Tag Archives: web zeroes

Gears of Production

I’ve been playing Gears of War 2 like a madman all weekend. Seriously. I believe it is affecting my day-to-day interactions with those of hume kind. I am like a raving lunatic, curb stomping all in my path and demanding that random passersby get out of my way while I take mad cover. I’m a little into it. Maybe because I’m an absolute video game nut, but I guess you knew that.

If you have an XBox 360, I’d recommend getting it just for Horde mode, which is probably the crowning jewel of the title. Great stuff. I’ll be doing a review for GamerSushi sometime in the near future, so that’ll be fun.

Filming marches onward, and I wish I could show you some more, but we’re trying to guard Episode 1’s secrets like some ancient guild. You’ll see more soon enough.

In the meantime, a new episode of Web Zeroes is on the way this week. Should be up within a few days.  Happy Waiting. And if you haven’t bought the TLW Season One Soundtrack yet, something is wrong with you.

The Waterga Attack

I told you guys I would post about the crazy flooding that happened in my apartment the other night. Basically, the water heater exploded and dumped water all throughout the living room, the bedroom, etc.

Luckily, it didn’t quite make it all the way back to the spare bedroom, where all of our equipment resides, but it got pretty darn close. The padding and carpet had to be torn out so it could dry, and my wife and I had to move all of the furniture to any spot that was dry.

You should recognize some of this stuff because it’s where we film Web Zeroes. Here are some pics:

Anywho, things are mostly back to normal, though he haven’t moved our furniture back yet. It also managed not to slow down production, as Nick and I are busily editing audio for the first 3 episodes of Season 2. Filming starts this next week.

Start Your Engines

Season 2 production is fully underway. We got together and recorded audio for episodes 1-3 the other night, and it was definitely a time saver already to do them all at once. Since the hard part is getting everyone together and then getting started, it really took about the same amount of time as it does for one episode. The method is already working!

The reason I waited so long to update this week is because I was hoping to have something cool to share with you guys, but I’m going to have to wait just a little longer. Rest assured, a barrage of content is going to start coming out next week, ranging from Web Zeroes episodes to TLW teasers, screenshots and even the soundtrack very soon.

Also, I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Ross Scott’s work, but he has put together a brilliant machinima piece called “Oil’s Well” that he produced in Half-Life 2. Give it a watch, and visit his website.

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:

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.

In Seattle!

Daniel and I are here in Seattle and geeking out a little about attending PAX in the morning. Me more so than him. It’s been a long day of traveling and getting some major junk together. Getting what together, you may ask. DVD’s and business cards, actually.

We’ll be handing these bad boys out to some folks in the gaming biz over the weekend. The DVD’s have the TLW season recap, some of our shorts and the first episode of Web Zeroes, due out next week. And before you ask, no, you can’t have one (sorry, supplies are limited). This will be a good way for us to get our name out there to some of these cool dudes that we’ll be meeting.

Now, it’s time for bed and then off to adventures tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have some cool Smooth Few Films related news to report shortly. In the meantime, keep an eye on GamerSushi for videos and pictures from the PAX floor.

Edit: We’re handing these out to business-types, not just random people. Thought I should point that out.

The TLW House

Thanks for the cool response that you guys gave to the G.R.I.E.F. trailer. I’ve got to say, the general excitement people showed for it was pretty sweet. We’re looking forward to doing a few episodes of G.R.I.E.F. while we continue to recharge and prepare for Season 2 of The Leet World.

The Web Zeroes Pilot should be hitting at some point next week, as well as some other cool TLW extras. Also, PAX is this weekend, and I really can’t wait, but more on that later.

It occurred to me that some of you dudes would be stoked to have a couple of the maps that we film on. Nothing too exciting, just thought you’d like to have them. So, here you go- simply download these and then stick them into your cstrike/maps folder:

TLW House
Death Room

Edit: For those of you wondering, the TLW House is an edited Militia map with no hosties, no time limit, no cars in the garage and Leeroy’s Lair. Also, that map probably won’t work in GMod if you don’t have CSS, but the Death Room should be just fine.