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.

Too quiet

No doubt a lot of you have noticed a little too much radio silence over on the MH channel lately. Trust me when I say that we're working on new stuff, and that it'll be ready relatively soon! Marble Hornets isn't over, I promise! We've got a ways to go yet!

Doing the writing for Slender: The Arrival ended up taking a bit more time than I originally estimated it would. Lots of idea bouncing between us and the developers, which is great. Having more fresh perspectives does wonders for getting the right ideas right, and getting rid of ideas that are actually kind of stupid. They were cool enough to continuously send us up to date alphas to play though and build things around. It's probably an unconventional way to do things like this, but hey, whatever works. I'm pretty confident in the writing now, and just submitted what is hopefully the final version of the script a few days ago. There's still a few things here and there that need some tweaking, but by and large, our work with the game is finishing up. It was a fantastic experience that I would gladly do again. Hope you sweetie pies enjoy it.
(Wanna see a trailer? There's one right over here fresh out of the oven)

Now that that's wrapping up (I guess that's a Christmas joke), it's time to get back to focusing full time on the next MH entry. It was nice to kind of step away from it for a bit to work on something different, and something that I personally needed. Writing for Slender helped with the slight burn out I had been feeling since finishing all the crazy intensive work on Entry #65. The trade off, of course, being that it's caused a longer wait than any of us were expecting on new MH content. So for that aspect, I apologize. BUT, we're back in the saddle, and are planning shoots as soon as we're all back from our Christmas family fun time, so sit tight for just a little longer!

And one other thing

It's official now. Me, Joseph, and Tim are all on board to do the writing for the upcoming game Slender: The Arrival, which is the remake/sequel to the super neato, massively popular Slender: The Eight Pages that was released by our pal Mark Hadley a while back.

The Arrival is being jointly developed by Mark and Blue Isle Studios, and we're totally amped to be involved now too. You can read the official press release from Blue Isle Studios here.

As usual with these announcement type things, I'll go ahead and answer some questions I've gotten about it so far:

Q: Does this mean Marble Hornets will go on hold while you do this?
A: Nope. Marble Hornets will still be going on. Whenever we're not doing that though, our attention will be completely on The Arrival. It's pretty good timing for me, because it gives me something to focus on while I wait for Joseph and Tim to finish up their classes for the semester!

Q: Will The Arrival tie into the Marble Hornets storyline at all?
A: As awesome as it would be to have a Marble Hornets game, The Arrival will be separate from the MH storyline.

Q: What do you know about the game? Tell meeeee.
A: I'm not at liberty to say anything about the game that isn't already known. Rest assured though, it's going to be a good deal deeper than what you experienced with The Eight Pages.

Q: What's the release date?
A: Early 2013 is as concrete as it gets at the moment. Keep an eye on the official website, as well as Blue Isle Studio's twitter and Mark Hadley's twitter for updates. I'll be doing my best to pass everything along to all of you as well.

If you dudes have any more questions, let me know in the comments down below! I'll be sure to answer whatever you have as best as I can.

Hope all of you are as excited for this thing as we are. We're definitely feeling the pressure to get the writing aspect right to help the game be as immersive and spooky as possible. The developers are also working hard to make sure you'll be looking over your shoulder and getting all jittery the entire time you're playing, and from what I've seen and heard so far about it, they're doing an excellent job.

A few things

So Entry #65 was lots of fun to shoot, despite how long it took to actually get it all shot. It was basically the time for us to think up all kinds of weird things to try and get with our chestcam during the "nightmare" portion in the beginning of the entry. While we were brainstorming stuff to shoot, nothing was really off limits. There were a ton of shots listed that were completely crazy to try, most of which we actually went out and got. Unfortunately, we couldn't use all of them, for the sake of keeping the entry at a slightly more reasonable length.  I don't want some of the cooler stuff to go to waste, so I'm thinking I may include an "extended cut" version of it on a magical disc that can be read by lasers that may or may not be happening once season 3 is finished up.

Progress on Entry #66 is going slowly but surely. It's going to be another fairly involved shoot, similar to 65, but I'm hoping we can get it done faster this time. It's nearly finals week for both Tim and Joseph at school, so we're having to work around all of that. I'd prefer MH to not cause them to flunk out of school or something.

Speaking of which, I spent a good bit of last week helping out with Tim's final project for his film class. I don't want to talk too much about it since it's not mine to talk about, but here's something from it that you've probably already seen:

It was so strange only being in front of the camera for a change, and not having to worry about editing and setting up shots. It was almost relaxing. Tim and his team were really really good and getting stuff done, and I'm glad they wanted my stupid face to be in it. I've been told the finished product will be going up on Youtube, so keep an eye out for that, dudes. Tim will no doubt keep all of you updated.

That's all I got for now. Well, there is one more thing, but I'll fill all of you in on it tomorrow. WHAT COULD IT BEEEEEE.