Daniel has been working his butt off writing and directing shorts, and his newest, The Last Birthday, is now available at Funny or Die. It’s also going to be screened as part of the Houston Comedy Film Festival on August 14th. Check it out!
Daniel’s New Short: NBCSI, Episode 101
We occasionally get questions asking what we’ve all been up to recently, so I’m happy to share NBCSI, a short that Daniel wrote and directed:
Nick edited it, and Jace did the music. The short was created as a submission for Channel 101, but unfortunately didn’t get selected for the April session.
If you aren’t familiar with Channel 101, it’s a monthly event created by Dan Harmon, who also created Community. Every month, ten five-minute episodes of independent shows are screened for an audience.
Audience members vote for the five shows they liked the best, and whichever shows get picked are required to create another episode for the next month. The longest-running current show is called Car Jumper, which should give you an idea of the kinds of absurdity that tend to flourish in that setting.
Bobby King Does Stand-Up Comedy
In the clips below, Bobby King’s mustache-free alter-ego, Ty Mahany, runs through a few stand-up routines. You may also recognize Ty as the voice of Asher and Mendoza. Check out his routines, maybe subscribe to his channel, and enjoy! You can also find Ty on twitter @tmahany. He likes to play hashtag games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RBbvkCe5cs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXnvrLlnqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpPxqITP878
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M8aSrm_8ZM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wra0X-Rjmow
New Site, Old Content!
You may have noticed that the site was down for a few months. Sorry about that! Basically what happens is that when you leave a WordPress site largely unattended for a few years, it tends to get hacked EVEN IF you keep the install up-to-date. Those hackers are wily!
In any case, we started having trouble with both GamerSushi and Smooth Few Films getting filled with malicious spam, so I decided to take down this site for a while under the assumption I would take the time to create a streamlined non-Wordpress version without much trouble.
Several months passed, and I realized that I wasn’t going to get off my ass and make a whole new site from the ground up any time soon, so I’ve gone ahead and reactivated the WordPress site with a new theme and some minor changes here and there.
Now, before you get excited, this post doesn’t mean the guys are working on any new stuff. Don’t take this as an opportunity to ask if they’ll be making season three of The Leet World, because it’s not going to happen. We know you guys loved The Leet World, but it came to a natural end more than four years ago!
Your friendly webmaster, signing off!
SMOOTH FEW FILMS, 2007 – 2010
Answer Time: Go, Go, Go
Man, I’m terrible. I’ve waited since August to answer some of your questions. Hopefully you don’t all hate me for that, but I think I’ve given you plenty of other reasons to loathe me before this oversight.
Because it’s Christmas and I’m feeling charitable, I figured it was finally time to give you guys a few answers. As I said last time, feel free to leave more questions in the comments, especially if I didn’t get to your question this time.
And now, Q’s plus A’s:
1) What all have you been up to since the hiatus?
GamerSushi! Nick, Jeff and I help run the video game blog and even recorded a few podcasts. We’ve been on a bit of a break from that (for reasons I’m about to list below), but they’re a good time and worth a listen. We’ve got a video podcast going up soon if Nick can ever pull himself from his beard long enough to do things.
In terms of other stuff going on, Daniel and Nick have both been out in Los Angeles, working for the man and making some money with various productions. They are currently working on a pilot for Dan Harmon’s Channel 101, an original piece they crafted with Jace called Street Justice. I’ve seen the script and I think it’s going to be awesome. As soon as it’s online, I’ll direct you guys over to it. Daniel’s also been updating a design blog, Done Well Is So Much Better, at times. It’s neat.
As for me, I’ve been working on the second draft of my novel. I’ve also taken a freelance writing gig with Rooster Teeth to help on Season 10 of Red Vs Blue. It’s kind of cool. I wrote a tad more about it on my blog, if you’re interested.
2) Do you guys miss working on content for Smooth Few Films?
Yes and no. I don’t think any of us miss the exercise in tedium that was Leet World, or the ridiculous daily grind that made up Web Zeroes. Much less doing all that work for no pay. The experience taught us a lot about ourselves and about what we like to do, but we’re not itching to go back to that formula of lots of work and no lives for no compensation.
That being said, we do get that itch and miss out on the fun part of storytelling. There’s nothing quite like writing or producing something and knowing that thousands of people are going to see what you’re working on, and soon. Everything else since then has felt like working in a vacuum. So yeah, we get nostalgic about the platform that we had to show people our stuff. But that’s about it.
3) Will you guys make anything in Counter-Strike: GO?
This is a tricky one. I don’t want to say never, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep either. As of right now, I’m not in love with the character models of CS: GO, and I’m not sure it would translate all that well for a fun little updated TLW short.
In addition, I’m not even sure what kind of machinima opportunities would even be available with the updated engine. It’s one of those things where I’d have to play it for awhile and see if there was anything we could do. And on top of that, we’d all have to want to do it.
I think my big worry would be releasing a one-off short, and then having people go nuts and demanding more. That’s a good problem to have, to be sure. But it’s still an issue to consider.
4) I was thinking of using Roxio Game Capture for the PC to capture footage, do you think this piece of hardware is a good buy? Or should I use an actual capture card?
I’m not the expert here (that would be Daniel and Nick), but I’d recommend a dedicated capture card when you can, if your concern is maintaining the quality of the original. I’m guessing going through a box like that is adding a stop for the footage, which just gives it another spot to lose quality. Also, I haven’t read great reviews of that particular piece of Roxio hardware. If nothing else, and you decide that you don’t want to invest the kind of money in a dedicated card, I’d always recommend hardware over software.
5) Can I make TLW DVDs for my own personal use?
Go for it. The reason we never made them is because we can’t sell them. Download the episodes and go nuts! You can’t sell them either, by the way. So don’t do that.
Riot Gear and Some Questions
I’ve decided I’m going to start updating this blogernator a bit more. But as we don’t have many updates, I figured I could use it to answer some questions. So from here on out, feel free to ask away in the comments, and I’ll do my best. If you’re an aspiring content creator, I’d love for this to be a place where you can get some advice from some guys who have been there and back and have the scars and torn up contracts to prove it.
Our first round of answers:
1) We still got lots of questions about Season 3 of Leet World. This kind of surprises me, because as much as I know people loved the show, it has in fact been over for 2 years. People have done some pretty cool things on the Internet since then, and I highly recommend checking some of them out. Such as this nifty Portal 2 machinima. The writing’s not fantastic, but I’m impressed with what they pulled off, technically speaking. And there’s always Red Vs Blue, which has gone into a stratosphere that no other machinima creators can hope to touch.
2) If you ask us if you can be the one to continue Leet World, my answer will always be that nobody can stop you from doing what you want, but you’re not going to get our blessing. I’d encourage you to make your own thing, in your own way. Because I’m tyrannical like that.
3) All of us have recently rewatched The Leet World for the first time in a very, very long time, and I’ve got to say… I’m still baffled we did it. There’s a lot of technical stuff going on in a lot of those scenes that a lot of effort went into, and in some ways nobody can ever truly appreciate it but us. Weird to think that we pulled it off with all of the hurtles we had to overcome.
4) Not to make light of a serious situation, But I think Player is ready for the London riots. Seriously though, stay safe out there you guys.
If TLW Was a Video Game…
Howdy, gents and ladies.
Wanted to say a big thank you to all the supportive comments we received on that last post. There will probably be some changes coming to the site over the next few months, so stay tuned for that.
I mainly wanted to post a bit of music that Jace did. Basically, it’s the TLW theme in 8 bit. I kind of love it. I’m sure you will, too.
http://smoothfewfilms.com/extras/TLW_8_bit.mp3
Right click and save as to download. Happy listening.
The Old Dusty Trail
Gentlemen, we had a good run. Smooth Few Films is on indefinite hiatus.
This update has been a couple of months in the making, and I apologize for not doing it sooner. To be honest, I didn’t really know how to say it, and I was kind of heartsick about even writing it. I’ve also been busy with a lot of stuff in my personal life from work to writing a novel and I avoided it because I knew it would pain me to write it. But now that comments have come over to my personal blog queue about this site I felt like it was time to do something. So again, I apologize to those of you who have checked back here every day hoping for an update. I know there are quite a few of you (thanks to the wonder of Google Analytics) and it for real means the world that there’s that kind of dedication to our bumbling Internet troupe.
The reasons for the indefinite hiatus are fairly easy to explain. For one, Daniel moved to L.A. a month or two back in order to follow his dreams as a film dude. Him and Jace are living together and doing awesome things. I fully expect them to hit some big successes out there, and will probably update this blog to let you guys know about them whenever they happen. Daniel was always the talented one, so him leaving was what really solidified the decision for us.
Beyond that, we really did burn ourselves out from 2 plus years of throwing everything we had at Smooth Few Films. It may not have looked like much, but we gave up the majority of our free time, thousands of dollars and sacrificed a few opportunities and friendships along the way. We did all of that because we loved telling stories, and tried to do our best to tell a couple of fun ones.
Truth be told, the most fun part of the whole thing for me was seeing the way you guys, our community, really latched on to what we were doing and how you reacted to it each and every step of the way. I seriously go back through comments of old Leet World episodes sometimes, just to relive the excitement you all had for the stuff we made. I can’t speak for the other guys, but for me, that totally made it worth all of the time we toiled.
Is this the end of us working together? Not by any means. As I’ve maintained (and why I put this post off), we’ve got lots of things we want to do… eventually. What the magical conditions are and what stars have to align for that to happen is anyone’s guess. When/if the indefinite status changes, you guys will be the first to know. Believe me, I’m rooting for it.
Without being cheesy, all I can say is that I love you dudes and I’ve always appreciated the love you’ve thrown back our way, when we really didn’t deserve it. You guys are awesome.
-Eddy, signing off.
On Domination
Happy November, guys and gals.
Just wanted to stop in say it was great to see everyone’s comments on The Last Word. As I said before, I think Daniel did a spectacular job on it, and it shows. It’s a touching short, and something I’m particularly fond of.
Anyway, I promise there will be a couple of regular posts here in the next couple of weeks, including a range of topics that we still get asked a lot of questions about. I’ve been terribly busy with some other things going on personally, and that looks to clear up in the next week or two. But for now, enjoy another free track from the TLW soundtrack.
This one is the Domination Man’s theme from Episode 8 of TLW. You know, the one that plays during the entire cheesy GMod log fiasco and the zany antics surrounding that. I’m a big fan of what Jace did when he built this out for the soundtrack. I think you will be, too.
http://smoothfewfilms.com/extras/4_domination_man_cometh.mp3
One of the things people keep asking about is if there’s a way to still buy the soundtrack. Right now, the answer to that is no. Basically, sales had diminished over the last few months to where it was more expensive to keep the store going than it was to just take it down. If you hang around, we’ll just be releasing it every week for free from here on out.
In other news, who out there has played Black Ops? Thoughts? We reviewed it up on GamerSushi and I’ve been dying to play it.
Short Film: The Last Word
I think I end up saying this all the time these days, but sorry to you faithful dudes about the lack of updates around here. As I said before, there’s just not a whole lot to update on at the moment. Everyone’s kind of doing their own thing, and whether that turns into a Smooth Few Films project in the near future is anyone’s guess.
For instance, I’ve been working on a monster of a book which I just finished in this past week. It’s a huge unwieldy fantasy story that needs a ton of editing that I can’t wait to get started on. Meanwhile, Daniel recently produced a short film with his bud Ryan Hargrave for a local art show. It’s called The Last Word, and I kind of love it. Different from the tone that you guys are used to from Daniel’s work to be sure, but that’s not a bad thing.
You’ll notice a few SFF regulars in there, including Alex, who played Pedro in WZ and also ran sound for that series as well. You’ll also see Ty, the lovable Bobby King. Music by Jace Ford, in what I think is one of his best pieces yet. Plus, Daniel plays a dude that chases people and beats them up. Anyway, take a gander to see what I mean, and give Daniel his props.
Another TLW soundtrack song coming next week!