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.

The deadline for the Streamy Award nominations is rapidly approaching. Faster than the hair grows on Nick’s face, even. Terrifying, right? Well don’t let the fear paralyze you, stand up and vote for Web Zeroes. The deadline is this Friday, January 15th, and you can vote every single day until then. Every vote counts, and we seriously appreciate the support. If you’ve forgotten, I put up a voting guide for Web Zeroes so you guys can help us out.

Writing has officially begun on Web Zeroes, Season 2. We had an awesome planning session recently and I must say, this season gets meta as all hell. I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully you guys are, too.

In other news, we are considering picking up the podcast-ing again. You guys should submit some topics you’d like to hear us discuss or things you’re curious about in our world of content creation. Maybe we’ll talk about them. Or not. Either way, let us know!

Also, I’m not sure how many of you have seen the Source filmmaker tests that have been leaked from the TF2 beta. From what I hear, it could really change the way Source machinima is done. It eliminates the need for actors and renders some pretty cool effects in real-time. That sure would have been helpful a few years ago, Valve, but maybe it’ll see the light of day at some point. I doubt it, but folks can dream, can’t they? Anyway, here’s a cool Team Fortress 2 test I saw the other day:

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.

Even though we’re not making so much machinima anymore here at Smooth Few Films, it doesn’t deter my interest in it. I still like to scour and search for what’s new out there in the wide world of video game movie-making, just to see what other people are doing and what games they’re using.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem that any game has made as big of a splash for the machinima community as Halo 3 did back in 2007. It’s crazy to me that it’s just over 2 years later, and we’re still waiting on the next engine to come and revitalize amateur filmmakers to try out some of their own stuff. Uncharted 2 just dropped for the PS3, and it has some machinima tools hidden within its depths, if only you can make it past the incredible single player campaign (and trust me, it is quite incredible). I also hear that Dragon Age: Origins coming out next month will make use of some rather robust tools.

In terms of some of the new things I’m seeing out there that hold promise, a couple of things come to mind. Red Vs Blue Recreation once again sets the standard for awesomeness. SgtPadrino has some remarkable Call of Duty videos that he’s been scripting together, and they’re impressive as anything I’ve seen in recent months. Likewise, Mystfit continues to work away on some custom TF2 animations. Can’t wait to see what the results of those experiments are. Running Gun (creators of Spriggs) are steadily releasing a fully scripted Fallout 3 machinima called JudgeMental. And then there’s good old Darkspire Films, who just released the Candy Coated Wonder Road, a Halo 3 children’s show.

So what do you guys think the state of machinima is? What are some of your favorite machinimas out there right now?

Also, Web Zeroes Episode 3 hits tomorrow, and some new TLW outtakes should be up later this week- hope to see you back for both of those!

It really is nice to have the Web Zeroes announcement out in the open. We’ve been working our butts off on the rebooted version of the series for a couple of months now to make the Fall release date.

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:
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Man. Took us long enough, huh?

The Leet World Series Finale, Army of One Part 2, is now available for your viewing pleasure.

I have to admit, it’s a little bittersweet to be presenting this one to you guys. While we’re sad to see the show go, making a series of any kind is like slamming your testicular area in a car door, so we’re happy that it’s past us. It takes lots of grueling labor and a bit of a masochistic streak to make a show like this. Like that dude in the Da Vinci Code who keeps whipping himself. Ah, self flatulation… wait, I think I got those words mixed up.

Anyway, there’s lots of stories we could tell you about these last two months and what all went into getting this episode up for you guys, and also what kept us from finishing it when we wanted to. Be sure to send lots of love to Jace, Nick and Daniel who kind of took one for the team in the last 24 hours to make this release date possible.

So, check out the episode on the TLW premiere page, or just hit the jump for the normal version.
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One thing that we love doing is watching things that dudes from the community have made concerning our ridiculous library of Smooth Few Films work. It’s baffling to us that people like what we do enough to spend their own free time making a tribute to it.

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.

Thanks for all of the congratulatory posts regarding our news from last week. I really wish I could tell you guys some more, but unfortunately, that cat has to remain in the bag for just a little while longer. All I can say is that this new project is already starting to eat up all of our time, and will continue to do so for months to come. Funny enough, we are managing to put one time sucker to rest in exchange for a shinier one.

It is impacting the series finale (and already affected Episode 13) in a few ways, mainly in that it’s taking longer to make. We’re getting pretty close to being done filming it completely, and as I said before, I’ll let you guys know when we’re about a week away from release.

In the meantime, check out some new screenshots. They contain images of machinima ownage and dudes shooting at other dudes.

Also, has anyone seen District 9? I’m planning on going this weekend and I keep hearing great things. I have a condition where I ache to see awesome sci-fi action, and the movie appears to be able to scratch my itch in a meaningful way.