NEW VIDEO: STRANGER IN NEED

[Ross Scott]

The video was great by the way, seemed like there was a lot of people in the credits and its nice to see a lot of people coming together to make stuff like this.

Okay I can't hold back after reading a comment like this. A lot of people in the credits did about 5-20 minutes worth of work, and were so hard to get a hold of that if I had to do it again, I would have done all of their work myself. I was hoping to assign some of the easiest jobs to other people to help save time, but that proved fairly disastrous overall. Also the people in the credits are just the ones that DID something. The majority of the volunteers ended up not doing anything. Now some other people really did do a bunch of work though, so it's definitely a mix. One person did more work in one night than 15 people were able to do in over 3 weeks. In the future, I'm really going to have to reconsider how much help I ask for, on average about 80% of volunteers who offer to help, never do ANYTHING (or even reply after the first email) and of the remainder, about 75% of them will disappear randomly.

 

To volunteers: If I asked you for something simple, and you did it and replied faster than a week, congratulations, you're not who I'm referring to. Also if you had the courtesy to tell me you were too busy to help, I also appreciated that. All other volunteers: what the hell guys

 

 

So I jumped up in my chair

you scare the shit out of me, Ross!

I actually wasn't even trying to scare anybody with this one, although I did want a tense vibe

 

I'm guessing the guy who did all the work in one night was Sean who animated the car?

No, I did the car in the sections where it doesn't look quite as good, Mendelevius did the car in the sections where it looked pretty damn good. Sean did do a ton of work in one night, by placing down lots of underbrush props to make the forest look more believable. Other volunteers did some work there, but Sean came in and blew away all of them (and everyone else I tried to assign to that) in one night.

[lavaheart]

Man that would damage your car:

 

 

R1a3A6q05f8

 

 

lol I'm sorry but in the slow mo version... before the car comes one of the people that was later hit was turned backwards recording on his phone in the direction of the car XD (the sight of someone that silly just made my day...)

 

also great movie scott!!! I loved it! and almost jumped at the end!

[scott155]

That was pretty eerie, Ross. Nice job, I wouldn't mind seeing more stuff that's like this and The Tunnel. I certainly like eerie, creepy, surreal kinda stuff more than typical "scary" horror stuff.

[danielsangeo]

Ha! Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

[av3nger]

No, I did the car in the sections where it doesn't look quite as good, Mendelevius did the car in the sections where it looked pretty damn good. Sean did do a ton of work in one night, by placing down lots of underbrush props to make the forest look more believable. Other volunteers did some work there, but Sean came in and blew away all of them (and everyone else I tried to assign to that) in one night.

 

Funny thing is, I had never used Hammer up until that point.

 

Good work.

[RocketDude]

Even though you made it with methods you grew to hate, and while some may pass it up, I have to say:

 

That. Was. AMAZING!

 

 

I think you nailed the whole "creepy town that sucks people in" thing rather well, the animation still holds up, and it does sort of have a tense vibe of "what's going to happen next?"

 

[danielsangeo]

 

When the driver said, "Screw it, I'm out of here," I was with him 100% of the way (though I may have attempted to book it out of town before then).

 

Also, big spoilers on this (I suggest not reading this unless you're very curious about the possible inspiration for this story):

 

 

I see the town is called "Midwich", which is a town from a story called "The Midwich Cuckoos", which was later remade into the "Village of the Damned" movies, about all the life in Midwich falling unconscious for a day, then all child-bearing able women in the town fall pregnant at the same time, then give birth to otherworldly children who might not be entirely human. This idea adds to the creepiness factor of this story, IMHO. Kudos, Ross!

 

Edited December 4, 2012 by Guest (see edit history)

[Benito]

Have you used unreal engine enough to get an understanding of how much easier/quicker making videos will be? Will it essentially be the same "look" as your source videos, or is there a noticeable difference in graphics?

[GaSHiSHiN]

Ross, what do you think about closed captions on YouTube? I mean, maybe your community should be doing something in this direction, like verification and correction subtitles (at least for English language), contact with representatives Machinima.com for sending them or something like that? And maybe you can find person on forum for this post?

Or now Machinima.com not interested in such doings?

[Radiatus]

BETTER TO ASK THE WAY TO GO ASTRAY

[Bugthing]

Ross, where did you get that car music? I think I've heard it before somewhere, but I can't figure out what it is.

 

Edit: NEVER MIND. It occurred to me to look at the end of the video.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Guest (see edit history)

[PoiSonSonic]

STALKER maybe? It is written in the end of the movie. Anyways. For me, this is an A in many things. For the first... well second, after Star Trek Original, time the story and idea overwhelm my fanatic desire of maximum quality. I'd invite you to hollywood if I were some tough guy from there

 

Special thanks to danielsangeo from me ^^

[MrOpposite]

To volunteers: If I asked you for something simple, and you did it and replied faster than a week, congratulations, you're not who I'm referring to. Also if you had the courtesy to tell me you were too busy to help, I also appreciated that. All other volunteers: what the hell guys

 

Man, that sucks... I wasn't able to help out even though I offered, but at least I replied that I wasn't able to help out. Why do people just ditch the guy they look up to so much in such a rude way?

 

EDIT: Misquote

 

EDIT2: Main reason I wasn't able to help out was because, where I would have had the time to do some work if my hammer-skills were fresh, I didn't have the time to both fresh them up (haven't been doing hammer-stuff in quite a while) and do the actual work. And instead of saying I would be able to do something and then fail, I didn't take on the task so that he could reassign it to someone else. Also from the looks of it, my skill set wasn't even needed for this movie...

 

Also I forgot to say, great video, creepy as hell!

[SirNicholas]

Damn. That was.. unnerving. Not necessarily creepy, just unnerving.

 

 

My first thought was: 'Dat music.. S.T.A.L.K.E.R!'

It automatically associated the memories from that game and increased the mood tenfold.

 

Awesome video, Ross. Too bad the Source engine made production so much less enjoyable than the result.

[Patofilio]

Have you seen the guys using a Kinect to animate? I've heard they have managed to make it work with a couple of engines, including Source. The quality isn't bad at all. Maybe it could make your animation process easier.

[Aldibar]

I'm no critic, so I won't criticize. I see nothing to criticize. It's a lot of time put into something fun that's free for anybody who wants to watch. It's fantastic if you asked me! Great work, and it'll only get better over time!

[Lord Sinister]

 

But how did that guy get in to his car at the end? And what was with the people in that town? I sense we're not supposed to get any answers here.

 

Other than that, I found it both atmospheric and entertaining, but also strangely humourous and off-beat.

 

[Ross Scott]

GordonFreeman:

 

Something REALLY screwed up when I tried to reply on the forum and I accidentally deleted your post. Sorry about that. I even had a reply to you, you were asking about the Skyrim COPS video asking why they were able to submit that. My answer: I guess Machinima lied to me?

 

Ross, what do you think about closed captions on YouTube?

I want to get as many up as possible, but I have to go through Machinima to do it. In the past the mistakes made in the typos kind of discouraged me since they weren't 100% accurate, although they were very close. I'm thinking my perfectionist attitude about it is holding things up, so I may just see about getting a bunch up soon out of the existing ones and call them the official ones. It's just another entry on my giant "to do" list.

 

Have you used unreal engine enough to get an understanding of how much easier/quicker making videos will be? Will it essentially be the same "look" as your source videos, or is there a noticeable difference in graphics?

Yes, I have used it. As for it being faster and quicker, for most things it's not that it's necessarily a lot faster or quicker under ideal circumstances, but the difference is more like between a really reliable car v. one that breaks down every 3rd time you use the brakes. As for the look, it will be different because it's a different engine, however I promise not to use the tinting, desaturating, and overblooming crap that plagues so many Unreal 3 engine games. I'm also going to make sure I have high quality antialiasing on UDK videos.

 

But how did that guy get in to his car at the end?

I thought about that while working on the video, and hey, the driver does exit his vehicle multiple times. Grigori could be proactive with his hitchhiking.

[danielsangeo]

Plus, with the overall surreality of the town, maybe the normal laws of physics and such do not apply or Grigori doesn't need to enter the car by traditional methods. Grigori is a slippery devil anyway.

[K0Z]

After watching it I wondered if there really was a gas station near the town. And if there was, it wouldn't be the type of station the has the gas you use to fuel cars with. No it would be the type of gas that has adverse effects on the human brain causing mild to extreme insanity. That type of gas would be a rather effective weapon for causing chaos, delicious delicous chaos. . .