Friday, August 26, 2011

Edit: In case you missed it on facebook, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette released an article about MH yesterday. Here's the link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11236/1169306-67-0.stm 
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Sorry about the radio silence this week. It was my last first week of classes ever, so I was a little preoccupied. Scheduling was awful with Joseph and I. It's like whenever I would be home and available to shoot, he'd be at work, and vice versa. I think we're good to shoot early next week. Whatever happens, a new entry will be posted before we pack up and head to Atlanta for Dragon Con next weekend.

I ended up combining two of the three things we shot previously into the one entry last week, so our posting schedule is a bit thrown off now that we don't have anything ready to go this week. Originally, the confrontation in the parking lot and the phone call to Jessica were going to be separate, but then I realized that was kind of pointless and would probably end up pissing people off, having two "only talking" entries in a row.

It's a very delicate balancing act that we're having to work here. You can't do no-context suspense entries only, because then they'd become expected and (even worse) boring, but you also can't do strictly exposition too much because people ultimately want to get to the suspense, which I think is our bread and butter, not to sound to full of myself.

Joseph and I talked a little last night about the direction we want to take Season 3 in. We have the ending of Season 2, and we've had the ending of Season 3 ready for a long time, but everything in between those endings is vague at best. I think we've at least gotten started on solving some of the problems we've encountered with the initial writing process, but we're still a ways off from having it finished. Wish I could talk about it more, but of course that would probably spoil what's to come with the remainder of Season 2.

Guess you'll just have to wait and see, dude.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

That Announcement Thing

Wow, I'm kind of surprised no one clicked on the comma after the link in my last blog post. I figured someone would have noticed it immediately. Guess I'm getting too crafty, yeah?



No but seriously. I guess I should announce that thing now. Like I said earlier, a good number of you have already guessed it, so a good number of you can go ahead and pat yourselves on the back.

Marble Hornets is going to have a third season.

It's going to be the LAST season, for real this time. I know we said about a year ago that this season would be the end, but halfway through shooting it, we began to realize that we'd greatly underestimated how much time we'd need to devote to explaining the lost seven months. There wasn't really much time left afterwards to return to the present and show the ending, not to mention that the whole story felt incredibly cramped that way. So we decided to take the ending and devote an entire season to it. That way we don't feel like we're cheapening it by rushing into it after spending so much time somewhere else.

Sound good? We cool with that? Need more explaining? Okay, I can handle that.

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Preemptive Season 3 FAQ:

Q: Will there be another seven month gap between seasons 2 and 3?
A: Nope. While I can't give a solid "release date" for it just yet, rest assured that it won't be that long. The gap between the seasons will only be as long as Joseph and I feel is necessary for us to cool down to avoid getting burnt out.

Q: Does this mean Season 2 is about to end?
A: Sorta kinda. I can't tell you how many entries are left in Season 2. It's not a double digit, though.

Q: Will there be a Season 2 DVD?
A: Nothing is set in stone yet, but I don't see why not. The first one sold (and is still selling) wonderfully.

Q: You're just doing this to make more money, aren't you?
A: Absolutely not. We're doing this to make the story we've had going for over two years finally be completed. I'm kind of bad about not finishing things I've started (case in point), so I'd like to go against the flow for once.
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Q: The ending is going to be one giant ambiguous wad where nothing gets resolved and no questions are fully answered, isn't it.
A: Come on, I'm no David Lynch.

Q: Why are you announcing Season 3 before Season 2 is over? That spoils some of the mystery!
A: It's kind of unconventional for us, I'll admit, seeing as how we didn't announce Season 2 until about a month or so after Season 1. But I don't really see what part of the story is spoiled because of this.


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Any other questions that you think I might be able to answer, go ahead and post them in the comments and I'll get back atcha.

I'm glad we'll be doing this one more time before wrapping everything up in a neat little box. Thanks in advance for continuing to watch! High fives all around!

Friday, August 12, 2011

Status Report

It was a busy day yesterday, but we managed to shoot everything that we needed to get done. I think Joseph almost had a heat stroke in the middle of one of the takes, but other than that and having anxiety attacks about the rain early during the shoot, things went well. Glad it's over though.

We also got an awesome phone call regarding a possible future of Marble Hornets while we were getting all of the equipment together to change locations, but as you can probably guess, I can't talk about it right now. Nice surprise though.

So that's two entries shot and one more left to go. We'll either do that tonight or tomorrow night. I'm still tired from yesterday, so tomorrow night seems more likely.

As for the announcement, I'll probably share it come Sunday. I've seen a few people guess it already. Kudos to your mind reading powers.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Something the body does when you shake it

This week is crunch time for us. Believe it or not, we're going out to shoot three separate entries this week, one of which is going to be pretty complex and involved (by our standards at least). I can't explain why at the moment, but there's no room for error this week. If we miss getting everything, we're well and proper hosed and will have to either do some major rewrites or have an overly long hiatus. Neither of which I want to do, of course. Especially not the last one. I'm a little stressed out right now, to say the least. There probably won't be time to get an entry edited and posted this week with all the shooting going on, but there should be one early next week. Wednesday at the latest, I'd say.

I'll be spending today getting a shot list organized, finishing the scripts, and hopefully getting in a ton of rehearsal time to minimize the number of takes we'll need. I'm not sure when Joseph will be off work so that part is kind of up in the air right now. Why can't we make enough money to quit our day jobs, geez.

On a more positive note, I think I'll be clear to say the "fairly big announcement" later this week. Probably after we finish all this shooting. I guess it'll be my reward.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for watching Joseph Plays A Trumpet. The viewcount was higher than I thought it'd be when I checked it this morning. For those asking, no, it isn't the comedy series we've been working on. I'd be a little ashamed if it was, I think. Seeing as how we shot it in all of 30 minutes.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Slacker

I hate moving.

Ever since I started at UA, I've never stayed in one place for more than a year. You'd think that'd make me really good at moving all my shit from one place to another, but no, you'd be wrong.

I bounced around dorms for a few years, and then I ventured out with Joseph and Brian into the wonderful world of apartment living. And now Joseph and I just finished our most recent move into a real life house. No more quirky apartments for us. I for one will enjoy not having shared walls with people I don't know. All that mysterious yelling and banging around coming up though my floor was starting to get on my nerves.

The thing that always sucks the most, though, without fail, is the fact that I always get incredibly lazy after moving. I guess I feel like I should reward myself for the maybe 3-5 hours of actual physical exertion with 2 weeks of doing absolutely nothing. That ratio seems a little off.

I tried to force myself to get some work done while trying to slack off at the same time, but I found out pretty quick that that doesn't make any sense at all. If I was slacking off, I'd constantly be thinking of all the things I need to "for real" do, and when I was doing those things, I was constantly wanting to do something else.

I was finally able to finish one of the things on my todo list yesterday, as you may have noticed. Entry #46 caused its fair share of headaches while editing, but was far from the worst. As usual, there's some things that I noticed that needed fixing after posting, but none of them very major. From the lurking I've done around the various forums, response has been pretty good. I'm glad most people liked our subtle attempt at poking fun at ourselves in a few ways with it, too. Marble Hornets has never really had much room for humor, so when the rare opportunity presents itself, we snatch it up. I'm hoping all the dialogue between Joseph and myself that didn't get used is able to be shared one day, the whole thing was improvised so there were some pretty good one-liners that came from it. Maybe they'll be on some kind of supplementary material contained within a technologically advanced disc read by laser machines. Who knows.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There's a fairly big announcement on the Marble Hornets front coming in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!