A few years ago, I adapted an old speck screenplay I worked on many years ago before scrapping completely for the machinima scene. The series was an action / drama based story surrounding a battle hardened NSA agent's mission to hunt down and prevent a biological attack led by his former partner and protege. However, with each step this man (Hastings) makes to prevent the attack, his former partner (Slade) is always seemingly two steps ahead of him and his agency. Admittedly, this was heavily influenced by my love for conspiracy thrillers such as the Bourne series, 24, and Chinatown to some extent.
However, after episode 3, we called it quits because it was very clear that machinima.com's viewer base simply wasn't interested despite positive ratings and having even been featured on Machinima's now cancelled "Storymode". Fact is, if a machinima upload can't even break 10k with it's massive sub count, then clearly something is amiss. Who knows, maybe machinima isn't the place for anyone to attempt dramatic narrative since it's probably harder to take video game characters seriously, heh. Or maybe folks just straight up weren't into it. Looking back now, there's definitely a lot I would have done differently with the writing, a lot I would have cut, but too little, too late, I s'pose.
I do wish we could have gone a little further though, since I'd already written up to Episode 6 where the story really begins to pick up, plus all the lines for 4 were already done. *I felt especially bad since the voice of Valerik spoke an entire scene in Russian, and to not use that recording after how painful it had to be to record made me feel like a complete prick*.
Still, I was impressed to see what fellow machinima-maker Brent made of it. A great deal of work went into making each episode, including the writing, the filming, and the original soundtrack, and was glad to be working with a number of familiar cast members once more. So I thought I'd share the fruits of that labor here; figured maybe folks here might enjoy it, or even have critique or notes as to what they feel hindered the series or what simply fell flat for them.
Hope y'all enjoy!
[B]Episode 3 - 'Up To Speed'[/B]
[video=youtube;cZ7n_hGI1fs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7n_hGI1fs[/video]
[B]Episode 2 - 'Without A Trace'[/B]
[video=youtube;OXHyMHUrlu0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXHyMHUrlu0[/video]
[B]Episode 1 - 'Two Steps Ahead - Pilot'[/B]
[video=youtube;rtcuO5MRvGU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtcuO5MRvGU[/video]
looks great
Thank you kindly.
Yeah, your mistake was going with Mashitima. Their front page gets spammed with videos and pushes down your video within 10 minutes, and Mashitima's audience doesn't appreciate fine cinema, either.
[QUOTE=Mr. Tripp;39365182]Yeah, your mistake was going with Mashitima. Their front page gets spammed with videos and pushes down your video within 10 minutes, and Mashitima's audience doesn't appreciate fine cinema, either.[/QUOTE]
Not only that, they spam your videos with shitty annotations even over dramatic segments. They're a sham.
No doubt, quality control leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately however, the alternative was put in the work and receive next to no views, had we uploaded to our own channel. It is like being between a view-less rock and a really asinine place. Our perspective is, if we are to put in that much work, we want a larger amount of people to see it, and that simply does not happen with our channel.
[QUOTE=Doakes;39367469]No doubt, quality control leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately however, the alternative was put in the work and receive next to no views, had we uploaded to our own channel. It is like being between a view-less rock and a really asinine place. Our perspective is, if we are to put in that much work, we want a larger amount of people to see it, and that simply does not happen with our channel.[/QUOTE]
will you work on something in future times?
Currently, I am working on an action based series for Portable Ops Plus called Soldiers Without Borders, and a PW followup called Complicity Syndicate. Initially, they were machinima like TSA, but I have since taken to using 3DS Max to animate the series instead.
Episode 4 I am shooting to have released hopefully before next week, as it will be the first animated episode. Mostly the same cast of voice actors and obviously the same writer as TSA, only more freedom with the camera and motion, something that was lacking prior with machinima.
The stupid fucking annotations for other videos that pop up on Machinimas' videos piss me off so fucking much. I'm going to slam an infant face first into a goddamn wall if I see another one, I swear to fucking god.
[QUOTE=AlexGT;39374832]The stupid fucking annotations for other videos that pop up on Machinimas' videos piss me off so fucking much. I'm going to slam an infant face first into a goddamn wall if I see another one, I swear to fucking god.[/QUOTE]
disable annotations and grow a set
Unfortunately, that cannot be helped as they're always trying to plug more highlighted projects onto every other video posted. A business hinderance perhaps, but like I said, not many other alternatives out there. At least not any alternatives that would result in the kinda turnout we'd hope for.
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