Limited Cognition EP2 has been released on machinima. So be sure to go and watch it, comment, and like it! Try to get it some views. That would be much appreciated! :)
As for Episode 3 of Limited Cognition, unfortunately, we have come across more problems, as usual. The composer problem is all good, but some voice actors are having some life problems, and we need to respect that always comes first. So, we will be re-casting his character. As we need to keep producing LC. We also have some problems with one of our 3D Graphics Designer's on creating a character for us on CGI. So we will do whatever is necessary to keep producing this stuff as necessary.
First of all, I'd like to welcome DanIsAllied to EF. He's been working with us for quite some time now with IIWR and other shorts. It was only natural that he should join. Dan's style of humor and effect work can best be summed up with this fast paced WTF-style video:
It's a strange one but we liked it.
In other news, Rob's been a busy beaver, his fourth episode of Three Man Army is out:
Spearhead is busy working on making Captain Assassin very badass:
Martyn, Octane, and CoolGuy are all grinding away at various shorts that we hope become viral. CK is back and intermittently working on some experimental short films. Last but not least I'm working my balls off to finish the last few episodes of IIWR season 2.
Rob has done an excellent job and I hope you all enjoy it. Unfortunately you won't be enjoying on Machinima.com for at least another few weeks. Limited Cognition has been dragged to the forefront a debate amongst directors about video quality and promotion.
Martyn has quit Machinima, at least the main channel but he continues to work on Respawn. Martyn, like many other directors does not work on a quantity basis and doesn't always do comedy either. While it's great that Machinima.com will upload pretty much anything we send them, priority is given to short comedic videos and established series. There are many reasons for this, but they all ultimately boil down to profitability. The majority of the audience simply isn't interested in anything but comedy. While it is true that you push something new onto an audience and make them like it, this is not the preferred method. It cuts into profitability and can create a backlash. While videos like Limited Cognition perform excellently on smaller channels with a narrower focus (like the EF channel :P ) they do not have a lot performance potential on Machinima.com.
When Martyn quit he made his feelings clear on both the private director forums and on on Virtual Flicks. Even though we work together, I disagree with a lot of what was said. Martyn was soon engaged by Jeremy the, Director of Entertainment Programming at Machinima.com, or one of several staff members that directors engage on a regular basis. Jeremy countered Martyn on all points and was not amused by the more sharp statements Martyn left. Let's just say that a tiny flame was ensued that I wasn't much interested in but I decided to have some input. The one and only thing I discussed was that dramatic and serious productions are often marginalized. I used Rob's Limited Cognition as an example and several other's picked up discussing it.
Episode 2 was finished right in the middle of this. At this point in time it doesn't feel right to submit the video. It would seem like we were doing some political maneuvering in order to get a better upload spot. This is not what I want people to think of when they think of Euphorian Films. We want our works to stand on it's own merit. We'll get it uploaded in a few weeks, and I hope that the wider audience will enjoy it when it does come out.
Even though I don't really consider myself a game commentator, everyone else does. It isn't something that I flocked to for fun but simply as a way to get a little extra money to pay for a new TV, and then a new laptop, and now a wedding. It started off pretty mundane and uninteresting, but the more did commentary the more I liked it. The audience seemed to agree too. With around ten of them under my belt I'm still very new at this but I see a lot of flaws with a lot of other commentators videos.
So many of them don't know how to edit anything. I see that the video and audio commentary are not synced at all. The commentator will be discussing a pertinent event ten seconds after it happens or even worse, ten seconds before. I see games with no color correction added, no editing done (not even trimming off the beginning and end), and no sound balance. It's as if they hit record on PVR, record game, hit stop, record audio, drop it in the tracks, and call it a job well done. I've even heard this lot complain about "a lot of editing" when more than two tracks are required. From the standpoint of a machinimator, this is child's play. The gap in the viewing market left by sloppy editing and simply recording gameplay became evident to me after the response to this video:
The response on my page and the EF page from this video was HUGE. Biggest release I've had yet. Put in proportion to it's total amount of viewers, it really struck a cord with about 1/5 of the entire audience. I received so many man messages about how nobody had seen anything like it before and was quite shocked. To be honest, it wasn't really that well made or edited. It took about 3-4 hours to film and edit with most of the edits being done the laziest way possible. However, when I looked around, I really couldn't find anything like it. Nobody seemed to be doing any more than recording straight from the first person perspective.
Is that all there is out there? Are there no more cinematic or unusual commentary styles? Surely there has to be more to this popular sub-genre of video than a gameplay with a dude talking to you. It baffles me, it really does.
