State of the Organization

I'm currently about 1/3 done with the re-write. Overall I'm very pleased with how it's progressing. So far it's just bigger, badder, deeper, and more fun than the way things were in the first draft. I had hoped to shorten the length a bit, but so far it remains the same.

The first scene has been completely overhauled, with a new setting, location, characters, and situations. Whereas before it started with pure exposition and saw no action until the second act, this time there is some simple, suspenseful action right from the beginning.

In addition I've made the entire story a flashback, and because of that it made it a lot easier to flesh out Andy's character in both his actions and voiceovers. Every piece of dialogue has been scrapped and completely re-written.

The goal of the story has been completely changed as well, to something more understandable and definitely more interesting. The first and third acts will essentially remain the same, save the re-imagining of unecessary scenes and the re-writing of dumb dialogue, like the scene I mentioned above. The second act will be entirely different. I was never too happy with that section anyways - it was the least planned and most of it ended up as filler.

Currently I'm considering having act 2 start a bit earlier than it used to be, and make the rest of act 2 the new scenes, making things shorter and tighter. That's the plan, but of course it all depends on how it paces. In my older stories, I had a problem with rushing the endings. So I always keep that in mind. Finding the right balance will be hard. Even though this can be solved later in editing, I like to perfect things as much as possible on paper rather than doing it at the last minute.

Unfortunately I can't stand for anything less than "great", and even the slightest doubt makes me depressed and obssessive. Being a perfectionist is a disease. Sometimes I wish I can just write a really short project and just make the damn thing in a few weeks, good or not. Everytime I start one of these kind of projects, it ends up being about 10 times bigger. The new live action project was concieved as a 2 minute piece, but now it's a 10-15 minute piece. OTSS 2 started as 15 minutes, and is now 40 minutes, and 50 times the amount of work compared to OTSS 1. I wish I had 20 short films to show on riot-films.com, that was the original goal for the site. A year later, the number of films is still 2.

I'm now at the point where I have so many projects going that it would be suicide to take on another, short or not. Maybe I should give up a few or postpone one or two.

Anyways, I will be posting a screenshot of the "Parking Garage" level as soon as possible, when Allen sends me the current build of it.

Oh by the way, yay for the MFF2005 nominations! (Best Sound and Best Off-The-Shelf Machinima) The competition is very strong in both categories, but I have my hopes up for Best Sound. After all, you can't deny that crazy ass soundtrack that Ricky and Scott cooked up. You guys rock!

Undeath... Rebirth.

I'm still alive! It's been quite a while since the last update. Since finishing the first draft I've taken a long break especially now that there is no rush. For the past week I've immersed myself in the story again. I'm glad I took that break. Now I can look back more objectively at the material. Already, the rewritten first act is ten times better than before. Hopefully the entire draft can be completed in a few weeks.

In a couple of days I may be posting a screenshot of one of the early maps, so look out for that.

During the hiatus, Johnny and I have been bouncing around ideas for a short live action film. Don't want to reveal much yet, but the core of the story would deal with insomnia. We'll be working on the plot and script on the side over the next month. Hopefully we can shoot and release it before the end of the year, as we haven't had anything new in almost a year.

October 24 is when the nominations will be announced for the 2005 Machinima Film Festival. Coincidentally, the 24th would be exactly one year after we released OTSS. I'm looking forward to the outcome! The past two years have been great, and I know there will be a couple of new shows that will get some deserved attention. Hopefully, OTSS can garner some attention too. That would certainly boost the team's morale, especially mine. As well as being a nice birthday gift. :)

I'm also hoping that the festival will help gain some attention to machinima itself. I wish I could go, really badly, but there is just no way I can afford the trip at this point. :(