So you've OBVIOUSLY read my short and to-the-point chronicling of the whole situation as seen from my eyes, and now you get the situation from the eyes of Hat Trick Productions, aka. The Production Company. Interestingly, some of their observations are very similar to mine, though they've downplayed her disappearance to a single month and put perhaps a tedious amount of focus on the "flamewars", even though they never got far enough to truly be flamewards. Some minor flicker battles were fought, but nothing major.
One shame about focusing so much on the supposed flamewars is that there's less time devoted to the actual work a lot of people did. One thing I think is hilarious about it, though, is that at the end of it, I'm portrayed as a bit of a villain, which I quite enjoyed watching. ^_^ Half-arsed endorsement indeed!
As for the quality of the documentary... I think it's entirely befitting the muppet-show of a project this entire thing has been. The completely silly and sarcastic narration complements the whole situation, though it of course also helps to downplay what was a very emotional time for a lot of people and turns it into a bit of a "look at what the stupid webternet people got up to this year!" kind of program, which is fine. It's not like I'm not used to being portrayed as a nerdy tosser by the media. (I was interviewed for the telly when I was camping out for Lord of the Rings... Interesting lesson in how TV does whatever it can to turn things into a story... like... "LOOKIT THE NERD!" for example.)
So yeah. Some more text for you! Hope you enjoyed!
Look at me! I'm a star! I'm on the telly!!!
(I'm even on IMDB now!)
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Let me tell you a little story that started in early June of this year. It's about a minor Youtube "celebrity" who made a video inviting people to make a zombie movie over the internet that would be released on Hallowe'en. A lot of people thought it was a really cool idea and before you could say "They're coming to get you Barbara!", the forums were abuzz with ideas and zombie-movie banter. People were flocking to it, offering their services and spending a lot of time discussing the film. A production company even wanted to make a documentary about the project for the BBC! Oh, what good times!
After almost two months, they called for people to audition for the main roles of the Internet Zombie Movie through the magic of the internet.. Among the people sending in their auditions was yours truly, auditioning for two of the roles; Ethan (the "asshole") and Ben (the sensitive one). After submitting my auditions, I thought it'd be a good idea to get involved with the forums, so I signed up. I quickly got heavily involved with it and participated in a lot of discussions about character building, tone of the film and so on. It was a very friendly and very enthusiastic group of people I met there, and I was having a ball. Bryony (the project's initiator and leader) wasn't around, though, which was a bit strange. The casting was to be announced in the end of july, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Two months went by without word from the project's leader, except from appearing on the BBC episodes pretending like she had been working on the film (work that never actually ended up materialising in any way, shape or form). A lot of forum goers were getting quite anxious about the whole thing, including myself. I was quite vocal in expressing my distaste for the lack of leadership and communication from Bryony, as can briefly be seen in this episode. Don't let the spelling of my nick fool you: It really is me and not my evil twin, Magnalus.
During this time, development grinded to a near halt in the forums. Attempts were made to contact Bryony for some decision-making or just any kind of a sound from her, but she was busy with her vacation in America. After some drama, a group of people got together and decided to be productive about it. It was decided that since no one had even heard from Bryony, the Hallowe'en deadline was obviously not to be honored. Then we (I say we because I was part of the group) decided to really get to work on re-writing the first draft of the film to give it some real shape and some real characters.
Everyone was fired up by this turn of events. Imagine our surprise when Bryony even showed up to check out the first meeting of the writing team! We all had a nice chat on Skype about things that need to be done in order to make the script filmable and Bryony seemed to agree with everything we said! Hooray! Everything was going to work out! But no. After turning off voice chat, Bryony announced that the film was STILL to be finished by Hallowe'en and we had to finish re-writing the script (remember, we hadn't started yet) within two weeks, or else she would use the original draft, which she had now decided was "Fine as it is". It needs to be pointed out at this point that she was referring to a pre-first draft as she hadn't read the actual first draft.
No amount of pleading or argumentation could dissuade her, so the team set about trying to rewrite the film in two weeks. The entire group worked really hard and worked together really well. We had several very productive and civilised meetings, and in the end, we all managed to deliver our various parts of the script to Mitch, who had been appointed "script organiser" and was also tasked with putting the script together from our individual pieces.
Once he had put it together, however, he decided at the last minute that the script wasn't good enough. It was simply much too long and badly paced to his eyes. He set about re-writing several pieces of script, cutting away some of the fat and then adding new fat in other places, cutting jokes, adding his own jokes, etc. None of this was discussed with the rest of the script writers, so imagine our surprise when his "final draft" of the script ended up on the forums. I shouldn't have to tell you that there were a few angry writers that day.
You can't lay much of the blame for this incident on Mitch, because as misguided as he was, his intentions were good. At least that's what I tell myself. If we had had a week more, we would also have had time to discuss the changes he felt he needed to make and we could have come to an agreement. But no. We WERE given a chance to submit yet another draft in contention with Mitch's, but Bryony, the leader with no experience in any kind of film production except for Youtube vlogs, made a decision and stuck with Mitch's draft.
What happened to the auditions? Well, after three months, Bryony gave the forum denizens a list of actors she thought would be good for the film and asked the forum-goers to help her decide on the casting. Among those people was yours truly, up for the part of Ethan because I was "popular on the forums" - as she so delicately put it in Episode 23 of the documentary series. I will not make claims about my own acting abilities, but the general consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of me playing Ethan. However, she decided I wasn't right for the role.
In retrospect, I'm glad I haven't been working on the film, because it would have wreaked havoc on my coursework, which I'm struggling with as it is, but the decision came along with a whole range of decisions from her side that were made with no regard for the opinions of the people involved in this "collaborative project". I was angry for a while, but I soon decided not to let the project bother me any longer. I was happy there was finally a director (Rather than telling the project members who had been asking about the director for a long time, she announced this in the BBC episodes) and the film was finally getting made.
The film wasn't finished on Hallowe'en, obviously. A promo was released, however, with all the footage filmed so far. That's four and a half minutes of actual film by the date the full film was supposed to be finished according to Bryony. I'll admit that I was happy to see that the guy who replaced me, though having the wrong physicality for the role, was the best of the actors in this scene. However, the script has been changed even further and the editing is supremely awkward. No matter. Not my part of the film to think about, really.
I had put the whole thing to rest when a mass e-mail arrived from Bryony regarding the half-hour documentary that is to air this sunday on the BBC. I will not quote the entire e-mail, but the general gist of it was "I'm a star in my own TV-show (with some others) and you have to watch it so I can get on TV some more!" In the entire e-mail, seven words were used to indicate that the film was a collaborative effort and not something she made entirely herself. Conveniently, she put up a video today that was much the same as her e-mail except she doesn't mention anyone but herself in this. If I had not known her better, I would maybe have taken her video as facetious, that she probably was joking, talking about starring in her own show, etc. However, I find it hard to believe.
The combination of the e-mail and the video was too much for me. In a rage, I sent her an e-mail telling her exactly how I felt about the way she has treated everyone involved in the project and her treatment of the project herself. Again, I won't quote all of it, but I did mention that she was behaving a lot like a "pampered, ego-centric prima donna with no shred of respect for any of the people you've depended upon throughout the production of this film." It aggravates me that only those involved in the project really know the real story. Whenever I see a comment like "Wow, you really did a good job, Bryony! You really deserve all this!" I feel a shot of anger going through my body.
I'm not even bitter about my own efforts being diminished. I'm angry that this whole project has become a vehicle of attention for someone who hasn't done anything to deserve it while a whole bunch of really dedicated people are shunted into the shadows and spoken of as a bunch of whining douchebags. Sure, there's a good chance the project would never have gotten off the ground in the first place if it hadn't been Bryony (or someone of her "caliber") initiating it, but there's NO chance the project would have ever come close to fruition if it hadn't been for a all the people who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on it while she was busy touring the States and making decisions left and right.
That's my rage spent and my story told. I realised I hadn't said so much as a peep about the Internet Zombie Movie on this site, so I decided to do something about it. I'm sorry this has turned into such a massive wall of text, but it had to be done. I feel I can finally put all of this to rest and wash my hands of the entire situation. Perhaps I can focus on actually working now... (This has not been proof-read yet, because I can't be bothered. I'll do that later.)
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I wrote this poem months ago but never actually recorded it. I'm a delicious poet, aren't I?
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Recorded back in June, this is a pretentious meditation on the fact that most of our travelling these days consist of standing or sitting still, waiting.
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Aka: Spouting Garbage
I've been gone from the site for longer than I ever have before, and for that I'm embarrased. I'll try to get back on track.
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I've neglected to put anything about my addiction to the Spore Creature Creator on here so far. Quite why, I have no idea. When it first came out, I played it solidly for a full week, hardly doing anything at all except play, eat and sleep.
Spore, when it comes out, will be a game of epic proportions. You start out with a single-celled creature that you evolve as you go along the game. By the end, via a series of different types of game play, you're controlling a space-faring race of creatures that's able to create life on planets or destroy entire planets, if that's your wish.
The Creature Creator is all about just making creatures for the full game. With the tools available, it's amazing how many different creatures you can make. When you've made them, you can upload them to the Sporepedia where they'll be joined by more than two million other creatures. I've made tons of "original" creatures, but I've also been making creatures that look like characters and animals from real life or various games, like Mannoroth the Destructor from Warcraft 3, pictured in original and Spore form respectively:
I think the likeness is rather good, myself. If you want to see my various creatures, you can go to my profile page and check them out. There are a LOT of them, though. Eighty at the current count, in fact. I'll put some of them up with some stories and stuff later on. For now, have a look at my dancy video right here (made from one of the earlier versions of Mannoroth) and then buy the FULL version of the creature creator so you can get all the different parts to use. Well, you can use the trial as well, but you only get one quarter of the parts.
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When I first heard of it, I thought the Threadless site was just another t-shirt seller. However, it's so much more than that. It's a web community of designers and artists who make designs and rate eachother's designs all week until a small selection of the designs are chosen for printing. The reward to the winners is simply stunning at 2000 USD cash plus vouchers and other niceties.
I just ordered my first pink garment from there, namely the hilariously named Gay Pride T-Shirt (Groups of lions are called "prides") and I'm very tempted to start uploading some of my own designs from the Cafepress days when I get back to Scotland.
So check it out.
(Yes, the link is a referral thing, so if you buy a shirt there, I actually get three dollars off on their products myself, which is the exact same amount I got for every t-shirt sold on Cafepress.)
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We bought Age Of Conan (The Norwegian-produced, hotly anticipated MMO based on the Conan world) today and as I'm about to enter the second hour of the installation process, I would like to take this opportunity to quote Henry Rollins in his fantastic spoken-word album A Rollins In The Wry:
My life... is leaving me.
I think it's safe to say that the Age of Conan will pretty much be over by the time all the patches and everything are done installing.
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Some of you know of my (pretty much consistantly failed) attempts at writing, chief amongst them Bulb Squad Chronicles, which I never continued after the second installment. Well, it occurs to me that I don't know if you people write at all.
I can think of a few of you who MIGHT be writers, but I don't KNOW. So here's the deal. If you're like me and you're working on some project (or several) and you're missing fellow writers to talk to about ideas and to get feedback from, I just started a forum at write.magnulus.com that you can join.
Now, it's a relatively closed thing for the sake of the privacy of the people who write there (Mainly me and two others for now) so only register if you're actually planning on participating either with feedback, your own projects or both. It sounds kinda elitist, but it really is only for privacy reasons.
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Some of you may or may not remember that I spoke about Beyond Good And Evil a long time ago and, at that point, talked about how it would be awesome on the Wii. Well, it's been two years, but it's finally actually coming out! Counter-intuitively enough, it's not coming out for the Wii, but I'm fairly certain it'll be awesome-sauce (which is the online lingo for "cool" these days) in any case. Have a look at the trailer just below here:
An online friend (whose name I didn't know was Fabian 'till ten minutes ago even though I've known him for five years or so) pointed me in its direction and was lamenting the colours and general art direction of the trailer. He conceded that it looks absolutely gorgeous, but that he missed the look of the original game, as seen here:
I think that the trailer is quite possibly taking a leaf out of Blizzard's book and using a realistic design for the cinematics but a more saturated, cartoony look for the game itself, like with World of Warcraft or any of the other Blizzard games. Even if they do stick with this realistic style all the way through, I don't mind myself as long as the gameplay, story and animation are as well-done as the original.
In worrying news, the CEO of Ubisoft said that the original was commercially unsuccessful because it was too hard and that they're looking to make it more "accessible". The game was nowhere near too hard when it came out, and I suspect, like I told Fabian, that the game is an easier sell to the CEO if they say that "Oh, it sold because it was too difficult, we'll just make it easier!" rather than "We're still not entirely sure why it didn't sell. Could be marketing, the strange characters, the cartoony style (yeah, right!), the non-genre-specific nature of it, or any combination of all of those, but we're sure people will like it THIS time!!".
Let's hope the game industry works a little like the movie industry and that they were only saying that to get the backing from the CEO. Even if it IS too easy, I'm fairly certain it'll still be enjoyable to play.
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