"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.

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

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.