Hey everyone, no new videos I’m afraid, but here’s a news update. I’ve successfully relocated to Los Angeles, it’s about what I expected. Machinima had several new hires besides me and wasn’t fully prepared for everyone, so I haven’t really had a computer to work on for the past 2 weeks. My own computer arrived from moving a couple days ago, so I can at least resume working on some things. I still don’t have a place to record audio however, so for now this means no new videos that requires me to voice act. In light of that, I’m focusing on the pilot episode I mentioned (where I won’t be a voice actor) and a partially completed Civil Protection episode where my dialogue was already recorded a long time ago. I’m sure the audio situation will get resolved eventually, everyone seems interested in me continuing Freeman’s Mind especially. In the meantime, here are some things I’ve learned about LA that I didn’t already know:

-Cars actually yield the right of way to pedestrians here. This is a very alien concept to me.

-I’m honestly amazed Taco Bell can survive out here in light of the competition.

-There seems to be an unspoken stigma here against people who ride the bus. Lucky for me, I don’t care.

-An old Indian name for Los Angeles translates to “the valley of smoke.” I consider this more accurate than “the city of angels”

-It’s easy to see why there were power shortages here a few years ago when many power lines buzz erratically so loud I’m expecting sparks to be shooting out from them.

-I’m starting to see why some art directors for videogames consider making everything look brown to be realistic.

Hey everyone, big news, I’m being hired to work full time for Machinima.com! While some of you may not care about that, this is likely to be good news for everyone who’s a fan of the videos. My official job title will be “segment producer” and will entail a lot of what I’ve already been doing (making my own videos), and also acting as a technical advisor for Machinima.com’s other projects, especially those that use the Source engine. Some may consider this as me selling out, and that could be, but I don’t think it will impact the videos negatively. I’ve discussed the job offer with them at length and I’ll still get to write and direct my own material and have final edit, and you’ll still get to watch the videos for free. The only real limitation they may impose on me is to have my longer episode ideas (which I haven’t gotten to yet anyway) split up in more of a mini-series format. However, they’re also cool with me distributing the final, unsplit version of those episodes to be watched as I would have intended, so I see this as a non-issue.

In case it’s not clear, Civil Protection WILL continue, as will the pilot episode I’m working on, as will Freeman’s Mind (though this one is more up to you, FM has become more of a fan-service for me than something I would continue without your interest), so none of this should jeopardize more videos coming out in the future. While nothing is quite certain, Machinima.com is offering me support to produce the more involved episodes like CP. I may actually have animators assisting that I can work with locally, which could be worth its weight in gold to me. While I think it’s possible I may actually have less time to work on the videos than I’ve been putting in, the additional help may make up for that.

Part of this job will entail me moving near Machinima.com’s headquarters, which is located in Los Angeles, California. I’ve currently been living in semi-rural Virginia, so this move may be similar to “The Beverly Hillbillies”, except that they were rich. I’d like to make it known that just because I’m working for an official company now, does NOT mean I’ll be getting rich from it. On the contrary, the cost of living in LA is monstrous. I anticipate a 1 bedroom apartment in the region will take up roughly half my income, and I’m going to be giving up my car and taking the bus to economize further. Also I can’t say LA is my first choice of places to live as I prefer forests, fog, cold climate, etc., but this could be a dream job for me otherwise. The level of creative control I’ll be getting is quite rare, something even most professional directors don’t get.

Finally, I may find I regret saying this, but I know NO ONE in the LA region. I don’t want to promise anything in case you’re a psycho (and not the fun kind), but if you live in that general area (I don’t know where I’ll be living yet, but M.com is located in the Hollywood area), are in a similar age range (I’m 26), and are interested in meeting me, go ahead and send me an email and tell me about yourself. It could take me quite a while to get back to you as I’ll be very busy initially and will have limited internet access, but I’ll try and respond to everyone who can write in complete sentences. If it helps (and I guess I have to stereotype here) here are some types of people I tend to get along with: artists, philosophers, intellectuals, easygoing people, goths, metalheads, horror movie fans, and people into surreal stuff in general. Bonus points if you’re willing to buy me food. Also if you smoke, I may not want to hang out with you much, simply because I hate the smell of cigarettes; it’s nothing against anyone personally. As for my own personality, I’m not sure how to describe myself, I’m maybe a little bit like a watered down cross between Mike and Dave from Civil Protection. Freeman’s Mind is more just acting. If you just think of me as some sort of goblin in a workshop, I think it’s hard to go wrong with that image. And for those that care, here’s a picture of me from last year, though lately I’m looking more like a musketeer or Guy Fawkes.

That’s all for now! There will be a delay on all videos while I relocate, but hopefully things can pick up soon after that.

Ross

P.S. I’ll try and get the broken download links for FM back up when I get a chance.

Youtube

Filefront 640x480 WMV (49MB)

Here’s the next episode finally. I was originally hoping to have this done sooner, and even after it was finished a couple days ago, there was more of a delay on getting it uploaded than last time. Unfortunately, I think this one might be one of the weaker episodes since despite this one taking longer to come out, I was putting myself under the gun to get this one out as fast as possible. Thus, some lines that maybe should have had retakes I left as they are. I think the writing is more or less on par though.

In other news, the subtitle page has been repaired, though I’m still horrendously behind on reviewing and uploading all the volunteer submitted subtitles. It will still be a while before they’re all up I’m afraid, just be aware that I haven’t forgotten about them. Also check back in a day or two for more news.

I’m letting people know the next FM episode is going to be a little delayed. I’ve had sort of a perfect storm of things go wrong. First, Otto, the audio editor that assists me, had his hard drive completely fail on him, so he was unable to help on this episode, which adds to the time for me to do it myself.

Second, my system got hit by some sort of virus that hosed my whole OS. I spent most of this weekend just trying to fix it. I didn’t lose any important files, but I still have a ton of software I need to reinstall, so I’m trying to catch up. For those that are interested, I’ve had this sort of thing happen before using AVG as a virus scanner, this time I was using Avast. Since it failed me, I’m going to try out Antivir this time, which is supposedly one of the better antivirus programs out there. This is actually an extremely rare occurrence for me, I can count on one hand the number of times a virus has taken down my OS before.

Anyway, I’ll get the next FM episode done as soon as I can, then I hope to catch up on some of the subtitles after that.

Just a quick note to let users of the “Google Reader” know that I have added an “Autodiscovery” link in an attempt to satisfy this application. There were reports that this particular reader was not working with the feed, and anonymous users suggested that this addition would solve the problem. If you have “Google Reader” please test the feed and provide any feedback as comments to this post. As I don’t have this reader, please be as descriptive as possible, not just ‘It don’t work’.

Also, any users that wish to be credited for providing useful suggestions to the site should take the time to register, at which point you will be mentioned by login name. Curently the suggestion for the “Autodiscovery” addition is credited to “Anonymous” - I guess you know who you are.