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Okay, here is the GOOD version of the trailer available to watch or for download. I’m kind of boycotting the old Youtube version simply because it’s unfinished. The visuals are the same on both versions, though they made me add a pumpkin graphic to some contest they’re conducting, I removed that for the downloadable copy.

The real difference between these trailers is in the audio, which can be crucial to setting mood. Thanks goes to Otto Beumelburg (I frequently misspell his name) for the great sound effects and most of the audio mixing and Craig Kesicke for composing great custom music for the trailer; both of whom had extremely short notice on this. You’ll be hearing more of Craig Kesicke’s music in the future as there are situations that I require custom music for, plus there’s some drama going on surrounding my use of game soundtracks, but I’ll save that for a separate post.

Now about the trailer itself! This is NOT the best trailer I could have made, however it’s one of the safest. While it’s impossible to make a trailer that’s spoiler-free, I took pains to make sure this one didn’t reveal too much about the episode. There are major scenes of the episode that aren’t shown at all here and there should be plenty of surprises throughout the entire episode once it gets completed. Not only that, but I wasn’t really ready to begin filming, so I just dropped the work I was doing and made a lot of snippet shots. There’s a high probability almost none of the exact same shots you see here will be in the actual episode. On top of that, I changed a line or two of the dialogue so it would flow better and the joke at the end was made up for the trailer as well, it’s not even part of the episode (because most jokes are less funny once you’ve already heard them). While the plot and theme will remain the same, several lines are delivered in completely different areas or context. My goal here was to give you a reason to watch the actual episode if you’ve already seen the trailer (and vice-versa once it comes out). So if you want NO spoilers, don’t watch the trailer, but if you do, rest assured it doesn’t spoil much.

When the episode does get completed, it will be both comedy and suspense and will likely be the longest episode of CP made so far, probably at least 15 minutes. While there will be humor throughout the episode, the jokes won’t be as constant as some others because there will be more emphasis on developing the story. And while the episode will start out in the same location as “Shadow of a A Doubt” it is not meant as a sequel to it. I honestly don’t know when it will be done since I’ve been so busy with other work, but I can guarantee it won’t be rushed out the door.

Things are a mess at the moment, but I should probably give a news update. I was recently asked by Machinima.com to make a trailer for “The Tunnel” since it’s not going to come out before Halloween because of everything else I’ve been doing. I surely agreed, as this is going to be a long episode and I thought I could make a trailer without spoiling much. I ended up having very little notice on this however and ran into some bugs, so I did everything humanely possible to get this out in time (I worked about 32 hours between Monday and Tuesday night). Unfortunately this wasn’t fast enough and Machinima wanted it released TODAY, so this comes at a sizeable expense to the quality. I’ve never rushed anything out the door this fast and I can say right now this is not going to happen again. I compromised because I can live with a trailer being subpar, but I would never allow this for a full episode.

Anyway, it is available on Youtube now, but I don’t want to link to it, since the audiowork should be finished for it before too long and the final one should create a better impact. The version that’s out there now has no sound effects and consists only of Half-Life music that I arranged in about 10 minutes. The “good” one will have sound effects and hopefully some custom music composed for it. It will be available on Machinima.com and here when it is. I’ll make a new post when that’s done. I don’t want to discuss anything about the trailer until the good one is out, so I’m not answering any questions related to it or the episode right now, I’ll give the details on everything once it’s out (hopefully quite soon). I just wanted to give an update for people wondering what was happening. Watch it now if you really want to, though I recommend waiting a day or two for the better version.

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Youtube

672x384 WMV (71MB)

Here’s the new Freeman’s Mind episode. This is the first one in widescreen format at it was requested by Machinima.com that I film it this way. I originally gave it a 4x3 aspect ratio to accommodate Youtube and since that changed on me, it’s not a big deal to switch over to a widescreen ratio. Ironically since all my Civil Protection videos are in widescreen, my early episodes were hard-encoded to be letterboxed in a 4x3 ratio for Youtube by Machinima.com. It feels like I can’t win sometimes.

Speaking of which, I’m afraid this episode comes at a cost. Between making three Freeman’s Mind episodes this month and other side projects I’ve had to work on, I really don’t think the next Civil Protection episode is going to come out before Halloween. If it was up to me, I would have put FM on hold and made sure the next episode of CP came out in time, but Machinima.com has its own priorities. This does disappoint me, but for what it’s worth, this won’t be strictly a Halloween episode, just a scary one. So while the timing would have been better for this month, it should still be enjoyable for November. Also to be clear, this rate of Freeman’s Mind is perfectly sustainable, it’s this and other things on top of Civil Protection which is causing the overload.

This delay is not due to lack of effort on my part. I’ve been working about 75 hours a week the past couple weeks where I was trying to get this done on time, but I can only create the episode so fast. I haven’t been doing much besides working, exercising, and sleeping. To put it in perspective, I’ve been told that Machinima.com has only done one show in-house that uses scripted animation like CP and for that they were funded, hired lots of outside help, had a team of 6 internal animators working overtime and even then just barely got it completed in time. I don’t have a paid team helping me, just volunteers the same as previous episodes (though I’m not discounting their efforts), so I still have to fill in every missing role that I can. Factor in that this will likely be the longest episode of CP so far and it’s becoming a pretty big strain on me. I’m going a little batty with these hours actually, but I’ll be happy once the episode is done.

Also I fixed most of the broken download links Machinima.com keeps deleting randomly, I’ll get more done when I get a chance.

 

Follow the thoughts of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a 27 year old physicist and neurotic individual. In this episode, Freeman manuevers around a giant monster, wanders deep in Black Mesa, and gets stuck.

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Youtube

Machinima.com streaming

640x480 WMV (76MB)

Well here’s the latest episode, one of the most difficult episodes for me to produce to date, due to the recording situation. It looks like that’s getting resolved however, so hopefully the pace should pick up sooner on that. It’s anyone’s guess though as the computer they salvaged for me completely died on Thursday, but rumor has it there’s a laptop I can continue working on. Also I apologize in advance if the video looks a little choppy on Youtube. With the exception of FM14 and Morning Patrol, every single video I’ve submitted to Machinima.com has been uploaded at the incorrect framerate on Youtube. Maybe someday this will get fixed.

Progress continues on the next CP episode. I’m determined to release that before Halloween and will likely be working on weekends as well to make sure that happens.

EDIT:

I’ve been informed that the Youtube version is far darker than it should be, this does appear to be true. This is bad, since this is already a darker episode in terms of lighting. I don’t know why the brightness was reduced, but it wasn’t my fault this time. I recommend either watching the streaming version on Machinima.com or downloading the WMV version.


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