While we had some good times working on TLW, we have all moved past it, and are happy with what we produced. Since it’s so far in our rear view mirrors at this point, there is nothing that really makes us miss The Leet World. Except maybe this.

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.

I know I’ve said it quite a bit, but I truly am sorry for the lack of updates. It’s crazy, because in checking our site statistics regularly, there really are quite a few of you who come here every single day only to be disappointed by my failure to sit down and type some words about how we continually make fools of ourselves on the IntarWebz. Apparently there is a market for this kind of thing.

In terms of Web Zeroes, we are currently working on episodes 3 and 4 of the second season, doing our best to keep a steady pace without murdering ourselves. The show should debut in the next few weeks, though we haven’t quite nailed a date down with Revision3 just yet. This is part of the reason I’ve waited to update, simply because there wasn’t much news to give you guys. Also, it’s hard to show too many screenshots without spoiling some of the developments that we left hanging at the end of Season 1, so that makes it a tad difficult, too.

During my free time, I’ve found myself starting a fantasy novel of sorts. I’m not exactly sure why I’m sharing that, really, but it’s certainly interesting to me even if it’s not interesting to anyone else. One of the things the guys and I have talked about recently is that while we don’t miss the workload and the tedium that came from working on a machinima production like The Leet World, we do actually miss the ability to tell a ridiculous tale that really had no rules. While Web Zeroes is ultimately more rewarding to make, we wish that we had the budget to make a live action epic on par with the zaniness seen by our small corner of the Web. I suppose writing my own fantasy stories lets me get that out of my system. Who knows, maybe some day you can buy one. Or not.

Lately, I’ve been completely consumed by the final season of Lost on ABC. It really is a fantastic and wild show, and the engrossing mystery has had me enthralled for some time. In the final season, I’m finding myself both overjoyed and enraged by the way the questions refuse to be answered, yet trying to not worry and just appreciate the ride while it lasts. Honestly, I can’t imagine seeing anything else quite like this on TV ever again. However, it got me wondering about the mystery we wove on our own goofy Counter-Strike: Source show. Did you guys ever find yourselves frustrated by the way it unraveled?

More news on Web Zeroes coming very soon. In addition, some more “lost” info of Leet World will be revealed, as well as some old school outtakes. Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for being great fans.

Last year, as many of you know, we announced the end of the Leet World. At the time, we cited several reasons, one of them being our confirmation that Valve was not interested in machinima in the slightest. While we couldn’t go into the details of how we knew this to be true, it seems that another machinima studio has done so.

Pixel Eyes Productions are the creators of the well known Shelf Life machinima, using the Source engine. Recently, they’ve gone through some of the same issues we had in terms of trying to monetize their (hour intensive) hobby, and came up with similar results. We just assumed not talk about the problems we had, but it seems they have done so. This includes their issues with trying to become YouTube sponsors, where they were denied, just like us, since they don’t own the rights to the Source machinima they produced. Naturally, Valve owns those.

More interestingly than the YouTube dilemma, though, was that they (like us) pursued the securing of these rights from Valve, via a commercial machinima license of some kind. And, they have posted the official response. Which, just as we insisted all those many months ago, was simply that Valve is not interested in machinima.

If you don’t feel like clicking on the link, here’s the short of Valve’s response.

We are not interested in licensing our technology or IP for machinima. This includes providing copyright approvals.

I have to say, I really feel for Pixel Eyes, having been in their shoes just last year. If you are a young filmmaker trying to use Valve’s excellent Source tools, they have essentially shut the door with statements just like that. While I don’t blame Valve for trying to protect their property in the slightest, it certainly is a shame to see them take such a hard line stance when it comes to something their community produces so readily and in many cases excellently.

To me, it’s stances like these that will keep machinima in kind of a stale flux for many years to come. What you are starting to see is that the more talented individuals get snatched out of making machinima and onto other things, because machinima runs into more dead ends than it does opportunities. While it’s a nice low-budget way to practice something you love doing, making money off of it is often times the exception and not the rule. And this extends beyond machinima even, to any kind of derivative content.

My advice for any hobbyists out there that like to dabble in machinima or other forms of derivative content (fan fiction, stories based on popular games or movies, comic strips that do the same, etc) is that if you want to do this stuff for a living, don’t spend all your time on something you don’t own. By all means, practice your craft with machinima and use it to gain a fanbase, but let that be only a supplement to a project that you own completely, and let that be where you sink most of your time into.

Trust me, in the long run, it’ll be worth it. You don’t want to spend years of your life working on something only to be told that it doesn’t really belong to you in the end. Sure, you gained lots of experience and you had fun doing what you loved, but if you can do all that and then use it to pay the bills, it’s a double bonus. And believe me, if you’re good, somebody somewhere will want to pay for what it is that you’re kicking ass on.

So go out there and make it happen.

Figured I should take a few moments and wish all you dudes around the world a happy new year. It’s more than a tad strange to be in 2010. This is the decade when we need to start seeing real live robots, flying cars and video phones I’m thinking. Either that or Half-Life 2 Episode 3. Just saying.

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.

Well, here’s a late “Happy Christmas” to all of you guys from us here at Smooth Few Films: new Leet World outtakes!

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!

Right on schedule, here is Episode 10 of Web Zeroes, The Drop. In it, the dudes scramble to remove an unfinished Web site from Digg before lots of people see it and hate it. One wonders who they might contact to accomplish such a feat…

This is certainly an interesting episode both for us and for you guys, as it finally starts to hit the territory that the previous iteration of the series first hinted at. You’ll see what I mean at the end. For us, these last few episodes have been an absolute blast to make, and we really feel like we’re getting towards our stride. Apparently, we tend to gravitate towards something not all that dissimilar from Leet World- ridiculous dramatic situations, so we’re starting to see that more and more in Web Zeroes.

Speaking of Leet World there are more than a few nuggets for you TLW fans in this episode. Hit the jump to watch!
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I know I haven’t been leaving too many updates lately. My time has been devoured by production and a dangerous horror known as Modern Warfare 2. On the production side, things have been rather nuts for us here at Smooth Few Films, but there’s not really a whole lot to talk about, which is kind of weird. We’re currently filming Episode 10 of Web Zeroes while getting ready for the release of Episode 7 tomorrow.

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.

Check it out dudes. It’s Wednesday, so that means that Episode 6 of Web Zeroes, Digg Bait is here for your enjoyment. It was written by JJ, our kindly Web master, making it the 2nd episode he’s penned this season. More to come from him!

In this episode, Ray moves in with Alex after losing his job, and tries to take charge of the group by making top 10 lists with Nate. This episode really continues the ball rolling forward, and starts to move us toward some of the storyline that the original episodes hinted at with Ray and his unemployment. I think you guys will like where this is going.

As always, if you want to download it, hit up Revision 3. For now, just hit the jump to see the episode.
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A few weeks back, I posted a feature called The Lost TLW Factoids, which included bits and fragments of things that you guys never knew about your favorite Counter-Strike:Source machinima. We received lots of great feedback and some awesome questions. I didn’t quite get to some of those questions this time, but I do plan on it. I just thought these tidbits were a little juicier.

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.

Since we like you guys, we thought we’d bring you a shiny new episode. This one has dragons in it. Well, sort of. Episode 5 of Web Zeroes, Dungeons and Date Night, sees Nate, Alex and Ray trying to play a game of D&D on the same night that Alex and Diane are supposed to have a romantic evening together. As you can imagine, these two things do not mix well. Also, JJ makes an appearance in this episode as Max.

Like I said last time, this is one of the two episodes we knocked out on that big weekend that Jace and JJ came for a visit, bestowing upon us their awesomeness. It was much appreciated. Also appreciated were the responses to the last episode.

Episodic shows always take a bit of time to get rolling, and this show is no different. We were like a machine on the production of Leet World, and it took us nearly half a season to get there. This is a different animal entirely, and we like the steps we’re making. Some day, she will be fully tamed. At least, we hope. She might just trample us under her burly hooves.

But before that happens, hit the jump and watch Episode 5 of Web Zeroes!
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