I want to talk about
Neverending Nights which uses the
Neverwinter Nights game engine from Bioware to create a series.
Personally my favorite is that Peter the Ranger character. He's so sauve. So cool. So funny. He's all around the best character. His side kick Grayson is all right.
I figured I'd open up its own thread. I know people aren't always keen to going to yet another new forum - so if anyone watches our episodes - they can comment here.
The first 10 episodes are rough. In the first five, we try SEVERAL different filming styles, and video capturing styles. In the first five, we're also using a cheap $9.99 mic. But Episode 10 we were using my Karokee machine through my PC because the sound was infinitely better. By episode 16 (or 17) - we had bought Shure Mics (200 bucks a pop), plus a full audio/digital converter, built a mini studio in a garage and gone the whole 9 yards with it.
It's paid off, as I said before, because of PC GAMER UK, interviewed by Bioware on their site, Atari contracts, NWN2 for free (plus the expansion) all before it came out, entrance to E3 for free under Atari's badge, entrance to the San Diego Comic Con for free as professionals, etc etc etc.
So if you're interested - head to the site - download the videos (all for free) - like I said just keep in mind the first 10 are pretty rough - and the entire Season 1 ended up being a HUGE learning processes so that Season 2 (all available for free to download also) was much better all around.
Our website - neverendingnights.comFacebook PageOur Youtube ChannelOur Twitter PageAnd I have to link
Travis Richard's Page since he did so much incredible music for us in Season 3, that really put this series over the top!
If you download the episodes, I'd recommend checking out our
Video Page, which has writer comments and talks about the episodes (especially the first 10 episodes, when we were still learning how to make these...)
DOWNLOADS:SEASON ONE:Episode 01: Heroes?!Episode 02: 20k?!Episode 03: Come On Baby Light My Fire...Episode 04: A Walk In The Woods...Episode 05: Ye Salty Dog!Episode 06: He's A Magic Man!Episode 07: Things That Make You Go... Boom?Episode 08: On Borrowed Gold...Episode 09: It's Not The Size (That Matters...) Episode 10: Racial BenefitsEpisode 11: Deep, Dark, Revenge (This Is How We Roll!)Episode 12: Where There Is Smoke...Episode 13: In And Out, A Hero's TaleEpisode 14: Here Comes The Sand AgainEpisode 15: Reach Out With Your Feelings...Episode 16: Dessert City?Episode 17: Heroes Bar & Keep And...?Episode 18: Pepper Flavored? Episode 19: A Little Magic!Episode 20: Variety Is The Spice Of Life... And Death!Episode 21: Accumulation!SEASON TWO:Episode 22: This is 'Dragon' Too Long.Episode 23: Oh How I Treasure... Treasure!Episode 24: The Watchful EyeEpisode 25: The New RecruitsEpisode 26: Reunited And It Feels So Good.Episode 27: Even Ghosts Have Racial Benefits?Episode 28: The Light At The End of the Tunnel Episode 29: The Plan.Episode 30: Good Elf... Bad Elf? Episode 31: Side Effect May Vary...Episode 32: Employment Opportunities Episode 33: There Be Pirates!Episode 34: Barking Up The Wrong Tree Episode 35: This Is Bull$#!+Episode 36: Mind Over Matter (Not That I Don't Have A Mind - It Doesn't Matter!)Episode 37: Crime Does Not PayEpisode 38: Mandatory Flashbacks Episode 39: Confessions of a BladeEpisode 40: Something's Not Quite Right... Episode 41: Something Wicked This Way Comes...Episode 42: Oh Mother Dearest...SEASON THREE:Episode 43: Got Time To Kill?Episode 44: Seeing The UnseenEpisode 45: A Friend In NeedEpisode 46: Dude, Where's My Sword?Episode 47: A New Hope Episode 48: The Assassin Strikes Back!Episode 49: The Return of the Goblins Episode 50: Destiny or Chance?Episode 51: Wanted - Dead Or Alive.Episode 52: These Aren't The Heroes We're Looking ForEpisode 53: Forging DestinyEpisode 54: Back By (Somewhat) Popular DemandEpisode 55: All Time 'Lowe'... Episode 56: Funkafied! Episode 57: Pawn of the Dead (... or Grave Situation... Again!)Episode 58: VisionQuest Episode 59: These Are My Confessions Episode 60: But I'm A Lover, Not A Fighter Episode 61: Reunited And It Feels So Good (Wait... Didn't We Use That Title Last Season?!) Some others that we did (Atari brought us on to help promote NWN2 before it was being released)...
EPISODE 01: “The Real Daze.” - Writer’s Note: Neverending Daze was created because the folks from Obsidian/Atari had contacted us to do a contract with them and release some NWN2 Machinima pieces to help promote the soon to be released NWN2. It was definitely an amazing experience. Both Adam and I got to go to the Obsidian Office and meet the wonderful team behind NWN2, as well as tinker around with NWN2 while we were in their office. While we were there, they showed us some of the powerful tools that the NWN2 toolset had over NWN1, and answered a ton – and I mean, a ton! – of our questions on how we could make it work for machinima. We also got to go backstage at E3 into the Atari booth and meet with a handful of Atari executives and got treated like celebrities while we were back there! Definitely an amazing moment in our journey. We were given Alpha/Beta copies of the game to make these pieces in. Our first episode, we wanted to make fun of how popular reality television was these days – and thus created an episode that would introduce the characters by doing a parody of MTV’s “Real World.” When we were thinking of a title for the series, we wanted to keep it similar to our own – so, rather than Neverending Nights – we originally called it “Neverending Days” – and then laughed at the notion and rapidly changed “Days” to “Daze.” And we knew then – we had the perfect title for the series. Something unique about this series, we tackled it like “Bugs Bunny.” Simply, a character could die in one episode, and still appear in the next episode just fine. Each episode stood on its own merits, but still, we had the storyline sort of carry from episode to episode, regardless.
EPISODE 02: “What Is Beauty? (Part One).” - Writer’s Note: Interesting to note about this episode – all of the episodes were written before the Beta copies of the game arrived in the mail. Now, since Neverwinter Nights is based in Forgotten Realms, and Beholders are a center piece of Forgotten Realms. So this episode was supposed to be about a Beholder. (The whole saying of, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” – which is why it was originally titled “What Is Beauty?”). We had already laid down the voice tracks and assumed the Beholder would be a part of the toolset. Much to our own horror and dismay – when the disks arrived – we discovered somehow (for whatever reason!) Beholders were not available in the toolset! We considered scrapping the entire episode and trying to come up with some additional ideas – but in the end we stuck with it. This episode actually connects to Episode 03, which is the second part to this story.
EPISODE 03: “What Is Beauty? (Part Two)” - Writer’s Note: This story continues from Episode 02, where the main creature to be encountered had been intended to be a Beholder. Instead, in a mad scramble – we used one of the devil/demons and changed the dialogue around to reflect that in this episode. This episode (within the zip file, which is why it’s so large) – contains two versions of the episode. There is one episode with “subtitles” for the devil, which I had done the voice for (with no digital modifications! That’s actually one of the many voices I am able to do!) I really wished it had been a Beholder for this episode, because we were going to spoof the episode from the animated “Dungeons & Dragons” cartoon from the 80’s with this.
EPISODE 04: “A Grave Situation.” - Writer’s Note: This was a fun episode to do. Knowing the fate of the characters by the time they reach the end of the episode, I went all out with this one. This is one of those times, where I said – characters can die and appear in the next episode just fine. With this episode, what we had wanted to do (other than have fun!) was high light how combat looked in Neverwinter Nights 2 compared to combat in Neverwinter Nights 1 (where it looked more like they were often dancing, rather than actual combat).
EPISODE 05: “Giant Problems.” - Writer’s Note: This is one of the episodes where we ran into several issues filming. For example, when we “possessed” the Frost Giant, it had unexpected “teleported” itself to the far corner of the map – and we could not move the Frost Giant while we were possessing/controlling. This was an unexpected issue with the game – that we were suddenly forced to work around. We did this – by leaving the Frost Giant, not possessing him, and instead – to “show him approaching” we did a slow zoom on the Frost Giant in an attempt to make it look like he was moving forward. In this episode, we also wanted to high light Neverwinter Nights 2’s amazing ability to scale anything within the game. This can been seen as we scaled the house (and door) to a giant size, as well as the cat that they encounter inside the house. This ability to scale items was an amazing addition to the toolset.
They even brought us back to promote MASK OF THE BETRAYER, which we did with this (new set of characters since it was the actual game and not a BETA version that we were using) -
EPISODE 06: “Task of the Nay Sayer.” - Writer’s Note: Atari once again approached us when they were going to release the first expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2, entitled “Mask of the Betrayer.” This one was different in that I had done most of the work on my own – from writing, filming, editing. With the full release of Neverwinter Nights 2, all the models that we had used in the Beta versions of the game were no longer available. This is why this episode features a brand new cast of characters. Sadly, Paul who had done the previous voices of the dwarf (in the other episodes, as well as Neverending Nights) was not available to record and declined to return for the dwarven part in this episode. As a result, I did both the role of the Halfling and the Dwarf, once again, with no digital enhancements. Adam returned for the role as the leader. In this episode, we had wanted to high light a number of things that the expansion was bringing to the Neverwinter Nights 2 game – from new races, creatures, animals, and influence system – as well as The Blue Dragon. In this episode we had made fun of the ever increasing popular incident from the “Don’t taze me, bro!” that had happened.
We even used MACHINIMA for one of our friends College Reports...
Neverending Skewl Daze: EPISODE 01: “A NeN Project for Poppy’s Class.” - Writer’s Note: I had no hand in writing this episode. Poppy (our now famous “Salt Vendor” from the Neverending Nights series) wanted to do something unique for her class in College. Rather than do a normal video to present her thesis – she wanted to use Machinima to present it – and more so – use the characters with Neverending Nights to do so! She thought this would give her video a unique spin – and make it stand out from the rest! (Which I am sure it did… now that may or may not have been a good thing!) She did pass the class – so we can take comfort in that! Everyone – except for Adam, Poppy and myself – were new to recording in the studio. So some of them were very monotone – or some of them could not stop laughing – and some just got crazy. While the content of this video will undoubtedly go above the majority of people’s heads (since it was an actual thesis for College – and there’s a lot of big words in there!) – I would recommend at least hanging out until you get to the Out Takes – because this is where the fun comes in. PLEASE NOTE: The Out Takes do have a considerable amount of cussing in them! (Mostly Adam… But then whose surprised by that?)
