the Cambridge Film Festival’s Machinima portion. He’s one badass looking dude, and it was cool meeting him. Johnnie Ingram is also one hilarious dude, coming to Saturday at night wearing a suit and a kilt…awesome! Was great talking to him too. Here’s his writeup on the festival: http://is.gd/6kdo.
-Bllius, author of the Shattered Keyboard blog. He has an excellent writeup on the fest as well, and we talked for a bit. Totally cool guy.
Also congrats to Sam Goldwater (“The Monad”) for picking up three wins and for the team behind “Clear Skies” for winning the Best Long Format award. And of course, one big thank you to Friedrich Kirschner, the co-hosts, and the judges for accomplishing the what was probably the daunting task of organizing the festival. All the hard work paid off and it was a blast.
See more pictures at my facebook album, add me too if you like. The album is still being tagged with names and I’m uploading more pictures, so check back again later: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2007743&l=d85c5&id=1404969708
UPDATE 11/4: MORE PHOTOALBUMS!
Facebook album of the MFF 2008 by John C. Martin
And there was a post about the festival on the Wired.com blog! http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/10/game-engines-dr.html
Gman Squad Ep.5 underway and a potential prequel to a previously released film could come afterwards!
-Xanatos
Hi guys. Just a quick update.
Some of you guys may know who Phil Rice, aka Overman (Male Restroom Etiquette, Apology, Broken Obama) and Ricky Grove (Voice actor in the machinima Jill’s song, also had a role in Sam Raimi’s “Army of Darkness” film). Chances are, if you know them, you’re aware of their Overcast Machinima podcast. Anyway, to fill the gap for their podcast releases, they’ve asked a few of the machinima community members to submit ‘sideshows’ for them. I did one such sideshow on machinima maker’s beginners myths and Garrysmod/editing techniques. Check it out, it’s over 14 minutes long and if you want to hear a little more about me, some beginner tips, and some machinima moviemaking ideas/editing tricks specifically to Garrysmod and potentially all other engines too, check it out:
XANATOS’ OVERCAST PODCAST “SIDESHOW”
http://theovercast.com/sideshow-010/
Also, to go with the podcast, make sure you have this article written specifically for the sideshow open:
SIDESHOW ARTICLE
http://jsclan.com/?page_id=32
Enjoy! Also, today’s Wednesday..that means in 2-3 days..the 2008 Machinima Film Festival in NYC! I’ll be speaking on the Student panel at Eyebeam at 2:00 pm, and will pretty much be there most of Friday and Saturday. If you’re in the area, come check it out, it’s free. I’ll bring back plenty of pictures, hopefully. If you read one of the earlier posts, you can check out the best student category nominated submission, which is a combined version of our Half-Life 2 Anxiety & Nightmare.
-Xanatos
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