There will be a brief hiatus on production as we go out of town this weekend to hang out in Austin for South By Southwest. We’ll be attending the live DiggNation filming on Saturday night at Stubb’s, so if any of you guys live in Austin, are of age and want to drop by, please do.

In other news, I saw this pretty slick Modern Warfare 2 machinima, created by YouTube user Michael Barnes. He’s done some Call of Duty 4 stuff as well as GTA 4 stuff, so I’d definitely recommend checking out the rest of his work as well. Anywho, give it a watch.

In the Smooth Few Films neck-of-the-woods, things have been awesome. We’re taking a few weeks off of production since we’ve been working like crazy people since early 2009. So far, it’s been cool to see the great reviews pouring in from the finale. We were more than a little excited to reveal that Rooster Teeth played a guest part in the final episode of Season 1 of Web Zeroes, so I hope you all enjoyed that present as much as we enjoyed providing it.

We’ve already had a planning meeting for Season 2, and I honestly can’t wait to start writing it. We’ll be filming towards the end of January and will start building a foundation of lulz upon which the new season will stand.

In other news, one of my favorite machinima teams, TheDuoGroup, released a pretty cool Assassin’s Creed original animation that they created called Initiation. I highly recommend watching it if you’re finding yourselves parched for cool video game content since the end of The Leet World.

More content coming soon. Some of it Leet World related, some of it Web Zeroes related. Also, stay tuned for some posts that will be going up over the next few weeks informing you how you can help us out. You guys are awesome fans and we know you jump at the chance to support us. That being said, we want to go grassroots style on the promotion for Season 2 of Web Zeroes. We’ll let you know more when we know more.

Smooth Few Films needs your help!

The first season of Web Zeroes is nearing an end, and it happens to be right when the annual Streamy Awards have started back up! The Streamy Awards honor the best shows around the Web and we are asking for your guys’ help with voting to see if we can be one of the official nominees for our work on Web Zeroes. You can vote once each day between now and the 15th of January.

Votes can be made on a “series” or “individual” basis. Here’s what we’re asking for your voting help on:

SERIES (linky)

Best Comedy Web Series
Best New Web Series

Please go to the series voting page and submit “Web Zeroes” for the series name and put down either www.smoothfewfilms.com/webzeroes or www.revision3.com/webzeroes as the series URL.

INDIVIDUAL (linky)

Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series- Daniel Miller
Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series- Eddy Rivas, Jeff James
Best Editing in a Web Series- Nick Comardo
Best Sound Design in a Web Series- Alex Adamitis
Best Original Music in a Web Series- Jace Ford

For this one, please head over to the individual voting page and submit all these fine dudes for their hard work on this show. Use either www.smoothfewfilms.com/webzeroes or www.revision3.com/webzeroes as the URL. Remember, you can vote every day for the next month!

Thank you guys so much for taking the time to do this! It would mean so much to us for you fans that have stuck it out with us to vote and help us get more exposure.

Please vote for us!

Speaking of Episode 7, we think it’s easily our best yet, and kicks things up a notch. You see, we filmed 6 episodes in just 4-5 weeks before the show even debuted and we saw any kind of feedback. We listened to lots of people, learned some things, and then started working on the back half of the season. I think the results will speak for themselves. We’re pretty excited to start releasing it. So excited, in fact, that we’re holding a screening of the episode later tonight (Tuesday, November 17) at the Pearl Bar here in Houston. If you’re in the area, swing by, say hi and have a drink. Or nine.

In other news, I’m going to be working on some TLW outtakes for Season 2, as well as a post that details the similarities of Leet World and some other popular media, including Dragonball Z and Star Wars. Yes, really. Not on purpose, mind you, that’s just the way these things go down sometimes. I’m not particularly proud of it.

And besides playing Dragon Age: Origins and Modern Warfare 2, that’s what my nerdy life consists of at the moment. If you want, you can check out my MW2 review over at GamerSushi. Still not decided on Left 4 Dead 2 yet, though I think I’ll pass. I believe I’ve had my fill of zombie hunting in real life. It’s my day job, you know.

Also, if you don’t follow us on Twitter, you might have missed this picture I posted the other day of us on set of Ep 10 of Web Zeroes. We were doing a video conference between LA and Houston with Jace, who snapped a picture at a rather inopportune time for me. At least it might give some of you lulz.

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?

Soon-ish. We’ve still got lots of post-production stuff to do, not to mention Jace writing the music. But we’re getting closer. I’ll let you know when we’re about a week out. Believe me, nobody wants this thing out worse than us. But as I’ve said, the new project takes precedence, so we’re doing all that we can to make sure we can work on both of those without hurting the new one.

We’ve put an extensive bit of time into the finale so that it offers a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t leave you guys hanging. We’re happy with how it’s going to end. It wraps up the story pretty well, since there’s a chance we might not get to work on the movie for a long time, if at all.

In terms of the new project, Jace is actually flying down to help us with it next weekend, and even JJ, our kindly Web master and TLW co-writer is going to join. It’ll be the second time that all of Smooth Few Films has been together since TLW started, so that is worth a hell yeah or two, if you’re feeling wild. I really can’t wait to do some show and tell with you guys, and I apologize for all of the vague language. Just know that we’re working hard and we appreciate you dudes for hanging out with us.

Also, Batman: Arkham Asylum is awesome. That is important to know, too. Just saying.

Here’s what I can tell you: we just got a big deal to produce Smooth Few Films content. No, it is not TLW. I can’t tell you who we made the deal with or go into more details about it, but trust me when I say it was a pretty crazy moment for us when we found out they were interested.

This means the “band is staying together” essentially, and that all of us (including Daniel) are rearranging some plans so that we can invest ourselves into this project. As a bonus for you guys, it means lots more Smooth Few Films content after The Leet World is over, which wasn’t going to be the case before.

This is a huge opportunity that deserves all of our time. It’s the kind of thing that we’ve been working towards for the last two years. We’re kind of giving it all we’ve got. So it means there are probably going to be some more changes coming soon, and it is partially responsible for the extended time that Episode 14 is taking us.

We’ll give some more information when we can, but our hands are a little tied. Rest assured, you should stick around for all of this because it’s going to be badass.

Some of you may have noticed that there’s been a bit of radio silence for the last few weeks. There are a few reasons for that. Part of it is that there has been some vacationing going on, and another is something that we hope to tell you about soon. Still another part is that Episode 14 is the Godzilla of episodes. It is obese. All others bow before it. That hyperbole simply means that it is big.

I’d say we’ve got about a third of it left to film, but it’s the hard third (that’s what she said), so take that with a grain of salt. When we’re nearing about a week from release, we’ll let you know. It’s not that time yet, good sirs.

Maybe these screenshots will tide you over, but probably not.

Feel free to speculate. Thanks for sticking around to see this thing through with us, dudes. You’re kind of awesome in that way.

There hasn’t been an update in awhile because there’s not a whole lot to say. We’ve been eating, sleeping and fondling production for the last couple of weeks. And not just on TLW, but more on that later. Episode 12 marches inexorably towards its fated release day, which should be at some point over the weekend. It’s currently in post production while we film Episode 13. Or rather, part one (of two) of the finale.

As far as a general FYI goes, you might notice that all comments now go to moderation before being posted on the site. We’re trying to raise the level of discourse around here, so play nice, have something worthwhile to say, and your post will go through with no problems. There will be some other changes coming to the site shortly after the season, and we’ll give you a heads up when the time comes.

Since the questions are rolling in, I wanted to clarify a few things:

• Daniel is not leaving yet. He actually won’t be gone for about 5 months or so. In that time our goal is to finish the season, party like man-imals, and then make a sweet movie. We don’t know how long the movie will be, minutes-wise.
• The show is not over yet. We’re still going to do the second half of the season. For those of you wondering, it will be just a bit shorter than last season. 
• Without Daniel, we won’t be continuing Web Zeroes regularly. Since he’s kind of in it and also the director, there’s no way it could happen. We’d still like to do an episode or two before he goes, and there might be an occasional episode if he comes in town for a weekend, but that’s it.
• Nick and I will keep making stuff after TLW is over, but we’re not replacing one crazy big workload for another crazy big workload. Whatever we work on next (be it G.R.I.E.F. or one of our other ideas), it won’t be as regular or as big as The Leet World.

Anything not answered there is something we don’t know the answers to or can’t really address at this point. There’s a lot that we still don’t know, but I thought I’d do my best to answer the things we could. 

Episode 8 will be out at some point this week. I’m excited to start this half of the season. It’s seriously going to be wild.