The trailer was cut by Daniel Sheehan, who we’ve linked to before for another sweet trailer he made during Season 2. Apparently, he used four clips from every. single. episode. Pretty impressive. Give the dude some love.

However, the good news is that we started filming Season 2 of Web Zeroes last weekend, and so far, so good. I even brought some screenshots to prove it. I’m loving the look of the new footage we’ve shot on Daniel’s sexy new Canon 7D. It’s a great camera. Take a look and see for yourself.

We’re going to start on Episode 2 this weekend, and will keep hitting the grind until sometime during the Summer. The show starts in March, so it’s not too much longer before you guys will get to see what we’re working on.

In the meantime, who’s played Mass Effect 2? I kind of love it.

I meant to have these things up on Christmas morning, but I got a bit distracted by how awesome my weekend was. For real. We’ve finished filming Web Zeroes (the season finale is out on Wednesday) so Daniel, Nick and I are getting to experience the now-awkward warmth of actual friendship for the first time in a long time. You know, playing Dungeons and Dragons, hanging out, Rock Band, etc. It’s the opposite of how our time is spent when we make this stuff, which usually involves family curses, tiger uppercuts and CQC.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these outtakes. They hail from Season 2 of TLW, Episodes 9 and 10. As such, there are no Leeroy lines as he was out adventuring in the Matrix Mordor. There are also plenty of things from Ty doing his Asher and Mendoza voices and even some beatboxing at one point, as well as lots of Daniel having fun with Adam Sizzler. Because honestly, who wouldn’t have fun with that guy?

Sizzlin’ indeed. Right click and “save as” to download this stalwart mp3 to your general desktop region.

  (Direct Link)

Enjoy!

Here are some more lost TLW factoids.

• The clusterf*** of Episode 12. A little known fact about Episode 12 of Season 1- it was re-written no less than 3 times during filming. One of the earliest concepts of the episode actually included Ahmad assuming leadership of the Terrorists, because let’s get real, why would he let Cortez stay as the leader? This presented some funny ideas (like him making Cortez do the chores introduced in Ep 2), but ultimately we decided that we needed to get to the Ochos Muertos, because we had taken too long to bring them to the forefront. The original draft also didn’t involve the Domination Man, but we eventually included him just because we thought it would be cool. Which lead to other problems…

• The Domination Man’s Early Demise. Sometimes red herrings are cool. Other times they are not. Like when they distract you from the real plot and confuse the audience. While introducing the Domination Man to save Cortez in Episode 12, we ran into an unfortunate problem- most everyone that saw the episode thought that the Domination Man was in fact Mendoza. From a storytelling standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Leeroy is talking about Mendoza, Cortez’s brother, and then the very next scene, the Domination Man is heard while we see the logo of the Ocho Muertos, and then he saves Cortez. Suddenly, we were worried that Episode 13 wasn’t going to make any sense and that people were just going to assume for the rest of the season that DM and Mendoza were one in the same. So… we wrote a quick scene where Mendoza kills him. Boom, end of confusion.

• Leeroy’s Death. This was one that I regretted cutting from the story badly, but we just couldn’t make it work without it being stupidly confusing. Instead of getting kicked off the show by the Producer, Leeroy was going to be killed after the second challenge of Season 2, in either a crazy awesome explosion of his lair, or a shootout with Cortez. The death would send Westheimer spiraling into depression, and Ellis on the run at a slightly earlier time than he eventually did in the series proper. The twist? Leeroy had merely faked his death and went to study the death room. Cortez was in on it, too. We decided it was easier just to have him kicked off, because we thought that a fake death would lessen the impact of Ahmad’s sacrifice when it happened. Also, before we had fully fleshed out Leeroy’s arc for Season 2, it was going to be the Domination Man that appeared half dead on the house’s doorstep, spilling the Producer and Player’s secrets. Ever wonder why we didn’t show him getting shot?

• Darth Westy. When we did the initial brainstorming for the end of Season 2 and story for Season 3, we had 2-3 ideas that we toyed around with but ultimately scrapped. I’ll save the others for a later date, but one of them involved the house exploding with Westheimer trapped inside. The rest of the cast has fled, assuming him dead. Right before the credits roll, a half dead and burned Westy is found by the Producer, who kneels down and whispers, “Do not worry, Westheimer. We are going to fix you.” You can only guess who the main villain of Season 3 was going to be in that scenario.

Got any more questions that you’re curious about? Send them in, and let us know your thoughts on these new revelations. Also, we’ve got a new episode of Web Zeroes out tomorrow, so be sure to stop by.

It was interesting going back through these old audio files. One thing that we’ve never really done in outtakes is include bits where cast members have dropped spoilers as a joke. Now that the show is over, those boundaries are gone, so there are one or two of those sprinkled about. I’m also particularly fond of the Asher outtakes here, as well as Ben’s constant surprise when he reads jokes for the first time. He became a tad fixated on the idea of Cortez’s extra balls, but aren’t we all?

So, listen and partake in a couple of lulz. I know I did. Right click and save as to download. And as things typically go with goofing around, the language is more than likely NSFW.

  (Direct Link)

In other news, Episode 4 of Web Zeroes is out on Wednesday. Probably my favorite episode so far.

I was thinking the other day about The Leet World and doing a bit of reflecting on the Counter-Strike machinima that was, and I remembered some cool pieces of commentary that I’ve been wanting to share with you guys. Normally, this kind of stuff would come up in a podcast, but as we haven’t had any time to ourselves lately, I thought it’d be good to go ahead and post it.

Here are some lost TLW factoids for you to nom on.

• Player was originally going to be a girl. Yes, how very Spriggs (and Red vs Blue, come to think of it) of us. I’m not sure when the decision was made. Somewhere in the middle of making the first episode, we felt that if Player ever got a voice, the voice would have to be funnier than what he already was. We decided we could never top him as he has always existed in the show, so he stayed voiceless and male-ish.

• Asher’s original name was Jenkins. As many have surmised, Leeroy, the World of Battlelore player extraordinaire, was named after Leeroy Jenkins. As even more of a nod to the classic video, we were going to name Asher as “Jenkins”. We eventually changed this idea so that people wouldn’t start assuming that Leeroy and Asher were twins, seeing as how they shared the same model. Asher’s actual name is a reference to Ash, the android in Ripley Scott’s Alien.

• Westheimer was going to be Chet’s father. This is one that I’m still kind of sad we ditched. For whatever reason, we chunked it by the end of season 1, but Westheimer was intended to be Chet’s father. This adds even extra humor to Chet’s lamentation in Episode 5 about never knowing his father.

• Ahmad’s original murderer? The Producer. After Asher detonated (inside the warehouse instead of outside), the gang was going to leave the burning building behind, assuming Ahmad’s demise was inevitable. He is eventually found by the Producer and some Noonien soldiers. Ahmad reaches to the Producer for help and is shocked when Prod pulls out a silenced pistol, executing him amidst the rubble of de_nuke. The Producer simply walks away, ordering the soldiers to “Clean up this mess”. As awesome as this would have been, it was just a little bit too brutal and far less heroic for our lovable noob.

There are plenty more where those came from. Feel free to send in your questions about The Leet World, I’d love to give out more information like this. And come back on Wednesday for more Web Zeroes!

The support coming in from you guys and from other places has been really awesome for us, especially after giving our all to get that TLW Finale up. Thanks for that. We even got some nice props from Burnie Burns, of a little outfit known as Rooster Teeth.

In recent days, JJ has updated the trusty SFF FAQ page. We’re still taking some questions, so send them in. A few of you have been asking some questions about the new show. So I thought I’d answer those and a few more below the jump:

• What about the old episodes of Web Zeroes?

We’re rebooting the show, so they’re gone. Lost in the vacuum of the Internet. If you really wanted to download them, you had a chance to do so for about a year. But you are lazy.

• What’s with the “reboot”?

When we started making Web Zeroes, it was really just a test. We loved the idea, didn’t have many long term plans for it, and just wanted to make something that was uniquely ours. Pretty soon, we realized that the machinima angle was a bit too constricting, and there was a better way to open up the show more to give it more options: namely, that Alex, Ray and Nate would try anything and everything to get famous, and not just making movies with video games. They will still talk a lot about video games and will dabble in machinima, but it won’t be the only thing they do.

This gives us a lot more places to go with the story, and will make for a better series, I think. We discussed doing this kind of reboot anyway, and when Revision 3 came calling it gave us the perfect opportunity to start the series off again, with a better focus. That being said, not all of the old jokes/scenes are gone, and a few of them will find their way back into the first few episodes of the season. Other than that, the show is almost entirely the same. Except for the laser-eyed sharks.

• How often will the show come out?

Web Zeroes is going to be a weekly show, starting October 7th. You’ll be able to watch episodes here, on Revision 3, on YouTube, on iTunes and even Tivo if you really wanted to. Pretty much anywhere you can think of, our episodes will be there. It will even be at your mom’s house. We go there often.

• TLW Season 2 Soundtrack plox?

Jace has done some work on it, but we’re not sure when it will be out. We’re focusing on Web Zeroes at the moment. Believe me, I want to listen to it as badly as you guys do. For future information, plox has become the word that we associate with mental disabilities.

• What about the TLW outtakes and making-of video?

We’d still love to release that stuff in the next couple of months. Right now we’re so swamped with Web Zeroes that it’s just not really on the radar. To give you an idea, we’re currently working on six episodes at once. Eight if you count the two that Jeff and I are writing. Once we finally feel like we’ve got some breathing room, I definitely want to start working on those outtakes and show you guys some of the behind-the-scenes footage from TLW.

I think that about does it for now. That’s about as specific as I can be with Web Zeroes and our future plans. In terms of when there will be more machinima stuff, who knows? I hear Dragon Age: Origins is going to have some robust machinima tools, as well as Uncharted 2. We’ll see about that in the near future. Right now, though, we’ve got a sweet deal to do what we love, and that is live action content.

P.S. You guys have heard that the dude who made Counter-Strike is making a new game called Tactical Intervention, right?

For some of you, the cat has already been out of the bag since the newest episode of Diggnation aired last night, but the rest of you can still be surprised. If you’re unaware, Rev3 is the king of awesome Internet television content like Totally Rad Show, Film Riot, Co-Op and then some. Those of you that already watch their stuff can easily attest to that.

As for our show, this is going to be a slightly rebooted version of Web Zeroes, hence the removal of the episodes from our site. I can’t go into a whole lot of detail about it just yet, but for now, you should go watch the new Web Zeroes trailer over at Revision3! This is a huge opportunity that we’re extremely pumped about. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on.

Go watch the trailer!

Before, we’ve posted some community favorites of ours, so I thought I’d repeat that again with some new links that we found recently.

Check these out:

• Day in the Life of a Turret piano cover. Though sometimes YouTube can be a pit of despair, there are plenty of dudes that make it worth it to be there, such as David Debono, who has an awesome video of him playing Nine to Five, the song from our Portal video. We were hanging out last week during our shoot when Jace found this video and promptly freaked out, he was so excited.




• TLW Season 2 trailer. A pretty impressively put-together trailer for our 2nd season. While it’s not heavy on effects and such, the guy just did a great job of researching through the season and finding some great lines. The clips are organized really well and the trailer kind of pumped me up a little for the finale, even though I know how it ends.




• TLW Typography. This one needs almost no explanation. It kind of made me a lulz bandit.

So yeah, view those guys for some awesome tributes. We have some hearts for them. And if you have anymore things that you want to draw our attention to, send them over.

Oh, and if you’re wanting a TLW Finale update, our target is still this upcoming week. Probably later rather than sooner. Also, everyone dies. Not really. But maybe.

We used the holiday weekend to beat the new project like it stole something from us (ex: our lives), putting in four consecutive twelve hour work days. We also talked Final Fantasy 7, video game music, argued about making a cooler of beer look awesome, and ate lots of queso.

Signing deals means deadlines, and we are rushing like crazy to meet them. In all honesty, we probably shouldn’t be working on the TLW Finale at all to make sure that we hit these mystical lines of death, but we are doing so whenever we can spare an instant, just for you guys, since we think you’re cool. We’ve barely been able to make much progress on it in the last two weeks. That being said, the Finale should be out some time next week. Or at least, that’s what we’re gunning for. Feel free to woot.

If you’re curious about what our weekend looked like, hit the jump to see some pictarz of our SFF Reunion. Jace is the wild one that looks like an animal.

Here you’ll see some shots of us doing some set-ups in my apartment. The first shot is me, Chuck (our camera dude and DM) Daniel and Nick. The second is Daniel and I going over a script. And the third is Nick and JJ.

In this next group of shots, you’ll see Jace manning the camera as well as Nick, Jeff and Daniel striking some fun poses. I love the second picture because Jace literally just walked into it in the middle of it.

Next up we’ve got some more shots of rehearsals at Nick’s place followed by the dudes reviewing some dailies after the scene is done.

And finally, a Dungeons and Dragons scene, Jace getting ready to shoot a scene while Daniel looks very director-ly, and finally, our awesome crew dudes Chuck and Alex. Alex is the cool dude that handles our sound.

And there you have it. The SFF Reunion. Hope you enjoyed that brief glimpse on the inside.