A Very Special Feature

I'm very happy to announce that this trailer is going to be on the Season 2 DVD.

"Dee-vom-dees"

Tim, Joseph, and I got together a few nights ago and got the season 2 commentary recorded and sent off to the big cheese. We did two takes back to back of the entire season, which is significantly longer all the way through compared to season 1. We started around 10pm and finished at 5am, which was the exact same finishing time for season 1's commentary. Weird. I stayed up an hour or two more getting everything packed up and sending the audio off to the mysterious, far-away land of California for review. All signs point to it being finalized for the DVD! I feel so triumphant.

We tried to keep things lighthearted for the commentary while talking more about the actual shooting process since people seemed a bit split on the slightly-drunk content of the season 1 commentary. Hopefully we can make everyone happy this time.

There's still a few more things to check off the todo list before we can start taking orders, so stick with us. We're aiming to have it released a bit before season 3 starts.

Hope all of you little bowls of sauerkraut have a neato Christmas!

Lvl. 2 Seasoned Veteran

Alright. Whew, I've had a week to catch my breath.

I wanna start off by saying thanks for all the positive response to our final Entry of Season 2. It really made the horrible nightmare that was editing it and getting it rendered all worthwhile. I want to apologize again for the two day delay on getting it uploaded. Vegas finally decided that it'd had enough of my multiple layers and ridiculous audio distortions and got back at me by being all "I WILL TAKE THIS NO MORE" and crashing every time I tried to render. I think I saw it give me the finger a few times before it did, too. What a little drama queen.

It was an incredibly stressful weekend, trying to fix the problem while also having to finish up my last theatre light board job ever for the school, not to mention having a few shifts at my pays-actual-money job too. I was about ready to just give up altogether, delete the internet from my computer, and live as a bearded hermit for the rest of my days. I think the fact that I'm incapable of growing a respectable beard is the only thing that kept me from going through with it.

Shooting the entry itself took a long time, easily beating what I said about #50 taking the longest in a few blog posts back. Luckily, it was an absolute joy to shoot. Jessica took an entire day to help, right before leaving for London to study abroad. That's a pretty high level of dedication for a little ole' web series. Unfortunately, I had to cut a fairly wordy scene between her and Jay as it didn't really flow with the rest very well and just added on to the already lengthy running time.

Maybe that's something that can be included on a Season 2 DVD? Speaking of which, we're starting work on the Season 2 DVD.

I can't give any details about what all is going to be on it since we're still planning everything out. But I can say with confidence that we're going to step up the quality significantly from the Season 1 DVD. We've read all the suggestions you folks made a while back, and will be trying to fulfill as many as we can.

All I know for sure right now is that I've been given the responsibility to personally put together the blooper reel this time. Possibly all the behind the scenes stuff too. There's a very fine line between the two with us, after all. I've been keeping a folder of all of our screw-ups on camera for just such an occasion. How will I pick which ones will be included on the DVD? I love them all like my children.

After I post this, I'm going to compile the Season 2 credits and have them up on my youtube channel by Wednesday. I ask that you please go watch it when I do. Everyone that helped out in front of and behind the camera deserve recognition for everything they did. The cast and crew were a bit bigger this season, so you won't just be seeing mine and Joseph's name for pretty much everything this time. Sorry. I know you're all torn up about that.

So that about brings us up to speed. No, wait, one more thing. Keep an eye on the youtube channel after the credits go up. We have something extra special and covered in cake frosting coming up there soon after. I think you will possibly enjoy it.
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Hope all of you little wonderful bundles of smiles have a good Thanksgiving. Unless you don't live in the states. Then I guess have a good week of no national significance, nonetheless.

Geeking at Media Expos

I dunno how to say it any better, but GMX completely destroyed us in the best possible way. We weren't expecting that kind of turn out for us, and I want to thank all of you personally for coming, but that would be kind of weird to do here. I'll be emailing all of you high fives as soon as I'm done here.

The whole weekend was such a great experience, and a perfect renewal for our drive to complete season 2 and start prepping for season 3 as quickly as we can.

Here's a quick list of thanks, because I can't think of a way to elegantly work them in any other way:

• Thanks to anyone that came to any of our panels. Sorry the one about making a web series was so late and without a powerpoint or something to look at while we rambled on.
• Bonus thanks if you came to the sci-fi trivia that Tim co-hosted (Joseph and I were Team Bradley, of course).
• Thanks to all of you that came by our booth, too. We weren't expecting to have one available to us for the entire time (see previous blog post for proof), so we didn't really have much in terms of decorations other than a pile of DVDs and a makeshift sign. Hope we didn't offended too many of the other pro-booth folk.
• Huge thanks to Mary Fancher for buying the mask we had at the charity auction on Saturday. It sold for the highest price of them all, even beating out a lifesize cutout of David Tennant. No doubt the Oasis Center thinks you're a pretty awesome dude for that.
• Along those same lines, thanks to Jason Cole for buying us at the Orion Slave Auction (also for the Oasis Center) for an amount that made us the highest sale price of all the guys auctioned (Tiffany and some playboy model beat us, understandably). Our breakfast with you was great!
• Speaking of booths, thanks to our booth-mates Chris Haley and Curt Franklin over at Let's Be Friends Again for being such cool guys to share a table top with. They drew slenderman by request in a few of their books, if memory serves. Joseph's girlfriend folded their shirts all pretty while they were gone.
• Thanks to Jason Miller. He has the most intimidating headshot on the planet, but is one of the nicest guys to talk to. His acoustic show at the end of the con was also fantastic. (not to mention being involved in the nice surprise at the closing ceremony)
• Also thanks to both Ellen McLane and John Patrick Lowrie for seriously being the friendliest people I've ever met at a con. They were both so thankful for all their fans and were willing to sign anything you asked. I now have a signed copy of Portal 2, which I'm totally considering outright framing. Tim also chatted up John enough to where he remembered Tim's name throughout the weekend. Jealous.
• And lastly but not leastly, thanks to GMX and mastermind Jeremy Miller for inviting us! They were so helpful and made sure all of the people fit in the rooms they gave us for the panels. We'd love to come back next year, hint hint.

That about sums it up. Now we're all back in Alabama and back to having school work to do again. Lame. One more thanks to all of you for supporting us and getting us to cons like GMX. You'll be the first to know about the next one(s) we're going to.

Golf Mike X-ray

So here's what we know we're doing at GMX this weekend:

How to Make a Web Series - 12 midnight on Friday (well, technically Saturday, but Friday night.)
Location: Grande West
-We'll try to be as informative as possible with this, without lying. It may devolve into a Q&A about the actual making of MH once we run out of stuff to say. Which I guess would be acceptable as well. Not sure why they scheduled it so late. Hopefully no one will fall asleep.

Marble Hornets Season 1 Live Commentary - 10pm Saturday
Location: Johnson
-This will be our attempt to make up for the lack of actual production stuff included in the Season 1 DVD. There's supposed to be a full on Q&A afterwards, as well.

Season 1 DVD sales - ???pm
Location: We have yet to be told
-At some point, Joseph, Tim, and I will be selling DVDs at a booth for about 2 hours. I think they rotate people at the booths out or something. I'll let all of you know the exact time as soon as I do. We'll be happy to sign the DVDs, or anything else made of a non-DVD material for no charge. My signature is so messy that I may have to pay you, honestly. Rimshot!

Full schedule here

And that's all the official stuff we're doing, that I know for sure. There's been talk of the three of us being auctioned off for charity, as well. I think the winner gets to sit down with us and eat lunch, or spend an hour or two just goofing off. It's not confirmed yet, but it'll probably happen. Bring some money!

When we're not doing any panels, we'll be wandering around the exhibition halls and sitting in on the other neato looking panels. Tim is particularly excited about John Patrick Lowrie, who voiced the Sniper in TF2. We've decided to not make any Jarate comments if we run into him.

Shortstop

Finally getting a chance to give Mr.Bloggington some attention here. Things have been much busier than usual as of late.

Entry #50 was a bit of a nightmare to shoot. Scheduling conflicts all over the place. I think the total number of days it took to get it all shot ended up being about four. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's the entry that  spanned the most days in terms of shooting beginning to end. It was mostly due to the fact that the entire thing had to be shot around sundown, so we'd run out of light very quickly, especially while in the woods, which blocked out a ton of the little bit of sunlight we already had. There was one or two spots in the finished entry where the lighting wasn't consistent because of that, but overall I think I got it as good as I could possibly get it.

To those of you asking: No, Entry #50 was not the final entry of the second season. Although it is very very close to it. We're officially in the home stretch now, I feel.

Entry #51 has been fully shot. It went much better than the previous shoot, requiring only two days to get done. I'm in the process of editing it now, and should be done with it no later than Tuesday. It would be going a bit faster if I didn't have so much other stuff to get done at the moment. I'm currently working the light board for the UA theatre department's production of Animal Crackers. While it's a ton of fun, it's also very time consuming and is usually scheduled during the best "editing hours" for me. I've been squeezing in some time here and there though. Thanks for being patient, as usual!

Now that we're finally getting close to wrapping up Season 2, it's time to start talking about the Season 2 DVD. Although it hasn't been officially confirmed as of yet, I don't see why we wouldn't do it after how well the first one sold. So here's my question to you: What would you most like to see in the next DVD?


I know there were a few things people wanted more of, and a few things that were left out without my knowledge, in the Season 1 DVD so I want to do the next one as right as possible this time around. So suggest away, loyal folk. I'm all ears.

"Wipe that smile off your face"

Okay, I think I might finally be caught up on all the sleep I missed during Dragoncon a couple of weeks ago. We had a lot of fun, and met some really nice fans while we were there too! High fives to you all.

Also, this happened:

In terms of upcoming shoots, Joseph and I haven't gotten a concrete date just yet, but it'll most definitely be this week. We have a pretty major issue to resolve with our current script outline, so we'll have ourselves a cute little meeting tonight to figure it all out. There will be chips and dip.

Bear with us, we're getting to the good stuff.

Edit: In case you missed it on facebook, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette released an article about MH yesterday. Here's the link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11236/1169306-67-0.stm 
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Sorry about the radio silence this week. It was my last first week of classes ever, so I was a little preoccupied. Scheduling was awful with Joseph and I. It's like whenever I would be home and available to shoot, he'd be at work, and vice versa. I think we're good to shoot early next week. Whatever happens, a new entry will be posted before we pack up and head to Atlanta for Dragon Con next weekend.

I ended up combining two of the three things we shot previously into the one entry last week, so our posting schedule is a bit thrown off now that we don't have anything ready to go this week. Originally, the confrontation in the parking lot and the phone call to Jessica were going to be separate, but then I realized that was kind of pointless and would probably end up pissing people off, having two "only talking" entries in a row.

It's a very delicate balancing act that we're having to work here. You can't do no-context suspense entries only, because then they'd become expected and (even worse) boring, but you also can't do strictly exposition too much because people ultimately want to get to the suspense, which I think is our bread and butter, not to sound to full of myself.

Joseph and I talked a little last night about the direction we want to take Season 3 in. We have the ending of Season 2, and we've had the ending of Season 3 ready for a long time, but everything in between those endings is vague at best. I think we've at least gotten started on solving some of the problems we've encountered with the initial writing process, but we're still a ways off from having it finished. Wish I could talk about it more, but of course that would probably spoil what's to come with the remainder of Season 2.

Guess you'll just have to wait and see, dude.

That Announcement Thing

Wow, I'm kind of surprised no one clicked on the comma after the link in my last blog post. I figured someone would have noticed it immediately. Guess I'm getting too crafty, yeah?

No but seriously. I guess I should announce that thing now. Like I said earlier, a good number of you have already guessed it, so a good number of you can go ahead and pat yourselves on the back.

Marble Hornets is going to have a third season.

It's going to be the LAST season, for real this time. I know we said about a year ago that this season would be the end, but halfway through shooting it, we began to realize that we'd greatly underestimated how much time we'd need to devote to explaining the lost seven months. There wasn't really much time left afterwards to return to the present and show the ending, not to mention that the whole story felt incredibly cramped that way. So we decided to take the ending and devote an entire season to it. That way we don't feel like we're cheapening it by rushing into it after spending so much time somewhere else.

Sound good? We cool with that? Need more explaining? Okay, I can handle that.

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Preemptive Season 3 FAQ:

Q: Will there be another seven month gap between seasons 2 and 3?
A: Nope. While I can't give a solid "release date" for it just yet, rest assured that it won't be that long. The gap between the seasons will only be as long as Joseph and I feel is necessary for us to cool down to avoid getting burnt out.

Q: Does this mean Season 2 is about to end?
A: Sorta kinda. I can't tell you how many entries are left in Season 2. It's not a double digit, though.

Q: Will there be a Season 2 DVD?
A: Nothing is set in stone yet, but I don't see why not. The first one sold (and is still selling) wonderfully.

Q: You're just doing this to make more money, aren't you?
A: Absolutely not. We're doing this to make the story we've had going for over two years finally be completed. I'm kind of bad about not finishing things I've started (case in point), so I'd like to go against the flow for once.
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Q: The ending is going to be one giant ambiguous wad where nothing gets resolved and no questions are fully answered, isn't it.
A: Come on, I'm no David Lynch.

Q: Why are you announcing Season 3 before Season 2 is over? That spoils some of the mystery!
A: It's kind of unconventional for us, I'll admit, seeing as how we didn't announce Season 2 until about a month or so after Season 1. But I don't really see what part of the story is spoiled because of this.


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Any other questions that you think I might be able to answer, go ahead and post them in the comments and I'll get back atcha.

I'm glad we'll be doing this one more time before wrapping everything up in a neat little box. Thanks in advance for continuing to watch! High fives all around!

Status Report

It was a busy day yesterday, but we managed to shoot everything that we needed to get done. I think Joseph almost had a heat stroke in the middle of one of the takes, but other than that and having anxiety attacks about the rain early during the shoot, things went well. Glad it's over though.

We also got an awesome phone call regarding a possible future of Marble Hornets while we were getting all of the equipment together to change locations, but as you can probably guess, I can't talk about it right now. Nice surprise though.

So that's two entries shot and one more left to go. We'll either do that tonight or tomorrow night. I'm still tired from yesterday, so tomorrow night seems more likely.

As for the announcement, I'll probably share it come Sunday. I've seen a few people guess it already. Kudos to your mind reading powers.

Something the body does when you shake it

This week is crunch time for us. Believe it or not, we're going out to shoot three separate entries this week, one of which is going to be pretty complex and involved (by our standards at least). I can't explain why at the moment, but there's no room for error this week. If we miss getting everything, we're well and proper hosed and will have to either do some major rewrites or have an overly long hiatus. Neither of which I want to do, of course. Especially not the last one. I'm a little stressed out right now, to say the least. There probably won't be time to get an entry edited and posted this week with all the shooting going on, but there should be one early next week. Wednesday at the latest, I'd say.

I'll be spending today getting a shot list organized, finishing the scripts, and hopefully getting in a ton of rehearsal time to minimize the number of takes we'll need. I'm not sure when Joseph will be off work so that part is kind of up in the air right now. Why can't we make enough money to quit our day jobs, geez.

On a more positive note, I think I'll be clear to say the "fairly big announcement" later this week. Probably after we finish all this shooting. I guess it'll be my reward.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for watching Joseph Plays A Trumpet. The viewcount was higher than I thought it'd be when I checked it this morning. For those asking, no, it isn't the comedy series we've been working on. I'd be a little ashamed if it was, I think. Seeing as how we shot it in all of 30 minutes.

Slacker

I hate moving.

Ever since I started at UA, I've never stayed in one place for more than a year. You'd think that'd make me really good at moving all my shit from one place to another, but no, you'd be wrong.

I bounced around dorms for a few years, and then I ventured out with Joseph and Brian into the wonderful world of apartment living. And now Joseph and I just finished our most recent move into a real life house. No more quirky apartments for us. I for one will enjoy not having shared walls with people I don't know. All that mysterious yelling and banging around coming up though my floor was starting to get on my nerves.

The thing that always sucks the most, though, without fail, is the fact that I always get incredibly lazy after moving. I guess I feel like I should reward myself for the maybe 3-5 hours of actual physical exertion with 2 weeks of doing absolutely nothing. That ratio seems a little off.

I tried to force myself to get some work done while trying to slack off at the same time, but I found out pretty quick that that doesn't make any sense at all. If I was slacking off, I'd constantly be thinking of all the things I need to "for real" do, and when I was doing those things, I was constantly wanting to do something else.

I was finally able to finish one of the things on my todo list yesterday, as you may have noticed. Entry #46 caused its fair share of headaches while editing, but was far from the worst. As usual, there's some things that I noticed that needed fixing after posting, but none of them very major. From the lurking I've done around the various forums, response has been pretty good. I'm glad most people liked our subtle attempt at poking fun at ourselves in a few ways with it, too. Marble Hornets has never really had much room for humor, so when the rare opportunity presents itself, we snatch it up. I'm hoping all the dialogue between Joseph and myself that didn't get used is able to be shared one day, the whole thing was improvised so there were some pretty good one-liners that came from it. Maybe they'll be on some kind of supplementary material contained within a technologically advanced disc read by laser machines. Who knows.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There's a fairly big announcement on the Marble Hornets front coming in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

"When the lights come back on, you're surrounded by vending machines"

According to some of you, my last blog post was some kind of subtle announcement that Marble Hornets is now over. Come on, you silly heads, that's not true. You'll know when it's over, don't worry.

The next entry has been shot and is being edited right now. I can't really talk about how it went without spoiling anything or talking about things you've already heard. I guess all I can say is that, looking at what we shot, there's a feeling of "getting back to our roots" here. Take that however you will.

Hopefully we'll be shooting this coming weekend as well. I'm nearing the finish line for my internship hours, so we'll be able to pick up the rate of production soon, I'd say. The weekend after that, we'll be driving up to Nashville to meet with the GMX people. We'll probably have some downtime, so if anyone from the area has any suggestions on things to do, let us know!

Also, thanks to everyone who showed up for my impromptu chat, and Let's Play of Nightmare House 2 over on my ustream channel this past weekend. Despite my eventual whining about the game itself, it was fun to talk with all of you. I'm sure I'll be doing it again soon.

Post-Game

Thanks to all of you for the compliments on Entry #43! It turned out very close to how both Joseph and I envisioned it. There's a few things that I maybe should have changed when editing, namely the slightly slower than expected pacing, but other than that I'm very proud of it. I feel like it finally married together story and "action", which is what I've gathered people have been wanting for a while now.

Originally, it was different in almost every way. I had written the script for it on my own, and kind of at the last minute. The day we were supposed to shoot it, Joseph had a few changes to the script he wanted to do. As we talked about it, these small changes ended up becoming bigger changes. Then those bigger changes became script rewrites. Then by the time everything was all said and done, we had a whole new script. It took up more time on our shooting day, which lead to a more stressful time constraint, but we pulled it off. About an hour to spare, too!

Which is good, because otherwise Joseph might not have done his highwire act:

*Highgirder act?

Happy Birthday

About two years ago, Joseph and I went for a drive. I had my Handycam with me and pointed it out the window while we talked about this weird little idea I had. I didn't know what it would be called yet.

A day later, the Introduction of Marble Hornets was posted on Youtube. That was two years ago today.

It doesn't feel like it's been that long. But it does feel like we've come a long way since our first attempt at writing the original story of MH, which was only supposed to go for 31 entries if memory serves. There was no ToTheArk, no masks, no red tower, and no twitter account.

In a way, I miss the simplicity of what we originally had. It would have been easier (and cheaper) to shoot, and would require little to no real acting chops. But there also would've been no payoff storywise. Would that have been okay? Maybe. For the most part, I'm glad we branched away from it pretty quickly into what Marble Hornets is now. Sure, it often gives me headaches when trying to keep our own "mythology" and timelines straight, but I've gotten so used to it now that I wouldn't know what to do if it went any other way.

I want to thank Joseph for sticking with this, the little scamp. There's been times where MH has "tested" our friendship, but by and large, it's let us work together to make something we're proud of. And of course, I thank all of you for your continued support. Be patient for a few more weeks, and things will be picking up big time.

3

Roadtrip

Posting really quick to say that MH updates this week are very much up in the air. I'm in a car right now on my to a shoot in Jackson, MS that I'll be at until Friday. They'll be all-days so I doubt I'll have time to get any real editing done from the hotel.

For now, go outside!

Expo-say?

Shot the latest entry this weekend (and found a poorly written drug deal note in the process). Working on the edit now. It's gotten so hot here the past few weeks. The outdoor stuff has been pretty uncomfortable to shoot. Doesn't bother me that much, though. It's all worth it. So yeah, it should be up by the end of the week. Not much else going on right now, it seems.

Except, oh yeah, we're attending our first expo later this year. As exhibitors.

We just got all of the major stuff confirmed last week. It's going to be at the Geek Media Expo in Nashville TN, October 21-23. We'll be in a couple of panels talking about creating a youtube series. There's also probably going to be a showing of the season 1 DVD with live commentary from us. We haven't officially confirmed a booth yet, but I can almost guarantee we'll be set up somewhere since I'd like to bring some of the noteworthy props to display, like the mask, the tapes, and (the newest addition) the stop motion doll. We'll also be signing DVDs (or whatever else) if you'd like us to! No charge, of course.

We'll know a lot more stuff for sure in the coming months, so I'll keep all of you updated. For now, if you're going to be free that weekend in October, come say hey to us!

"OOG"

I've noticed a new trend when I read the responses whenever a new Entry is posted, and it's a little alarming. A good number are letting these blog posts influence their opinions about what goes on within the Marble Hornets story. It should go without saying, but this is not my intention at all. I purposefully leave a ton out and don't share any behind-the-scenes-production-stuff that could spoil things in any way.

So yeah.

Other than that, the response to #41 has been great! I think that reshoot was definitely worth it.

I'm off for a long weekend starting today. I'll be visiting probably-the-best-place-in-Alabama Auburn to have some long overdue outside time. Going to try and write the script for #42 while I'm out there. Vacation shmaycation.

Pandaman

I was able to get out and redo the shots for #41 Saturday, as well as get a few that I didn't think of getting until then. It should be a quick edit, so expect it around the middle of the week.

Joseph was in Florida for the pretend rapture his birthday. I kind of forgot he was doing that. Luckily, Tim was a little angel and helped out with the shoot. Then he made me a contact microphone from scratch just because he wanted to. Having an excuse to use his soldering iron probably had something to do with it. I documented its creation for no distinct reason:

(He found out the people that work at Radio Shack don't really know what you're talking about when you ask for something that isn't a cell phone.)

Once we got it working, which involved hastily wrapping it in electrical tape to cancel out vibrations in its casing, it gave some pretty great sounds. Putting it against Tim's face while he ate sunflower seeds was a little disturbing to hear, though.

Then we played this. It was hilarious:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU HEAD

It was also really stupid.

Do and Redo

Last week was brutal.

I came back to the alright-I-guess city of Birmingham for what is basically my annual summer-job-ish thing with Red Fox Media. My major's "special requirement" is to put in a couple hundred internship hours at an approved company before I can graduate, so I kind of gamed the system and got them to count something I've been doing for three summers straight anyway. I feel like I cheated by not begging to work with dozens of other production companies and getting rejected first.

I'm not used to having to wake up early and drive half an hour into work, so most of last week was spent trying to get over my college student sleep schedule. It wasn't much fun. I spent the weekend basically sitting around playing video games and sleeping in, which probably gummed up my weekday sleep schedule even more. Oh well.

Part of Sunday was dedicated to shooting MH stuff with Joseph. When I got the chance to look at the footage a few days ago, I wasn't really happy with it. The most important part of it at least. I forwarded it along to the big cheese, and he thinks we should redo the important shot. That pretty much guarantees a slightly longer wait than I originally thought for Entry #41. The internship definitely complicates our shooting schedule, too. I'll need to take the hour long drive to Tuscaloosa this weekend to get this one shot, but I'm hoping we'll have a chance to shoot the next entry as well. Nothing's been set in stone yet, though. Luckily, this internship isn't going to last all summer. Since I'm not really getting paid for it, I'm going to be able to leave as soon as the exact number of required hours have been hit. That'll free up a ton of time.

I know things feel like they've been updating slowly lately, and that Season 2 right now seems to be stuck in a loop of unhappiness perpetual state of "just getting started". I'm really sorry about that. We're trying hard to fix that feeling, but it's tough with all the things I'm having to juggle at the same time right now. So, as always, thanks for being patient with us.

I promise we'll make it all worth the wait.

Tiny vampires hiding in the grass

Slowly getting back up to speed over here. We managed to get everything shot at once on Saturday, but due to having to work crazy hours the past couple of days, I haven't even had the chance to look at what we shot yet. I'm going to try and start editing when I'm off in about two hours.

It was a surprisingly easy shoot. As expected, the hike up to the location wasn't great due to our arms being full of encumbering stuff. I also managed to get two ticks on me, despite my best efforts. Cringe. But once we got to the location, things went smoothly. Blocking, a process that usually takes longer than it should, only took about 20 minutes. After about 4 or 5 takes we were confident we had what we needed. That kind of scares me. It's usually not that simple. Guess I'll find out later today.


I ordered the last bit of equipment for our new, incredibly basic DSLR camera rig on Saturday too. Whenever it gets here, we'll be ready to start shooting our new, "less serious" series. I can't decide how I want to post it, though. It probably won't be on the THAC channel. We want all of the non-MH stuff to be under one production "company" name, so we'll make a whole new channel for it. The biggest problem with that being that we have to find a way to reliably let the audience know where that is.

There's also the problem of when to start posting the new series. We know people value "immersion" within the Marble Hornets universe, so we don't know if we should be posting videos of both Joseph and myself acting....well.... kind of silly. My preference is to start posting them near the end of this season, but who knows what will actually happen.

On a completely unrelated note. I wish I could learn how to wolf whistle.

Weatherpocalypse

UPDATE: A lot of you are asking if you can help. You absolutely can! Please donate any amount to The American Red Cross. They've got lots of relief workers out here that are doing a fantastic job.

I also encourage you to donate to The Humane Society of West Alabama, as they'll be helping with the animals affected by the storm as well.

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As you may or may not know, we were a part of the massive tornado outbreak on Wednesday. Tuscaloosa got hit incredibly hard, as I found out when we ventured out to our newly decimated 15th street yesterday:

(if you want to see more, you can see the facebook album I made from our excursion out there)

The pictures really can't do it justice. Large parts of what is essentially Tuscaloosa's main road are destroyed. A lot of the business around here have been leveled. It's all very surreal.

Myself, and everyone I know are fine. I live in Northport, which is only a few miles from where the tornado hit. Joseph was at his second day on his new job, a stones throw away from it. He's one lucky dude, that's for sure.

Classes have been completely cancelled at my school. Finals were next week, but apparently they're just saying to hell with it and having everything be done with for the semester. It's cool to not have to worry about finals anymore, but I would have rather studied than have a section of the city disintegrated.

As you might have guessed, the weather was less "permitting" and more "horrific" on Wednesday, so we didn't do any shooting. I had rescheduled it to today, but Joseph told me he's planning on helping the clean up efforts, which definitely takes priority. So a Saturday shoot it is. I'm picking up lots of extra hours at work, since I'm one of the few off-campus employees that can get there. It's going to be a madhouse with students trying to get out of town all at once. Yeesh. What a nightmare.

Hopefully things get back on schedule soon. Thanks for being so patient, everyone.

Happy Monday

It's looking like all the work on our end for the DVD sales is finally wrapping up. I've tried to keep up with all the people that alerted me to problems with their orders as best I can, but since I'm getting them on all fronts (facebook, twitter, youtube, whatever), I may have missed a few. While it's definitely okay to let me know, you should let the distributors know if you expect something afoul first, they'll be the ones doing all the heavy lifting. I've just been forwarding things through the right channels, which I imagine takes a little more time. Due to a bit of wonkyness on distribution's side, a problem would be if it's been more than two weeks after placing the order (maybe longer for international ones). I'd suggest telling them if that's the case. That's a longer wait than it should be, I know, but I can't really talk about why that is. It's not that interesting, I promise.

Joseph's starting his new job this week, so getting some shooting done is going to be challenging to schedule. What a surprise. I'm confident we'll work it out, though. The biggest problem this time, besides typical scheduling crap, is the location. There's a pretty long hike to it, not to mention we can't remember exactly where it is. So hiking and searching while hauling all the equipment will be a pain, but I have a good feeling it's going to be worth it.

There's a chance I'll also be shooting something for my other youtube channel later this week, too. Excitement!

Go Webby Go

Woah. This is crazy. I'm now officially Troy Wagner: Webby Award Honoree. Sure, I could be all mopey and say Troy Wagner: Webby Award Nominee would have been better, but come on. This is a huge deal. Huge!

Back when we entered into it, I was expecting to get the same "Try Again" that I've been getting under Sunkist bottle caps for the past decade I never would have guessed that what began as this little project I decided to do instead of looking for a summer job would ever make it so far. Getting in the top 10 percent of what's basically the Oscars for the internet is one of the most encouraging things ever. Maybe I'm actually pretty okay at doing this stuff after all.

Or maybe they're just paying me back for hosting it last year...

Alright, enough self-high-fivery. Back to work! Hopefully we'll have something even better in the running next year!

Thanks again for like the hundredth time for making this possible. All of you.

Ninja Update: Let's Play Half Life 2: Freeman Fridays begins tonight at 7:30 EST! Tim decided that Amnesia was just too much for his feeble brain to handle. If you're staying in for the night to play video games, why not watch us do it for you? As always, it's over at http://www.blogtv.com/people/ButtFuzz

Also, I'm still planning on doing my own LP of the original Alone In The Dark. I'll give you plenty of heads up before it goes down, so stay tuned or whatever.

Shipped

The big cheese sent this to us on Saturday:

That's a lot of DVDs in there. I'm glad I wan't the one that had to get all of those ready.

From the looks of it, some of you are already getting them today. Horray! You'll be the first ones to see the fully finished product. Before any of us here, even. I hope it cuts the mustard.

I've been really paranoid about it, to be honest. After recording commentary and getting Terry Lynn to help create the cover art, I was pretty much in the dark about how everything was going to look once it was actually in your DVD player. I trust the big cheese quadruple checked it before sending it out, but there's still that little monster in the back of my head going "SOMETHING IS WRONG AND EVERYONE WILL HATE YOU FOR IT". I don't like hearing that, even though it sounds like a good debut album title.

Help put me at ease, those of you that have it. How does it look?

And those of you that have yet to receive them, please don't ask me when they'll be there, because I don't know. I wish I could hand deliver them all to be sure, but that would probably increase your wait by about 6 months. Market research suggests that would be labeled as "a bit too long".

Sellout puns ahoy

UPDATE: Let's play Amnesia is back! We'll be starting at 7:30 EST
http://www.blogtv.com/people/buttfuzz/

------------------------------

In only 48 hours, we managed to sell one thousand DVDs.

Two days. The whole stock.

Gone.

I can't even comprehend that. Your generosity for our little internet project gives me such a warm, fuzzy feeling that I think if I were to open my mouth too wide a kitten would fall out.

Our producer jumped ahead of schedule and ordered 1000 more DVDs. Not sure when they'll be ready. From what I'm being told, there shouldn't be that long of a wait if you didn't manage to get one of the first runs.

While we were busy being all excited, Joseph was quick to ask me when we're next scheduled to do some actual shooting. In all the hubbub, I forgot that there's still a ton of work left to be done on our end. We're officially scheduled, according to Joseph, for "probably tonight when I get off work". I don't have classes today due to my school's Honors Day, but of course Joseph is pulling a double. What a buzzkill. I'm going to try and enlist a person or two to go out and help me shoot the easier stuff while I wait.

Typically when I get people to help with easy shots, it's to make me look less crazy pointing a camera at myself in public.

Woah Wait What

UPDATE: The order numbers are irrelevant to how many DVDs are left. If you get a number over 1000, don't worry!

The response so far to the Season 1 DVD has been phenomenal. I'm completely blown away. Seriously. You folks have made me a very happy dude. When we were talking to the big cheese on the phone late last night, Joseph did a sweet fist pump when we found out how many had been sold already. It's hard to make him impulsively do that.

It's sometimes difficult to get motivated to keep working on something you've been grinding out for almost two years, but something like this makes me want to continue making Marble Hornets forever. I mean, I won't of course. The ending is set, and we're slowly but surely working our way towards it. It's just good to know that so many people are willing to support our efforts so readily.

Thank you so much, for all you've done for us.

HUGS ALL AROUND

The Trailer thing

For that DVD thing:

Diagonal Venndiagram Digitalization

The DVDs are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. As long as the big cheese gives it the go ahead after looking them over, they should officially be on sale this week! My blind, uneducated guess would be Wednesday. Don't quote me on that. I have notoriously bad luck with this kind of stuff.

Something I forgot to say in the previous post, which Joseph has already mentioned, is that the initial run of DVDs is 1000 units. Personally, I have no idea if that's a gross underestimate or not, like some of you have told me. I guess that's my inner pessimist coming out. Rest assured though, if they sell out, I can almost guarantee there will be more made. These DVDs probably won't be some kind of rare, super-fan status symbol I'm afraid.

On that note, and this will sound completely contradictory to what I just said, there's something weird and more or less unintentional about these "first-editions". There's an if-you're-not-looking-you-probably-won't-notice-it typo on the back of this first run's cases. This is through no fault of the wonderful Terry Lynn Massey, I should point out. In fact, I don't know whose fault it is. I didn't write the description on the back. Nor did Joseph. It's a mystery that will never be solved.

GET OUT

The unintended side effect of this is easy identification of the first-editions, as we were told it'll be corrected if/when another batch is made. So if that matters to you, you should get on this first run. I won't judge you either way.

One more thing. Some of you have asked if it's possible to get autographed copies of the DVD when they go on sale. I've sent an email to the big cheese asking about it and am waiting on a response now. I am absolutely opposed to charging more money for a case with my inconsistent signature on it. However, since the DVDs will be six states away, they'd have to be shipped to us first, then shipped out AGAIN after being signed. So in the interest of not losing money, we'd unfortunately have to jack up the price to compensate. I also don't know if we'd have the time necessary to sign them and make daily runs to the post office to send them again. I'll keep you all updated on it regardless. We didn't expect this request at all!

But seriously

Loyal blog folk: I have a confession to make.

It's not a joke.

We had to wait until today to officially be able to say something about it, but yeah, Marble Hornets: Season 1 will be available soon. No exact date has been set just yet, but it will be very very soon.

Here's the lowdown:



MARBLE HORNETS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
--------------------------------------------------------
-Two discs!
-Includes Introduction, Entries 1-26 and their respective totheark responses.
-Commentary by me, Joseph (Alex), and Tim.
-Behind the scenes funstuff like bloopers and Tim being a constant, hilarious distraction.
-The tweets/twitpics
-Bios
-Festival trailer
--------------------------------------------------------


A preemptive mini-FAQ:

How much will it cost?
-$11.95 +S&H

Is the DVD region free?
-Yes!

Where do I buy it?
-We'll let you know as soon as it's available.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS MARBLE HORNETS IS RUINED IF YOU SELL IT FOR MONIES YOU GREEDY SLOTH ALSO MY IMMERSION IS RUINED EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS A LIE
-I'm not forcing you to buy anything. If you want to help fund both MH and future productions, this is the perfect way to do so. Remember: it's free for you to watch on Youtube, but it's not free for us to make.

Is this an April Fool's Day prank?
-Isn't it bad form to pull an April Fool's prank when it's not even April Fool's Day? Think about it.

Did you make the cover art?
-Sure didn't. It was put together by a few people, but mostly by wonderful graphic designer Terry Lynn Massey, a big contributor over at Unfiction. She also made this amazing poster and this sweet ass video.


For like the hundredth time, big thanks to ALL of you for continuing to support us, whether you buy a DVD or not. None of this would be possible if we didn't have loyal people like you watching. Stay tuned!

[+/0[x]

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ABORT! ABORT!

If I may break the fourth wall for a moment (as if this blog isn't constantly doing that already), I'd like to apologize for that little bit of wonkyness the other night. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then don't worry about it. Really.

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to....kind of everything. So I feel like an idiot when something slips by me. Especially when I skip class and spend an afternoon editing everything together. It'll be a nice story to tell later, I suppose.

After shooting some actual stuff a few days ago, Joseph and I did some improv "comedy" videos that I'm contemplating on posting. After reviewing them, they definitely got better as time went on. I think we have four or five episodes. Joseph wants to reshoot some of them whenever we get time. Maybe we have a new series on our hands here. A really.....weird series.

Speaking of things that are also videos, here's the highlights of Tim and I's previous LP session thing:



That is all for now.

Bring Spreak

The subject sounds like a command from Inglip


This week's my spring break. Seems kind of early, doesn't it? My school's never been too bright when it comes to breaks, though, despite being the same school that canceled class due to football on more than one occasion. Since I don't have any money to speak of, I'll be staying at home trying to get stuff done. The todo list is pretty crowded right now.

Due to some business we were sorting out last week taking a little longer than expected, Marble Hornets updates will remain on hold for, most likely, the first half of the week. What kind of business? The shady kind, of course. Undercover espionage, redacted documents, Russians with eyepatches, y'know, stuff like that.

It's going to be kind of weird shooting footage this week. Joseph's work schedule is apparently worse than usual right now, so I need to go through and figure out what all shots I can do on my own. One man army style. It's bound to get complicated, but I'm aiming to get as much shooting done this week as I can, since I don't have any pesky school to worry about.

We're also talking about doing some new one-off things over on my channel at some point. There's a handful of ideas we're thinking about doing. All of them a bit silly, as expected. Marble Hornets tends to take up all of our dramatic tolerance as it is.

And... because I can't think of a way to end this, have bugs:



Genius.

Now go. Enjoy your pi(e)!

Meat!

Don't want to sit through 2 hours of Tim screaming at a game while I laugh at him? Someone went and found all the parts where that didn't happen and compiled them into one suppository video.

Subject lines aren't my strong point.

Here's some hastily written, unrelated things for the week:

-The "powers that be" have declared this our off week from Marble Hornets. There's some planning and meetings that needs to be done before we shoot the next entry anyway, so I guess that's what we're doing.

-Joseph's getting back from flexing his Mardi Gras muscles at some point today. I'm assuming he looked like this the whole trip:

-I can't decide if I'm happy or not with the frequency of updates we've had recently. I've been trying to post something every week (with the exception of this one apparently) with varying degrees of success. School tends to get in the way a lot. I feel bad for not having an "official" update timeframe, but that's just the nature of the beast we've created. Someone tranquilize the damn thing. Geez.

-Big thanks to everyone that watched Tim's Let's Play of Amnesia this past Friday. It was a lot of fun to ride his coat tails for the evening. He's currently in the process of uploading the massive thing to youtube, if you missed it. I think he said it's going to be in 13 parts. I guess that's to be expected when you have 50gb of video. Yikes.

-My once a week editing class for tonight was just canceled. I wish I had known that before spending my Saturday night finishing the project due today. It involved taking this awful green screen footage of Ozzy Osbourne and doing "something cool" with it. This would have been a lot easier to pull off if the camera wasn't constantly being flung around by an epileptic jib operator. Or if the song was actually good. Needless to say, I didn't take the project very seriously:

How do I work this?

New stuff coming this week. Thanks for being patient. Last week I had to throw together a research paper on The Atomic Cafe, do a small project with After Effects, get some experimental footage (some of which you may have seen by now), re-record some audio stuff with Joseph (for MYSTERY PURPOSES), and accurately impersonate David Byrne doing this for my theatre class. It was kind of busy. Stuff has slowed down slightly, at least. So another week of silence from me shouldn't be expected.

So I just checked my facebook friend count and it's closing in on 1000 people. That's crazy. Needless to say, Marble Hornets fans that have friended me now greatly outweigh all the people I actually know. That's fine, don't get me wrong, I like talking to MH fans. The vast majority of you are cool dudes. That being said, I am starting to notice some patterns arise. So in order to hopefully address some of this stuff all at once, here's a list of super common questions/comments/whatevers and what I'll probably respond with:

-I really liked this thing you did!
 Thank you!

-I really didn't like this thing you did!
I will try harder next time.

-This thing you did totally sucks, therefore I now assume you have a sexual orientation that my parents told me is bad.
Hush.

-When is the next entry coming out?
When it's finished.

-What editing software do you use?
Usually Sony Vegas 9. 

-[Marble Hornets story related question]
Why would I answer this.

-[Marble Hornets theory], is this right?
 Yes! You have figured out the mystery. Marble Hornets is now over.

-Will you read/watch/critique this thing I made?
I can't make any promises, but I'll try.

-Will you read this Marble Hornets fan fiction I wrote?
I've had terrible experiences with these in the past. So I'm hesitant to say the least.

-WHY ARE YOU NOT RESPONDING TO ME, DUDE?!


-Have you seen Splendorman?
Yes.

-[twenty dolla joke]
Stop.

-What's your XBL gamertag / steam username?
Both are winecannon.

-My friends and I are thinking about doing our own youtube series similar to yours. Do you have any advice?
Drink plenty of liquids.

-How did you make The Operator?
Who?

-When is the DVD coming out?
What DVD?

Thanks Windows 7

Sometimes these video thumbnails just work out wonderfully.

Busy as always over here. Trying to get Joseph to stop by tonight and re-record some audio that somehow got corrupt for the mystery item we've been working on. Editing new stuff while I wait.

Speaking of mystery items and new stuff, we've begun early early work on our next project. Writing ideas down, mainly. Google docs is wonderful for that. I'm pretty excited for it, should it all work out, which I suspect it will. I'm trying to decide on whether or not we should let Marble Hornets finish up before starting work on the new project proper, though. I'm thinking MH needs to be finished before moving on, but who knows what will happen. I do know that we were desperate during season 1, at points, for something less "serious" in nature. The new project fits that pretty well.

However, there's no set timeframe right now for Marble Hornets ending nor the new project starting. It's all speculative for the time being.

Either way, you guys will be the first to know. Whatever happens.

Now here's some pictures that may or may not be from shooting the previous entry:

We're prepared should this ever become a musical, by the way.

My favorite by far.

Show me your intensity face

I wish I could explain the importance of this, but I can't right now.

Demolition Time

For reasons that I can't elaborate on (even though I'm sure some of you will figure it out), I've been going back through the first season of Marble Hornets; trudging through alternate takes, outtakes, and general weirdness in an attempt to organize it into one maybe-semi-intriguing package. It's quite the undertaking, to be sure.

Doing so has made me realize something, though. This whole thing has come a long way. I don't know if I can accurately describe with words how disorganized, confused, and directionless everything was way back then. Mainly me. There are several times the camera catches me instructing things to be done "because that will look cool". This still happened on occasion even after I realized that these videos were inspected, by some, with the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for crime scene investigation. Talk about amateur. But in a way, I'm glad that's how it all used to work. It's forced me and my accomplices to take a sledgehammer to the many corners we've written ourselves into. It's not easy, and saying it's painfully confusing to get straight is an understatement. But dammit, if it's not fun.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you get better at things the more you do them. I feel like I've heard that somewhere before. Of course, that's not to say I think I'm some amazing visionary now or anything. I've just improved, but I never noticed it until now. It's a nice surprise.

In other news: there's so many fantastic things going on right now. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of it with you soon.

Quick Update

Whew. It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. School is starting to pick up again. I'm taking more hours this semester than I've ever taken. Weak, I know. But I think things are starting to come back together. Hopefully.

Joseph and I are headed out tomorrow to finally do some shooting and a little more location scouting. There's probably going to be at least one more shoot after tomorrow at the current location, then I'll start editing everything together. These next few entries have required a lot of planning, but I've got my fingers crossed that it'll all have been worth it when it's finished.

It's all taking a little bit longer than I'd hoped, as usual. Thanks, everyone, for being patient. I guess you're all used to it by now, right?

No Time to Breathe

I couldn't be happier with how everything has been working out with Marble Hornets thus far. I've been reading everywhere that people are excited for the story to be picking up again. This is definitely what we hoped would happen from the very beginning of season two. We knew that a lot of people were going to start getting antsy with the claustrophobic nature of the hotel entries, but we kept the slow burn going in order to make it that much more satisfying once it starts moving forward again. From what I've been reading (and I've been looking through a lot), we've accomplished that pretty nicely. High five, team!

That being said, it's time to get back to work. With the posting of Entry #33, we have pretty much exhausted our current stash of raw footage. That means we have to get back out there and do some more actual shooting. But before doing that, we've got to do a little preproduction. Things like finalizing the "roadmap" for the next batch of entries and getting rehearsals done. It shouldn't take too long, but there's probably going to be a little extra time between now and the next entry. Don't worry though, it won't be anything compared to some of the gaps we had during season one. That's a promise!

BONUS:

Here's another behind the scenes-esque picture. I think explaining the context will ruin it, though:

Maybe we'll tell you about it one day. Maybe in the special features section of some magical disc read by lasers. Who can say.