In For A Penny: Part Two "The Thorne of Rose Street"

Finally after the long setbacks, it's done, and it's published. The first streams are up.

Watch In For A Penny: Part 2 - "The Thorne of Rose Street":
Here
Or here.

Download available here as well.

If you haven't seen the first part, please do before watching this one.

There was a voice actor change which may or may not be readily noticeable. After sitting on the project for 6 months waiting for voice lines, I eventually needed to recast Thayle. I am extremely happy though with the job that Cranius did with the part, and I think the audience will agree.

It literally took me about a week to finish this after receiving the lines, that's how done it was since last year. Six months of waiting for lines had me quite frustrated!

All the music used is available in the FAQ. It is all under Creative Commons copyright, and I encourage donations to the artists if you like their work.

In For A Penny: FAQ

Since I get mailed a bunch for questions on a couple things, I'll add this as a link on the side for answering them. Feel free to comment with questions and I'll answer for you.


Q: Why did it take so long between parts one and two?

A: I sent my scripts out in September 2008, but a couple voice actors had RL things to deal with. At the beginning of April, I recasted Thayle. IFAP Part 2 was released within a week.

Q: How long until Part 3?

A:  The scripts have been sent to the actors and I have created some of the sets that will be used. We have a new baby, and that will take up most of my time. Unfortunately, I had different project I had to cancel on which I was looking forward to participating in, but tiny demanding god comes first.

Currently I am waiting on three voice actors; once those actors send their lines, I will begin working on the project.  Until then, I am enjoying time with my daughter.


Q: Can I do voices for IFAP?

A: Thank you for the interest, but I will need no more actors for IFAP.


Q: I need that song Leda sings in Part 1! I NEED IT!

A: Tori Amos - Mother Revolution. Here's a link to the amazon page.


Q: Did you sing the song Leda sings??

A: No. See answer above. I sang in a different machinima though.


Q: What's X song in X scene? Where can I get these songs?

A: All the music used is listed in the credits. A link to the songs is available below. Please do not contact me asking for me to e-mail them to you; I will not send them. You can purchase them on amazon for less than a dollar per song, or download from Jamendo, depending on which one.

Prologue:
Informatik - Watching You Watching Me
Bel Canto - Waking Will

Part 1 - "On All Eight":
NIN - Ghosts I-IV
Tori Amos - Mother Revolution

Part 2 - 'The Thorne of Rose Street"
NIN - 05 Ghosts I
NIN - Lights in the Sky
Sion - After Hours
Tryad - Breathe
Maya Filipic - Prelude in C# minor
Amanyth - I was there
Roger Subirana - Silent Tears

Q: What programs do you use?

A: World of Warcraft: Shadow Council Server, Oblivion TES Editor, Sony Vegas 8.0, WoWModelViewer, WoWMapViewer, Fraps, Particle Illusion, Audacity, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Crazytalk

Q: Who did the voices in IFAP?

A: IFAP Cast List:
P2: Thayle : Cranius
P1: Thayle : Jonathon Lourdes, aka Teacher_Nine
Thorne : Glenn X. Govan, aka Caruu
Nora : Melissa D. Johnson, aka Mippa
Emerson : Melissa D. Johnson, aka Mippa
Glimmy : Frank Minnie
Leda : Selserene
Guard/Jailor : Justin Miller
Guard : Gunderic
P1: Guard : Nick Freeston
Higgs : Troy Fried
Rocks : Troy Fried
P2: Drach : Richard Searcey
P1: Drach : Justin Miller
Reporter 1 : Miranda Nelson, aka Mirielle
Reporter 2 : Andrew Ash
Reporter 3 : It's a secret to everybody! (Don't kill me.)


Thanks for watching!

Optemizzm, I has it.

I'd hoped to have IFAP2 done and released last year, but it wasn't in the cards. I did get e-mail recently from the voice actors that I am still missing files from, who said they would work on getting them to me soon. It's making me hugely optimistic that I can start working on the project again. *crosses fingers*

I do feel bad whenever I see posts on my videos asking for the next one; I'd have it out if I could, really, but you have to roll with what you are given. I'm hoping that once I have the voices, I'll be able to release it within a few weeks of that. I can put off gaming addictions for long enough to work on it. ^^

In any case, I re-rendered the original IFAP Part One with better compression settings, thanks to Legs teaching me how not to such with megui. If you are interested in such things, you can find the download >here<. Quality should be much improved.

Dragon*Con Film Festival Finalist

I was excited to learn this week that "In For A Penny: On All Eight" was one of the finalists at Dragon*Con's 2008 Film Festival. I didn't even find out until a couple days after the con was over!

First place was Surgee's beautiful, "The Demise." My "In For a Penny" and Sam Goldwater's "Monad" were the other two finalists against some great machinimas. :D It's the closest to winning anything for my work I've come. I've had other movies that were finalists for different contests, but the finalist pool was much larger than just three selections.

There were a lot of great submissions as well, just going through the submissions page you can watch some of the best machinima I've seen all year.

It was an honor to be selected with those two great machinimas, both of which I've really since I first saw them. Anyone go to Dragon*Con and see what the machinima screenings and panels were like? I'm curious to know.

<3
Sels

Kitten with String

A couple weeks ago I asked a friend from a very long time ago if he would be interested in helping me with the script for "In For A Penny." We went over the first five I'd done then he wanted some alone time with it. Seventeen pages later, he's gone a little crazy with it. That makes for a rather long work, and may force IFAP to become episodic instead of a short piece.

Length isn't the most daunting thing though... it's Voice Acting. I didn't originally envision this with that many characters, simply because I have no one I know that is a Voice Actor per se, but I'm currently looking at at least 13 parts - small ones mostly, but still needing people willing to help. I put out the call to friends, and received a moderate amount of interest, and everyone that responded was sent test lines so I could see how their mic and voice sounded while reading lines...

Three weeks later I have four, yes four, people that have sent me back just the couple test lines. I feel in an awkward position. Somehow this little project I wanted to create just to create and share has expanded to something I cannot accomplish without finding people I don't know to aid me, and it puts me in a position I wasn't expecting. I can't imagine asking a stranger to read lines for me, for a project that is simply a monetarily free project created in the spirit of, well, creating. So really, I don't know what to do... I really think this project could swim or sink based simply on who I find for the lead parts, and I've really started to wonder what I've gotten myself into... and whether it's worth continuing.

Maybe I should have all the voices chat like Charlie Brown's mom and just use dialogue... in fact, I think Hollywood should do a remake of Casablanca just like that. We can call it... CasaWawa.

Compounding this is the idea that Machinima always seemed to me as a great refuge of the amateur is becoming a competition of special effects and cinematic programs, where Machinimators are looking to move into Hollywood-level production. It seems Machinima is being looked at as a vehicle to success; I've noticed an increase in Machinima related hosting sites recently, many being created and launched with some new movie in the hope to jetison their site to success. It makes me wonder if expectations for films to be professional grade will kill Machinima for 'kittens with string' like myself. I certainly hope not.

<3 A Kitten with String

Over Blogging Attacks Azeroth.

I swear I'll avoid this many in the future, but, "In For A Penny: Prologue" is up and available. =) Quicktime and Divx were having good days, and didn't take out their aggressions on me tonight!

As always, if there is a particular scene in this movie or others that someone would like a screenshot of in Hi-Res, just let me know. Thanks for watching. =)

Impatient Sels is Impatient.

Patience has never been one of my virtues. So after a couple all nighters, I've actually finished IFAP:Prologue. I'm now just waiting on an e-mail of all things. So, while waiting, I threw together some screenshots and images from the film. If you are interested in some downloadable High Res shots, you can download here.





I'd like to start releasing the film in the next couple days. Once it's out, if someone reading this blog has a particular scene that they enjoy, and would like a HiRes image of that scene, I'm happy to provide custom screenshots.

For the record, Tauren would not look good as the primary characters in the movie.

I totally have this nagging feeling that as soon as I release it, a great machinimator like BaronSoosdon or Olibith will put out something the same day, and no one will see my video on WCM again. Is that paranoia or cynicism? I really can't tell. The release of "He Will Redeem Us" fell off the front page in less than a day in a half, with under 400 views. While it's never a good feeling to have people hate your work, it's much more frustrating for no one to get the chance to see you work. If it wasn't for a few sites; Moo_Money's WoWInsider Blog, Wow.incgamers, and Wegame, who all featured my work, no one would have ever seen it. So paranoia or cynicism? Probably a little of both.

<3 /sels off