Two items

 Last few weeks have been doozies, lemme tell ya.

First of all, big thanks for everyone that came out to see us at Austin Comic Con on such short notice. When we first got there, the three of us mostly just wandered around the show floor because we didn't have a booth. We got stopped a handful of times even then, which was pretty neato.

On Saturday, the panel with us, Doug Jones, and James Moran went really well and had a nice turnout. We were able to open up about the details of the movie a bit more than I was expecting, too. Oh, and speaking of which, I had no idea that James had brought a clip of it with him to show everyone there. That was a pretty cool bonus for all of us, myself included. Unfortunately, we're not able to share the clip publicly and we had to make sure it wasn't being recorded by anyone in the room, so the details of it will have to remain a mystery for now. I'm pretty sure there's video of the rest of the panel around on youtube though, so if you wanna see everything but the movie clip, it's out there.

After the panel we had three hours at a signing booth, where we and Doug Jones gave away stickers and autographs to everyone that stopped by. We were swamped pretty much the whole time, which was also unexpected.

What's not unexpected is how nice Doug always is.

After leaving for the day, we went out to eat with Doug and the Mosaic folks at a pretty nice local place called Red's Porch. It was cool getting to hang out with those guys and get updates on everything else that's been going down with the movie. All positive stuff. That's good. Also Austin's local beer is fantastic.

All in all, it was great! I wish we had gotten more time to prepare stuff and lock in more panels, but I think the folks at Mosaic were just so pumped about getting word out about the movie that they sent us all out to the very first one that gave them a green light for it. I'm cool with that.

Back on the webseries side of things, we got the last two entries shot over the course of two days. Since the location we're using for the school is about a two hour drive away from us, it'd be pretty inefficient to only shoot one entry at a time whenever we're there, not to mention really expensive. That's not to imply we won't be using other, closer, more familiar locations before the ending rolls around though. Who knows. I'm totally NOT going to say that shooting multiple entries while we're at the school should decrease the wait time with them, because every time I do something ridiculous happens that keeps it from being that way. So uh, everything is going to stay the same forever. Yes.

I won't go into too much detail, to avoid the risk of spoilers, but the last two entries were very fun to shoot. Especially for me. Especially for the most recent one. It was one of the few that we had planned out almost entirely since the beginning of season three, so finally getting around to it was great. We'll definitely have plenty to talk about when we record the DVD commentary for this one, that's for sure.

As soon as Tim finishes up with a project he's been working on the past week and a half out in Birmingham, we'll be back to shooting. I guess I can say that we're in the home stretch of MH now because that's really super vague and doesn't imply how many entries are left at all.

So about those cons

Okay so remember how I mentioned that we didn't have any cons after GMX? Turns out we have another one. Pretty soon, actually.

Joseph, Tim, and I will be at Austin Comic Con November 22nd and 23rd with Doug Jones! We'll be doing a panel about the movie that'll be happening from 4:00-4:45 that Saturday (the 23rd) in Ballroom E. I don't think we'll have time to have a DVD/shirt table set up because we'll be having to get on our flight back home either late Saturday night or Sunday morning. Before and after the panel, I'll be sure to let everyone know what general area we'll be at so if you'd like to come say hey you can! Maybe we can weasel our way back behind Doug's signing table to hang out there, but I can't say for sure because I literally just now thought of that.

This is kind of last minute, I know, but come by if you can! At the very least to meet Doug because seriously that guy is just the best.

So about that movie

Happy Halloween everyone! Very timely word just came down that this would be the perfect chance to finally share some more news with you about the movie. At long last. I don't know if I'd be able to keep it to myself much longer. Here we go:

-First, the news that will probably put some of you at ease. The movie will not be a continuation of the storyline on the Marble Hornets Youtube channel. That's still set to finish up at the end of season 3, so no cliffhangers that will require you to go to a movie theater to see resolved. Instead, the story of the movie will take place in the same universe as the webseries, and there's definitely a reason for that, but speaking more on that ventures into spoiler territory.

-The movie itself, believe it or not, has already been shot! Remember our super secret trip to LA this summer? That was to visit the set. It was an awesome experience to see everyone bustling around and getting things done. Got to meet and chat for a bit with pretty much everyone on the team, including all the actors that were there that day. Oh yeah, speaking of which...

We happened upon this guy.

-As some of you have already suspected, it's totally true, the one and only Doug Jones is in the movie as The Operator. Yeah man, THAT Doug Jones. He was the nicest guy to meet and hang around with, yet was able to turn instantly unsettling once the cameras were rolling. I can't think of a better person to play the part and am so pumped that it all worked out. Tim is entirely to thank for getting it all started with a simple tweet almost two years ago (!!!)

So that's the three big bits of news for your Halloween enjoyment. We'll no doubt be blabbing on about it at every opportunity at GMX this weekend too, so feel free to bring it up there if you're coming. Release date, trailers, the title of the movie, and more are still yet to be revealed but we're working on getting some more announcements out there sooner than you might think! Thanks as always for sticking around for all this, everyone. More is on the way!

Gee-mex

It's that time of the year again where we pack up lots of stuff and head off to Nashville for GMX! This is pretty much our "home con" and the one we always really look forward to. This year we have more stuff scheduled for us than we've ever had before. Here's what all is going down:

Friday:
Opening Ceremony
6:00pm-7:00pm in Main Events
-The one where we always forget that we have to get up in front of everyone and say something. I doubt this year will be any different.

YouTube Content Creators Panel
7:00pm-8:00pm in Main Events
-Hang around right after opening ceremonies to hear us and other folks talk about this thing called the internet and putting videos on it.

How to Make a Webseries
9:00pm-10:00pm in Franklin
-Our half serious presentation about how we make MH and what all has worked and failed horribly for us. There will be a powerpoint.

Saturday:
Celebrity D&D: The High Adventure Returneth
11:00am-1:00pm in Palomino

-The continuation of our woefully inept adventures in Dungeons that also have Dragons in them. This time there will be some new, awesome people up there with us. I don't think I'm allowed to say who all they are so stop by to find out. We're honored to be their meat shields.

Exterminate Bullying Charity Auction

1:00pm-3:00pm in Palomino

-We'll be auctioning off another hand painted mask from Marble Hornets here, as well as lunch/dinner with us at any time during the con. Since we're in the final season of MH, all signs point to the mask being the last one that will ever be available for auction at GMX. All proceeds go to The Evolve Project, which is a non-profit focused on anti-bullying with middle school aged kids. It's a subject that I'm personally pretty familiar with, so it'd be really great to see lots of people come out and help support this organization.

Marble Hornets Q&A

5:00pm-6:00pm in Palomino

-Ask us questions about stuff. If no questions are in attendance we will discuss Sonic the Hedgehog lore.

Marble Hornets Season 3 Commentary
8:00pm-9:00pm in Palomino
-We have less time for this one than usual due to scheduling compromises, which is alright because we thought it might be kind of weird to do all of season 3 even though it's not finished yet. Also it's not at 2 in the morning like it was last year. That's a plus.

Sunday:

We'll be at our table all day until...

Closing Ceremonies

5:00pm-6:00pm in Main Events

-Come say bye to us before we haphazardly shove all our con stuff back into our cars and ride off into the sunset.

As usual, anytime we're not at one of these panels or eating, you can find us at our booth selling DVDs, shirts (for real this time), and stickers that I made and had printed especially for GMX that you can slap all over your cars and game boys. Signatures on anything and everything are free.

I'll be keeping my twitter updated during the con, so keep an eye on that if you wanna. I'll tweet out our booth location as soon as we find where it is.

Oh yeah, and our super secret special guest from last year will be returning this year too. Sssshhhhh...

A dump of news

Whoops forgot to update this for a while there.

I was really stoked to get the latest MH entry out. It was a heck of a shoot, all done in one night, but it turned out great and Jessica was easy to work with as usual. I honestly wasn't expecting a non-reluctant yes when I asked if she would be okay with Tim carrying her over his shoulder down some stairs while maintaining a limp, but that's exactly what I got. Everything was smooth sailing from then on, despite being so time consuming but that's unavoidable for really involved shoots like this. I think we started around 10pm and didn't fully finish until about 5:30am. It was tiring to say the least, but we're all pretty proud of the end product!

I've been writing the script for Entry #77 all this week and we're aiming to shoot this weekend. Tim is working on his own video project for school that he needs to have done by early next week, so there's a possibility that it'll overlap with MH filming. That's totally fine though, it should take priority for him anyway, and won't really push things back all that majorly. Basically what I'm saying is that the next entry is being worked on and is coming soon.

In my free time, I'm also working on an animated short, which I mentioned over on my Tumblr some time ago. Obviously my initial estimation of having it done in "two to three weeks" was way off, but I'm still working on it! Tim is doing all the sound design for it now too, which I'm pretty excited about. It'll be over on the THAC channel....um...whenever it's done. I'm afraid of estimating exact dates now.

We're also in the process of getting things ready for GMX, which starts November 1st. We're working on restocking our DVD and tshirt supplies after selling a lot more than expected at Connecticon (which was awesome!). We'll definitely have the shirts this time too, which we didn't have last year for various silly reasons. I'm also kicking around the idea of having a limited run of semi-GMX-exclusive shirts there. They'll only be available at GMX, but we'll try and figure out a way to sell any extras we have online. I'm thinking it'll either be something related to THAC shorts (like this), or something related to ToTheArk. Not sure yet. Any suggestions?

And finally, speaking of cons, I've been getting a lot of messages recently about what cons Joseph, Tim, and I will be at after GMX. As of right now, we don't have any others set in stone after that. BUT, if there's a convention near you that you'd like to see us at, by all means email or facebook or tweet or telegraph the folks in charge about it. If they'd like an email address to reach us at, mhtroyw@gmail.com is the one. Hopefully this doesn't sound like I'm asking all of you to do the work for us. It's just really difficult to pinpoint the countless cons out there that might have interest in having us around. Thanks a bundle for getting us to all the places we've been to so far too <3

Lots of new stuff coming!

Connectingcon

We're currently working as quickly as we can to get the next MH Entry done by the time we leave for Connecticon next week. It might be a photo finish but I'm pretty confident that it's doable. That's assuming the weather cooperates, which always kind of seems to be a crap shoot around here. I'm also working on a couple of new things for the THAC channel in my spare time, but those probably won't be finished until after we get back since most of our time is dedicated to getting the next MH out the door. Regardless, it's nice to have so much coming up!

Speaking of which, here's our schedule for Connecticon:

Marble Hornets Q&A:

Friday 11:30am - 1:00pm
Special Events Room 1 (Marriott Ballroom ABCDE)

-Come ask us stuff about anything and we'll try to answer as vaguely as possible.

How to Make a Webseries:
Sunday 10:00am - 11:30pm

Special Events Room 1 (Marriot Ballroom ABCDE)

-We'll talk about what works for us when it comes to shooting Marble Hornets. We have a powerpoint for this so you know we're the real deal.

When we're not at either of these, you can find us at our table in the Online Media Guest hall surrounded by all the other awesome people there. It's in "Exhibit Hall B, near the Dealer's Room and the Artists' Colony", according to the CTcon website.

We don't know specifically which table we'll be at, and probably won't until we actually get there. Keep an eye on my twitter and I'll be sure to mention it on there as soon as we find out. We'll be selling DVDs and shirts, and giving away our signatures on whatever you throw at us, so stop by!

"Can we go on a Nic Cage safari?"

Two fun things coming up for us soon. Early Saturday morning the three of us will be hopping on a plane to fly out to lovely Los Angeles for super top secret things that probably involve movies and definitely involves jet lag.  The farthest west I've ever been up until now is Phoenix, so this will be a whole new ordeal for me. Our hotel is a couple of blocks down from places like the Chinese Theater so we'll probably just be kitsch absorbing tourists on our down time, but if any of you have suggestions on stuff to do around that area, let me know! I'll probably be tweeting everything that I'm able to share while we're out there, so if you're down with that, keep an eye on my twitter. Tim and Joseph will likely be doing the same.

Second thing, the very next weekend, we'll be at the Alabama Phoenix Festival in Birmingham with a booth selling shirts and DVDs. We'll also be doing a live commentary and Q&A on Saturday at 8pm in Room 3, and a round table discussion on webseries on Sunday at 1pm in the same room. If you happened to miss us at Kami-Con a few months ago, here's another chance! Also Ernie Hudson is going to be there, which is totally awesome.

Speaking of conventions and totally awesome, don't forget that we'll also be at Connecticon in July! I can't remember if I mentioned that on here or not, but I'm too lazy right now to click the back button to check on it. I'll share more specific info on panels and stuff that we're doing once a few more details have been ironed out. Can't wait to see all you northerner city slickers there. *spittoon*

Hopefully we can find time to squeeze in shooting another entry between all this stuff. Maybe we should just do it in LA and hope no one notices....

I mean it looks almost exactly like Alabama anyway.

Drip drip

Alright, I'm now healed up enough to get back to shooting. Which would make sense, considering Entry #69 was posted a while ago. It was pretty time consuming to shoot, mostly because the red tower location is about an hour's drive away from us. We were smart enough to get more takes than usual, to decrease the chance of driving home and finding out everything we shot sucked or something. It was really strange to go back to the red tower. It's been a good year since I was last there, and even longer since I was there shooting Marble Hornets. It was one of the rare moments where I stopped and thought "Man, we've been doing this for a pretty long time".

A good chunk of Entry #70 has been shot too. There's still a couple of things left, but we're trying to get it finished as soon as possible. I've got a good feeling that the wait between entries will start to gradually get shorter from here on out. As usual, don't quote me on that because it always seems like something crazy comes up every time I'm optimistic about timing.

If all goes according to plan, we'll be going out to begin shooting Entry #71 this weekend! I want to try and squeeze in shooting another couple of Nature Breaks next week too. Gonna be a busy little cupcake, it seems.

In other news, I've had a couple of really interesting phone calls over the past few weeks regarding the movie. Not being able to talk in detail about some of the stuff that's going on is driving me absolutely crazy. There's a bit of news in particular that I'm really excited about sharing with all of you, but I have no idea when I'll be at liberty to do so. I think the only new bit of vague news I'm able to say right now is that principle photography is slated to start relatively soon. I'm constantly asking our contact at Mosaic what new stuff I'm able to share, so hopefully this trickle of information from me can continue. Maybe it can even graduate to a full on steady drip at some point. Who knows.

Afterwards

I'm happy to report that my surgery went off without a hitch last week. Everyone at the hospital was super nice and cut open the side of my head like real pros. The only rough part was having to wake up at 4 in the morning for it.

I'm still in the process of healing up. I had to go back to the hearing clinic earlier this week to get a sponge (!) removed from my ear that was there to widen up my ear canal, which was a pretty odd sensation. I still have some packing in my ear that will be removed April 3rd too. After that, the only thing that's left is packing behind my eardrum that will dissolve away on its own in about a month or two. Once all that is out of the way, I should be able to hear from both sides again. For now everything is still mostly muted, but I can kind of hear myself on my left side when I talk, so that's probably a good sign. Couldn't do that before.

Part of the hair on my left side had to be shaved, so I look a little goofy. I also still need to keep a cotton ball in there at all times. So once my hair has grown back and I no longer have a wad of cotton stuffed in my ear, shooting Marble Hornets can finally commence again. Thanks so much for being patient everyone! I'm spending the downtime writing more detailed outlines of the next few entries, as well as trying to get through my sale-induced, embarrassingly large Steam backlog. Little Inferno was lovely.

Speaking of games, and enough about me, Slender: The Arrival launches this Tuesday! If you haven't preordered yet and were planning on it, get on that! The 60 dollar name-in-the-credits tier may have sold out, but the soundtrack and special editions are still up for grabs. Mark Hadley, the director of the game (as well as the straight up creator of the original game) pulled double duty to compose the soundtrack himself and it sounds really nice. He posted a preview of it over on his youtube channel that you should definitely check out. All of the art that comes with the special edition is also fantastic. Along with looking all pretty, it will also be signed by the entire StA development team, including the three of us! So if that's something you'd be down with, the special edition is the way to go.

More fun news coming soon, so be in touch you sweet little sugarplums.

Cut cut cut cut cut cut....

I keep forgetting to mention this on here to all of you, but this Monday I'll be going under the knife. I'm having some slightly invasive surgery done on my left ear to help return some of the hearing that I've slowly lost over the years, due to various boring medical reasons. Those of you that came to our Kami Con panel and were on my left side probably noticed that I had some problems hearing clearly whenever a question came from that side of the room. Hopefully that won't be a problem for much longer. I went to an ENT in Birmingham a little over a month ago, and after a few cool looking CT scans of my head, they let me know it can be fixed! Well, "mostly fixed", but whatever. It also apparently involves drilling away a small part of my skull, which is totally metal.

Anyway, that will be early early Monday morning, and I've been told that it'll probably put me out of commission for about a week minimum. As soon as I'm able to get back out there, Marble Hornets will resume shooting. But for now, expect a bit of a hiatus while I am reintroduced to stereo sound.

Now suddenly this

I'm sure a lot of you have already heard the news by now, but in case you haven't, a movie based on Marble Hornets is currently in the early stages of development! Which is totally nuts.

Here is the article from Variety with the announcement.

It's something that's been in the works for the last couple of years now, so it's refreshing to finally be able to talk about it in the open. I can't really get into too many details about it just yet, but here's what I'm at liberty to share:

-Assuming everything stays on schedule, it will be shot this spring. Rough release dates have been tossed around, but nothing is anywhere near to being set in stone yet.

-It's being produced by Mosaic, who are mainly known for producing comedies, but is taking its first foray into a new genre with this. We've spoken on the phone with them plenty of times and they're all super dedicated to making the movie the best it can possibly be.

-The director will be James Moran, who has done tons of stuff. He was the second unit director for the three most recent Paranormal Activity movies, which shows that he's plenty experienced in a film making style similar to Marble Hornets.

-The script has already been written by Ian Shorr, and both Joseph and I have read it. It's great!

-We will be involved with the movie in a certain capacity, but I can't get more specific than that.

-This absolutely does not mean people can't make a series like this anymore, nor does it mean we're going to send out lawyers or something to the ones that are already out there. That's the last thing I'd ever want to have happen.

-And finally, Marble Hornets will not be ending early because of this, I promise. Nothing at all has changed on that front.

That's all I'm able to say right now. We're all super excited that the stars have aligned to make this happen. We knew, and were told plenty of times, to keep our expectations low with getting this movie made. There were no empty promises. After the past few years, I now fully understand why it usually takes things so long to get greenlit in Hollywood. Luckily, the hardest part is done now. That's not to say there won't still be challenges, but at least the ones left are significantly less daunting.

I'm stoked, and I hope you are too! Stay tuned.

Crossbow ninjas

Kami Con was great! Our table ended up being right next to LittleKuriboh, so we totally got to pass those notes. Also we stole their credit card reader a few times because Joseph's didn't like him. They were the best booth neighbors a guy could ask for. Thanks to everyone who came by to say hey! We enjoyed chatting with all of you!

That guy over there didn't say much though.......

We also did a quick video interview with LittleKuriboh's wife Marianne for Gamerfront about writing for Slender: The Arrival, which you can watch right over here.

I was aiming to have Entry #67 posted before Kami Con, and it ended up being a real photo finish. I stayed up until about 6:30 Friday morning finishing up the edit and letting it render, then uploaded it while getting ready to go, and finally unprivated it right before heading out the door for Birmingham. Couldn't have been any closer if I tried! It definitely made me feel a lot more relaxed at the convention, so I'm really glad it was able to be done when it was.

Shooting 67 was a bit of a mixed bag. Weather wasn't on our side again, but luckily most of it was indoors. It just wasn't much fun walking to the location in the rain. One of the days we were out there, it literally started pouring the second we got out of the car, right after I said "At least it isn't raining yet..." I mean for real seriously come ON. 

Once we were inside though, things went swimmingly. We were on a tight schedule, but we somehow managed to finish about 30 minutes early all three days we were out there. That's pretty unheard of with us, believe me. We even shot while some high school kids were in the same building shooting at each other with airsoft guns. Don't really know why you'd want to do that, but whatever. One of them called Tim "sir".

Anyway, work on the next entry is trudging along. No release date yet, as usual, but it won't be too terribly far from now!

Kami Con

I keep forgetting to mention this, but we'll be at Kami-Con again this year! Instead of being in our home city of Tuscaloosa, it's been moved this time to the BJCC in Birmingham. It's all going down this weekend (!!!),  so get your tickets soon if'n you wanna come. Me, Tim, Joseph, and maybe one other mysterious person that you've probably already guessed will be there all weekend in the vendor room. We'll be selling season 1 and season 2 DVDs, as well as a limited number of shirts (that we actually HAVE this time). As always, autographs on anything are free. I'm not sure where the exact location of our table will be, but keep an eye on my twitter and I'll be sure to update you on that as soon as I know.

We will also be doing a Q&A panel on Saturday in the forum room from 3-4pm. That's the only panel we've got for this one, so be sure to come help fill the room!

Also go see our bestie LittleKuriboh, who I hope is close to our table so we can pass notes to each other. He'll be doing a panel on Friday from 6-7pm in the ballroom.

Betaaaaaaa

Slender: The Arrival, the successor to Slender: The Eight Pages that we did the writing for, is now available for preorder! A kind-of pay what you want model has been adopted, using 6 tiers, with the base price for it being just 5 of your dollars. See all the other options here.

Preordering also gets you beta access to one of the "levels" in the game! It's the one that sticks the closest to The Eight Pages in terms of objectives, so it should feel pretty familiar to those of you that have played S:TEP already. A good bit of the story stuff has been stripped out to avoid spoilers, but it's still a fun area to explore while constantly looking over your shoulder. Keep an eye out for the canoeing rules because I TOTALLY WROTE THAT.

The release date has also been.....uh, released. March 26th will be when you and the full version can venture out into the night together and tell each other spooky ghost stories. That's right around the corner, depending on your perspective.

Anyway, big ole' thanks to all of you that decide to preorder for supporting Blue Isle and Parsec, and by extension, us!

More Marble Hornets on the way.

Ghost Wrench

At long last, I'm glad to say that Entry #66 is finally done. I think that it had close to, if not the most rewrites of any entry to date. We felt that the scene at the beginning was important enough to take the time to write it as carefully as possible. We'd write it, then do the scene together, each time usually finding something that didn't flow as well as it did on paper and change it. We even went to try and shoot it on three separate occasions, but kept having to cut it short for various reasons. It was a long process, but hopefully one that people feel was worth the wait!

By comparison, the "stalking" scene was a breeze to shoot, and lots of fun. It was done a good couple of weeks before the beginning scene was, which cleared up plenty of time to focus entirely on it. Shooting that was one of the few times we've gone out there and not run into other people. That's probably for the best, as it probably wouldn't look too great to suddenly see two dudes stalking someone through an abandoned building while brandishing a unnecessarily large wrench. The fact that it was like 8am on a weekday probably had something to do with that.

As far as the next entry goes, we're in the process of finalizing details for it. We have one or two things already shot, but the more involved stuff is yet to come. I'll probably spend the rest of this week getting all the writing locked in. Going to try and shoot a little more while I do that to keep things moving if scheduling will allow it. Either way, I definitely don't anticipate a wait as long as the last one for it, which is a welcome change.

Also, we're hankering to do another livestream sometime soon. If you have any suggestions, let me know! I was thinking of Surgery Simulator 2013, given our extensive experience with such things.