There used to be a thread here about it - and I dug through 3 or 4 pages, before coming to the conclusion - even if I did find it - it's all old and out dated information because that thread was posted so long ago!
So - I present you a new thread on an old topic - with more... updated info! Prepare for a long ramble...
Well, I figure I might as well blab about it here. (I don't think I have previously...)
Anyway - this might interest some people. Others may wanna beat me over the head.
My friend and I do a machinima (hold on, I will explain that in a minute!) called "Neverending Nights" based off of
Neverwinter Nights from BIOWARE. Now, some of you are asking, "What is machinima?"
Essentially machinima is when you use a game engine and capture (and control) the video to make a video of some kind: whether a skit, a music video, or an on going series. The best known machinima out there, without a doubt is
RedvsBlue which uses the HALO game engine.
Now, my friend (Adam) and I wanted to do something else. When RvB took off which such success - it seemed like everyone and their mother wanted to do a machinima - and all of them seemed to be based off HALO (thanks to RvB). So when Adam and I decided we wanted to try our hand at this - we wanted something different to stand out. So we used Neverwinter Nights.
Our first five episodes are nothing short, of perhaps, horrible. We were just learning how to do it (the video resolution is horrid, the audio quality is pretty bad, the writing and acting was stiff). But as we moved on, we fell into the groove of how it works, and we have done things (and spent money!) to upgrade and improve the series. We went from using PC mics, to using a karoke machine running through the PC (yeah, weird but it had superior quality sound over standard pc mics), then we moved to building an actual sound proof booth inside Adam's garage, spending 100 bucks per mic (one for each side of the booth), and bought an analogue/digital coverter to increase sound performance. All of this happened around Episode 10. So from there, you can hear the audio improv (not to mention, I got much better at editing audio and video). By Episode 11, we had a new way to capture the video, and had better control of everything, essentially. So from Episode 11 on we climbed in performance in every way - from writing, acting, editing, quality, you name it.
So - where the heck can you find our stuff?
You can head to our website,
NeverendingNights.com and from there you can read the
Character Profiles I recently uploaded, you can see the
cast listing for each episode, you can join our
forums, check out some
fan art that's been done, you can check out our
online store for various loot... and of course, you can check out the
videos that started it all.
And while, I say our first five episodes do "suck" as we strived to learn - I think one should still watch them, as it does set up the story and the characters. (Episode 17 is probably my personal favorite... though people seem to love the goblins from Episode 11).
We've met with some surprising "success" as we have done this.
PC GAMER UK got a hold of us and did a small write up on us and included the first five episodes on their DVD for the magazine (plus a special episode we did for PC GAMER UK once they contacted us!), Bioware - the folks who made Neverwinter Nights -
interviewed Adam and I on their site about our series, we have been linked in several tutorials on Bioware's site (
here,
here,
here, and
here.), and Adam and I even flew out to New York (from San Diego) because we were nominated for the
2005 Machinima Film Festival.
Phew. Okay.
Clearly I need to get into the publicity business...
