Tag Archives: smooth few films

TLW: Episode 3 Commentary

So, here’s the commentary for Episode 3 of The Leet World, which we were finally able to record when Daniel got back. Pardon some of the audio levels, there were a few mic issues, forcing us to record it the way we would a podcast, rather than what the last commentaries sounded like.

On the plus side, it is now attached to the video of Episode 3, so no worries on playing it yourself in time with the audio file. We might get around to the first two eps eventually, but there definitely wasn’t time to do it over the weekend. This whole commentary thing has been trial and error for us, that’s for sure. I think the Ep 4 commentary will be perfect.

So listen/watch, comment and enjoy. Don’t worry if you don’t see any video at first, it doesn’t start til a few seconds in.

The Machinima List

As some of you know, we were nominated for some awards recently. Well, the machinima lords and lasses have handed down the full list of 2008 Machinima Filmfest Nominees, so go ahead and get your browsing on. There are a few good pieces on there- some of it I had seen, some of it was new to me.

Notable among those are several nominations for our friends over at Lit Fuse, a fun short called World of Workcraft that combines cs_office with WoW, and a cinematography nomination for TheDuoGroup. If you’re unfamiliar with that last one, you need to check out Without Providence, which has some stunning visuals for a Halo short. Big fan of their work. Great stuff.

Check out the whole list of nominations here. Seen any of the other entries? What are your favorites?

Season 2 Update and WZ Screenshots

Wanted to give you guys a couple of production updates, as well as some screenies from the new episode of Web Zeroes that we filmed over the weekend. For future information, 9:30 am-11:30pm shoots were first thought up by the devil. And carried out by his bee-eff-eff Daniel, our steely-resolved director.

The first two episodes of The Leet World, Season 2 are almost written. There are some things we learned from the Finale – namely, that filming 3 “episodes” at once goes a lot faster than the normal method.

The idea this season is to film in 3 episode chunks. It’ll be an interesting experiment. So, by the time we release Episode One, we should be done filming the first three. What’s even cooler for you guys is that in theory, you should be getting a new episode almost exactly every two weeks on the dot, and in the meantime, we’re three episodes ahead, not killing ourselves. I’m a fan of the not killing ourselves part.

Of course, that’s all in theory, which, like Nick’s beard, is the subject of much speculation and myth. Men have died on those furry peaks. We’ll see how it goes. Filming hopefully starts next weekend.

Here are those screenshots I promised thirty seven seconds ago:

Nominated!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been without Internet for a few days here.

However, I return with some good news. A few weeks ago, we submitted our videos to the Machinima Festival that happens in Novemeber. Well, the results are in: Smooth Few Films has been nominated for several machinima awards!

Here’s the breakdown:

  • Day in the Life of a Turret– Best Short Format/ Best Music
  • The Bag Boy– Best Short Format/ Best Voice Acting/ Best Writing
  • The Leet World– Honorary Mention, Best Series

I won’t pretend that we’re not disappointed that The Leet World didn’t get an actual nomination for Best Series, seeing as how hard we’ve worked on it, or that it wasn’t recognized for the incredible music that Jace has continually produced for us. Personally, I still can’t think of another series save for Red Vs Blue that devotes as much as we do to characters and story, but to each his own.

All that said, though, we’re excited to be nominated for what we did get nominated for, and hopefully we can take home some kind of award come November, when the winners are announced.

In other news, production is starting on The Leet World, Season 2, and we filmed the next episode of Web Zeroes over the weekend. Stick around, because more things are coming this week, including commentary for Episode 3 of TLW!

The Prodigal Son

After several months of being away, Daniel has finally returned to Houston, marking the end of a production lull for us here at Smooth Few Films. We’ve been working on some pre-production and housekeeping things (new sites, scripts, etc), but now we can fully jump into things like Web Zeroes, G.R.I.E.F. and early work on Season 2 of The Leet World.

Our break for the last few months was much needed, as we had driven ourselves into exhaustion after working on TLW for a year straight (seriously). It was a time fraught with ups and downs, but we learned a lot of lessons from it, and we have a plan to make everything easier on ourselves moving forward. You’ll hear more about that soon.

In other news, the TLW soundtrack is essentially finished. We have to take a few more steps before we can actually put it up for sale. We’ll make a post soon enough detailing prices, but rest assured, it’ll be affordable, and it’ll be worth every penny. In addition, you’ll be able to get individual songs if you don’t want to get the whole album.

Also, a new TLW Season 2 teaser is on the way for hopefully sometime next week, with some Web Zeroes bloopers dropping soon as well. Things are kicking into full gear again, and there will be tons of content coming over the next couple of weeks. Oh, and one other thing…

Who dat?

Hour of Power

I don’t have time for much of an update, but if you’ve been paying attention to US News at all, then you know that Hurricane Ike came through Houston and rocked the city. The storm pretty much came in and took a path of ownage straight to the area where Nick and I live.

We came through all right, no damage to our places, but neither of us have had power since Friday night, which was 3 days ago. Water just came back at my apartment last night, so that’s good. We’ve been chilling with my brother, who was one of the first of 2.1 million people to get power back.

If you hadn’t guessed, this kind of puts a damper on any immediate plans we had. It’s not too big of a setback, it’s just that Daniel couldn’t come back in town when he planned, and it’s delaying the filming of both GRIEF episode 1 and Web Zeroes as well. I also had a TLW related project I was going to work on over the weekend that’s on hold indefinitely, though I plan on picking it back up once we have some electricity to work with.

In addition, the soundtrack is just about ready for release, but there are some finishing touches that also can’t happen until you know, our city is functioning again. Anywho, once again, thanks for all the great comments on Web Zeroes, we’re really proud to have released it, and thanks for all the well wishes over the weekend. 

Also, if you haven’t been to GamerSushi yet, I just put up an article today about some of Halo’s underrated qualities. Go join the discussion.

Operation: Hunker Down!

Just an FYI, in the event that we don’t post for a few days, there’s no need to fear. It’s just that measly old hurricane Ike is bearing down to swallow up our fair coast of Texas. Ground zero happens to be Houston, which is where we’re located.

So if I do in fact lose power and am unable to update til early next week, just know that you guys rule. For real, thanks for all the great feedback on Web Zeroes.

Some cool stuff coming next week.

UPDATE, 5pm Saturday: This is your friendly webmaster, Jeff, speaking. I’ve just heard from Eddy, and both he and Nick made it through the storm alright (Daniel lives in Dallas, and I live in Austin). Eddy asked me to go ahead and update the site so that folks wouldn’t be worried about them. Eddy and Nick are both without power at the moment, but hopefully things will be back up and running in a day or two. I’ll keep you posted on here if there are further developments.

Welcome!

This is the new Smooth Few Films home base. Still a work in progress, and you’ll see some new things added in the next few days.

As you can see, there have been lots of changes to the site, though for those of you who are familiar with it, it should feel like home in no time. All of your log-ins should still work just fine, and the forums are in-tact as well. If for some reason you find an issue or problem with the new site, just let us know.

A couple of quick notes:

  • You must register to comment. Spam was getting kind of out of control on the previous site towards the end of the season, and we need to kind of cut some of that down as we move forward, since traffic will be back to normal once we’re releasing videos again.
  • To get a picture next to your name, go sign up at Gravatar. Super-easy, and it helps give you an identity now that you’ve registered.

Web Zeroes should be out within a day or so. It’s been finished for a bit, we just decided we wanted to wait until our new site was done before we rolled it out. Kind of a grand opening, if you will.

Also, be sure to thank Nick and Jeff who did such a good job constructing this whole thing and putting it together while I have played Castle Crashers and Halo 3. They are kind of awesome. The dudes, not the games, but the games too.

Growing Pains

As you may have heard, a vast army of elves is currently toiling 24/7 to bring you a brand-new Smooth Few Films website.

In the process of doing this, the existing Leet World website may start misbehaving or looking funny, and there will definitely be an unknown period of time where both sites will be down while I have to do a bit of behind-the-scenes magic and make sure everything is in working order before we open it back up to the public. Hopefully the downtime won’t take too long.

This is just a friendly note to let everyone know that you shouldn’t freak out if our site is down / broken / etc. today and tomorrow. We hope to have everything back to regularly scheduled programming on Monday (September 8th).

NOTE: Kirk Cameron not included.

Important Post: On Branding

It would appear that nothing is going on here from just a mere glance, but that is one tall fib. A lot is going on behind the scenes, much more than you know, and all the dust of our construction (specifically, Nick and Jeff’s constructions) should settle, leaving behind something superb in the aftermath.

After taking a long hard look at things, it dawned on us that with all of our new endeavors (GRIEF, Web Zeroes, GamerSushi, etc), we can’t just be known as The Leet World any longer, as is the case for our base of operations (this site) and other things like our YouTube account. But rather, we need everything to be focused around who we are, and that is Smooth Few Films.

What that means is, we’re getting a new website. Several, to be more accurate. By the end of the weekend (fingers crossed), this whole place is going to look different, and smoothfewfilms.com will be a part of the Smooth Few Films network. We are also launching a new SmoothFewFilms YouTube account that will eventually replace the old one, and if you frequent that site feel free to go ahead and subscribe.

Over the weekend, we’ll release some announcement videos there to attempt some grand migration of our subscribers from one account to another, leaving the old one behind as some ragged skeleton full of old videos. It’s not going to be pretty (or easy), but it’s better to do it now than later. The Web Zeroes pilot will hopefully be coming alongside all of that.

So yes, big steps are coming. And once they are done, production hits the ground running on all fronts.

Also, Ty (the voice of Mendoza) has made it into the second round of the AMC Mad Men competition. Feel free to lend your support once again, and show what a great supportive community we can be.

Edit: In addition, Happy Birthday, Ty.