Hey people, I thought I’d give a minor update since several of you seem restless from the comments. Many of you can’t wait for another Freeman’s Mind episode it seems. The biggest reason I haven’t been working on it is because I haven’t had a place to record. At the moment I’m just staying with family. At Machinima.com, I could come into the office in the middle of the night and record it then. Right now everything’s in flux.

I noticed some comments claiming the reason I haven’t released anything lately is because I have a life. That’s incorrect. A lot of what I’ve been up to is hunting for a place to live where I can make noise for recording that I can also afford. You can complain all you want more Freeman’s Mind hasn’t been coming out, but the series isn’t exactly known for Freeman talking in a hushed tone, so I’m not going to make new ones unless I can do them properly. The good news is I just yesterday found a place, though I still need to take care of things like internet hookup, phone service, etc., but I should be getting back on track on soon. Once I’m set up in my new place, my plans are to make a new FM episode as soon as possible, then continue work on The Tunnel, then see where things go from there.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to keep on top of many other things. The website needs work. A new system for managing subtitles is still being established. Machinima.com has deleted more episode download links at random, which I need to put back up. I’m way behind on responding to emails. My files are a mess and very disorganized from working on two different computers for The Tunnel. I still have a ton of animation work to do for The Tunnel. There are some minor map fixes needed for The Tunnel. I’m trying to find time to research new animation techniques and technology that may help things go faster in the future. I need furniture. I’m probably going to need a car again. My headphones are falling apart. At the moment I have no health insurance. I’ll probably die alone. My motherboard chipset fan is making this buzzing sound that makes me want to take an axe to it. The pilot surprise episode is completely on hold at the moment. I’m facing new issues regarding my use of game soundtracks. I’m running into new problems with the Source engine. I’m also busy with stuff that I’m keeping under wraps for various reasons, but I think you’ll be pleased with in the long-term.

I know it’s easy to think that I’m just slacking off and not working on anything, but the best way I can describe things is that I’m retooling everything so that I can start becoming a mini machinima factory. I personally believe I’m going to produce more videos for 2010 than I have for any other year. If you don’t believe me, feel free to count up the most I’ve produced in a year so far and give me hell if I don’t meet that goal by 2011. In the meantime, chill. HL2 Episode 3 is late. Black Mesa mod is late. The Crossing is on hold. They Hunger: Lost Souls hasn’t updated in a year. SiN Episodes died. Many projects associated with the Source engine have a tendency to take for-frigging-ever or die. I’m trying, people.

Youtube

Download 640x480 WMV (11MB)

Well here’s the surprise video I mentioned, I hope I didn’t hype it up too much. This is the first non-machinima video I’ve released. I filmed this back in 2003, but never got around to editing it, so it’s been sitting on my hard drive for years. Since I didn’t have a place to record the past couple weeks and didn’t have a lot of time due to moving, this was the only thing I could think of that I could get out relatively quickly. There are a few video artifacts because I waited longer than I should have before transferring the video from tape, but it’s still watchable.

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten the names of the actors in this, if anyone recognizes them today, let me know, I’ll remember their names once I hear them again. Also due to various reasons I ended up doing the narration for this myself. I’m sure someone else could have done a better job, but the time restraints were tighter than normal. I’d still like to thank everyone who did send me a sample reel, my apologies that I ended up not using you for the voiceover, I can be a picky bastard sometimes.

As for the video itself, if there’s any confusion, I didn’t make a real show about this, it’s just a fake teaser commercial. After uploading this to Youtube, it looks like I’m not the first with this concept, though when I wrote this I was not aware of any other pigeon hunter videos. And yes, we did end up killing a pigeon in the making of this, but it was by accident. The original script didn’t call for killing pigeons, however, one of the actors ended up stepping on one of the pigeons by accident and broke its neck, so I decided to use that for an extra shot where he held it up as a game trophy.

In other news, I’ll be looking for a new place to live soon, but I plan to focus on finishing The Tunnel. Regardless of how far I get, I’ll probably make another Freeman’s Mind for January just because I get the feeling viewers will be ready to lynch me if I don’t. I plan to have many more FM episodes this year, but I’ll be alternating between them and some of my more ambitious projects.

Well I successfully drove from California to Virginia. Driving in a straight line for days gave me plenty of opportunity to go insane, but here I am.

I have a new problem on my hands however. I

I’m going to be leaving soon and heading back to Virginia, which will be quite a drive. I’ll be driving through a lot of desert, you may want to watch the movie “The Hills Have Eyes” to get an idea of what it should be like. Besides getting ready, I’ve been catching up on a lot of things the past couple weeks, though you probably won’t see the results of it until at least January. I’ll be away for about a week travelling, but I’ll get back to work on the videos as soon as I’m done. I’m going to try and get another video out before Christmas as it’s mostly edited. This will be a surprise one and won’t be very long, but I think there’s a good chance you’ll like it. You won’t see any new machinima videos until at least January, though I’ve got a lot of things brewing, I anticipate releasing more videos for 2010 than I did this year.

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In other news, the subtitle situation is still a mess and I’ve come to the realization that the scope of it is too big for me to handle and work on other things. I have hundreds of emails related to subtitles, most of which I haven’t replied to yet, and I’m unsure how to deal with it all. My latest idea is to see if anyone would be interested in assisting me with organizing and processing the subtitles. I would lay out the guidelines for him or her, and you could email that person instead of me to help get them processed. I would still approve all the English ones myself, as I’m the final authority as to what words are being said, but for all other languages, there’s no reason someone else couldn’t help me with this. I would probably hand off the emails I’ve gotten so far to that person and let them follow up and organize everything. I realize this might seem kind of impersonal for the people who have contacted me, but I feel like it’s the only way I’ll make any progress. This is my fault for not realizing just how much time this was going to take. I’d rather hand the job off to someone else who will do a better job than abandon the goal entirely.

If you are interested in being a “subtitle manager,” please email me. My requirements are that you have good communication and English skills, have a lot of time to devote to this, be familiar with Subtitle Workshop or similar software, have your computer able to read non-English characters, and be more organized than I am. Since I’m going to be gone soon, don’t expect any reply from me until at least a week or so. I can’t afford to pay you, but you would get your name on the site here. Also, it’s probably worth writing a paragraph or two just so I can confirm your grammar and spelling are above that of the average internet user.

(ADHD Version at the bottom)
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Hey people, I’ve got another update which you may or may not care about, but it will affect production for a little while. Some of you probably saw this coming, but I’ve recently made the decision to leave Machinima.com as an employee. I’ll still be working with Machinima, but on a different view-based contract, which will pay substantially less, but I won’t have the same kind of deadlines I’ve had lately.

The reason for me leaving is pretty simple. I was getting less done on the stuff I wanted to work on, and I found it much more stressful than working independently. I was working 7 days a week for months, (about 70-80 hours a week in October, 50-60 hours a week in November) and I was either just barely making deadlines, or falling behind on all fronts. Also it led to me having basically no free time, and I had to neglect everything else; exercise, basic household maintenance, recreation, time to research new technology for future episodes, etc. What’s worse is that I felt like some of the projects might be at risk. “The Tunnel” trailer was a perfect example of this because it was rushed out the door without sound effects or the right music, simply because I needed more time. Working indepedently, there would be less Freeman’s Mind episodes out now, but I think the entire episode of The Tunnel would have been completed before Halloween. As it stands now, it probably won’t be until at least January (I may have a different surprise video for December though). I felt like my only choices when producing content was to either lower the quality standards dramatically so I wouldn’t have to spend as much time on it, or else to put in more hours to try and keep up. I obviously went with the latter option and it still wasn’t enough in most cases.

I think pretty much all of this came from a misunderstanding about how much work some of the episodes required and my goals v. Machinima’s. I got along with everyone at the company and don’t think there was ever any negative intent. They never asked me to work those long hours, it was just the only way I was able to try and meet the deadlines. I think the whole situation was simply Machinima being used to producing content faster than what I’m able to keep up with, plus I’ve never been terribly good at time estimates. I’ve noticed in past comments, that some people seem to demonize the company, but you should remember that I accepted this job with some idea of what it would entail, plus I was doing all this on a salary, so it was their money being spent producing content. While I took that very seriously, it’s also the main reason I’m leaving, so I can afford to spend extra time on the videos if I have to.

Some of you may think I’m insane leaving, and maybe I am, but it’s simply a matter of values. My new income will likely put me slightly above the official poverty level, so I may have to find some part-time work to balance things out. While I absolutely care about having enough money to support myself, my main motivation with the videos is making something I’m satisfied with. Some videos that I make I really don’t mind cutting corners on (Freeman’s Mind falls into this category). Others, primarily ones that haven’t even been produced yet, I care about extremely and wouldn’t want to rush or sacrifice anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Although I want to clarify that statement a bit since it’s misleading. I do feel some aspects of a good production shouldn’t be rushed, like writing, editing, voice acting etc., my view on that will likely never change. However, working with the Source engine can be horrendously inefficient for some aspects of production and I’m constantly on the lookout for better ways of doing things. So while I do like to take my time, I also feel some things could be done faster and I sympathize completely with the frustration some of you feel with how long it takes for some of the videos to come out.

On that note, things are likely to be delayed until 2010 because I’ll probably be moving back to Virginia and try to find a cheap house to rent where I can make a lot of noise, so I can record any time I need to. I have a lot of things I’ve been wanting to research technology-wise and I’m pretty confident there will be an increase in videos for the next year. For Freeman’s Mind, while there will be a lull period, I can see myself doing another “marathon month” at some point in the future and promise to make many more episodes. I may alternate between that and other projects. For people who don’t care about my other projects and just want more Freeman’s Mind episodes, that’s fine, but realize that if I were to sacrifice anything, FM would be first in line; so just be glad I’m alternating and not killing off anything.

In the meantime, I’ll be trying to catch up on a million things (I’m months behind on the subtitles), and continuing work on Civil Protection.

EDIT:

I decided this post must be pretty wordy for some of the Youtube people, so here’s the ADHD version!