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/

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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!