The short of it is this: we’re not quite sure what’s next. That’s not for a lack of ideas at all. In fact, we actually have a surplus of them. The tricky part is narrowing it down, which will only come with time to weight out their pros and cons, and also time to chill out a bit. For real, we’re just starting to get used to having our weekends back for the first time in several years, and we’re going to enjoy that for a bit before we throw ourselves onto the content skillet again. It is a hot and buttery place. OK, that metaphor got kind of weird.

Anyway, the only thing I can really tell you is this. Our next ideas aren’t exactly small potatoes. They’re big. Orca fat, I guess you could say. Up until now, we’ve done everything without a budget and without a huge supply of time. Everything has been quick, free and dirty. The last episode of Web Zeroes is something we were able to throw a bunch of time at, and I think the effort really shows. As a result, we’re going to make sure that whatever we do next we tackle with both time and money. Just think: if we’ve pulled off the stuff we’ve done so far without a budget or ample time, it’s tough to imagine what we could do with just a little of both. Or a lot of both, which would be preferable.

And no, these do not include TLW. In conjunction with wanting to do our next project with the aforementioned time and money, we also want to be able to own it. TLW is the opposite of that, as we’ve discussed on many a fine occasion.

So, stay tuned. I promise more info is coming, along with regular updates. Some things that we’re hoping to have on the docket in the next few weeks include more lost TLW factoids, some Web Zeroes features and other cool things I can’t say just yet. In the meantime, check out GamerSushi, where we’ve got cool gaming news and podcasts.

In other machinima news, have you seen this Gears of War 3 trailer created by a variety of producers including The Duo Group, Treadster Media, Kootra and Sound Wizardry. I love it.

Discuss, gents.

Many big thanks to JJ, who penned a great episode yet again. Also, I’d like to give a shout out to Miguel, who plays Scott, and did a fantastic job. Give those two guys a hand, as well as Jace, who always kills it each week on the musical front. These people are like ninjas at their crafts, so it’s cool that I know ninjas, I think.

And now for some news…

The season 2 finale (Episode 25) will also be the finale of the show itself. Next week will mark the end of Web Zeroes. We’ve known that’s how it was going to be for a month or so now, but couldn’t really talk about it until the release of this episode. I wish we could have told you guys sooner, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. I think it’s important to note that ending the show is our decision, mostly because it has just been too exhausting to do the show as a part time job in addition to our day jobs. We’re thankful to Revision3 for the opportunity to broadcast this show to a much bigger audience than we had before, and for allowing us the privilege of being their first scripted series.

What does this mean for the future of Smooth Few Films? Well, we’re not entirely sure. We need a few months off to sort things out, take some rest and then go from there. I’ll be talking about that more in a future post, but I’ll go ahead and say that it does not mean the return of Leet World. In fact, this experience has convinced us more than ever that we have to go about things differently in the future. But as I said, we’ll be talking about that more later.

For now, enjoy the episode, because I think it’s a good one. And if you live in Texas, you should go read up about our Web Zeroes Wrap Party, and come hang out with us.

Watch, spread the word, and enjoy, dudes. Also, thanks for watching. We really appreciate it.

In addition to the Halo Reach beta madness, I was wondering if you guys had seen the news about Counter-Strike: Source getting a new beta, a big update and some achievements? Pretty interesting timing for that. It makes me wonder if they’re getting ready to return to that old CS well for more multiplayer goodness. To be honest, if they ever did that, I would play the junk out of that game. The Counter-Strike series still remains the best multiplayer gaming experience I’ve had, so I’d be excited for a new one. Then again, this is all speculation on my part.

Confession: I spent an hour today going over the TLW TV Tropes page. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a very insightful breakdown of some of the major tropes, themes and characters of that show. I almost went back and watched a few episodes because of it. Almost.

Speaking of Leet World, sometimes I do the voices on set of Web Zeroes. Sometimes, the camera catches me doing this. See the example below…

These little behind the scenes snippets may start coming more regularly. Kthx.

Regretfully, we have finally pushed things too far. Due to our parody of an “Avatar parody”, Fox has sent us an actual cease and desist letter. It wasn’t just the Avatar parody that lead to this, but also the suggestion that Fox would send us a cease and desist letter in Web Zeroes Episode 14 that lead to the actual cease and desist letter. I know, it’s both terribly confusing as well as ironic, but this is sadly not a laughing matter for us.

A few things are changing. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll have to remove Episode 14 of Web Zeroes, as well as any other outstanding works on our site that use other intellectual property. No we’re not yet in trouble for those, but this is what our legal counsel has recommended for us to do. This will include our Halo shorts, Day in the Life of a Turret, Leet World, and any episodes of Web Zeroes which use even images or brief shots of video games, which is quite a fair bit.

Sorry to have to tell you guys this, it bums us out just as much as it will you, if not more so. We’re not really sure where to go from here, because this is admittedly disheartening. It seems not even our live action endeavors kept us out of legal trouble. Maybe next we’ll work on stick figures or something, but who knows. We could always just send carrier pigeons straight to our fans because the Internet is a big and scary place.

Anyway, if you want to review the actual cease and desist letter, the link is right here. Maybe you guys can help us out.

Update: Yes, this is an April Fool’s Joke.

Whereas last season took a few episodes to launch us into the story proper, we’re getting things going right off the bat this time around. And it only gets more ridiculous from there. Also, I’d like to point out that a couple of cast members appear shirtless and/or pantless in this kick-off, so yeah, it’s a party. Take off your pants too, if you want. We’re not here to judge. Well, maybe I am.

Special thanks to RoosterTeeth for appearing in our goofy show again. And much thanks to Jace and Alex for wrangling the music and sound over the weekend. They are wranglers of the finest sort, and they also work for free, so that’s cool.

To watch the episode or spew burning magma flames at us, hit the jump.

Visit Revision3 for downloadable version of the episodes. Enjoy!

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?