On the Run: Vancouver Island Short Film Festival
February 20th, 2010

Posted by Tim

Last Saturday most of us took a drive to Nanaimo to attend the 5th annual Vancouver Island Short Film Festival, where we had two videos entered, which were “Mercenary Solutions” and “Secret of the Sauce”.

The festival was really great this year. We’ve been attending the festival since its inception and had really great experiences with it in the past, and I think we’d all agree that this year had the strongest lineup so far.

Best of all, the judges awarded us (specifically, Graham) the Best Writing award for Secret of the Sauce, meaning that LRR has won Best Writing at the VISFF for five years in a row!

We brought a camera along and recorded some of the goings on. I’ve strung together a few of the less interesting moments, which you can watch in the first of a new series of “slice of life” videos that we’re calling “On The Run”.

Enjoy perusing the minutia of our lives!

Preview Pic for Feb 22, 2010
February 20th, 2010

Posted by Matt

Oh yes. This means exactly what you think it means.

HAA!

Rejected ENN – Feb 17, 2010
February 18th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

Every week, Paul, Graham, Kathleen and I get together to write ENN. Over the week, each of us actually writes stories separately, then we get together on Fridays to choose what to use, what to revise, etc. Sometimes the stories we throw out aren’t very good; other times, they are too obscure for a wider audience. Even so, sometimes very good stories have to be thrown out because there is just not enough space for them in the episode. Here are two of those stories for this week’s episode:

Nintendon’t (two stories on same topic)

Joystiq is reporting that an Australian software pirate who uploaded New Super Mario Bros. Wii to the internet a week prior to its release, has been found guilty and fined $1.5 million dollars. Nintendo obviously felt such piracy was a concern, considering the game has only sold 10-and-a-half million copies in the 90 days since its release. Shigeru Miyamoto, in his role as Father of Modern Gaming, said he wasn’t angry, just disappointed.

The Revolution Will Not be Digitized (too obscure)

SquareEnix has registered a trademark for Deus Ex: Human Revolution–a curious choice given that the Deus Ex IP is owned by competitor Ubisoft. Square Enix Alphomega Imperial Hot clarified to ENN that the trademark doesnt refer to a game, so much as his plans to create a gigantic, robotic Robspierre to set loose on the French publisher, insighting the Deus Ex team to revolt, and join his company. The robot is scheduled for release in 2015, alongside Final Fantasy XV.

T-Shirt Update
February 17th, 2010

Posted by james

Hey guys, just wanted to drop in and let you know how our new T-Shirt system is going.

As you all know, our first design out of the gate was the very popular “Is somebody doing science in here?” design. After three weeks of preorders, I’m happy to report we blew clear past the 50 preorders required for the run to go ahead. So you’re all probably wondering where your new shirts are!

Well, they’re coming. I picked them up from the printers yesterday and started organizing them all last night. The goal right now is to have them all sorted and packaged by the end of the weekend and ship them all out at the start of next week.

Moving onto our current design, things are most definitely slower. Now, we fully expected this to happen, and the “Slacking” shirt is still doing very well. In fact, with only 9 days left in the preorder window we only need another 5 orders to reach our print goal of 50. Remember, we have this shirt available in various designs and colours and that is one of the benifits of ordering now. If you wait until we have printed the run then you are going to be stuck, with the only option being a black T-Shirt (in your size). So if you have been meaning to order the new shirt, stop slacking and order!

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER

So from all of us at LRR, I just want to throw a quick thank you out to all that have helped make this new T-Shirt system a huge success, and here’s to many more shirts down the line!

Olympic Beard Growing
February 16th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

If you’re like us, you’ve probably been glued to the Olympics for the past several days–as well you should be: they’re great fun to watch. I’m actually delighted by the fidelity of the online streaming this year, such that even without cable TV, I’m able to waste hours of my day watching events I don’t even care about. Such is the nature of the games.

The other advantage of the Olympics is we get to make another Olympic video — something that doesn’t happen very often. This one was conceived by Paul because he hates you. He knew that by dangling the spectre of his so-recently-departed beard before you, he would illicit squeals of joy, before leaving you with the stark realization that this was only a functional means to an end — not a full return to beardly glory.

While Paul’s original script called for this to be filmed over several weeks, we decided that would be a people-wrangling-and-venue-booking nightmare, so we instead did entire thing in reverse. Paul and I grew out our beards over about five weeks, and then used a trimmer to shave them off about evenly for each section of the video. Delays in filming pushed the actual shooting time by another week, which actually turned out to be problematic for me– I’ve never let my beard get as out-of-control as it was for this video, and up close it was pretty scraggly.

Anyway, there you have it. While you’re here, you should check out our previous Olympic video, which introduced Canada’s freestyle slacking team. If you’re new to the site, you might not have seen it, as it’s a couple years old at this point. You’ll also notice that our latest T-shirt pre-order ties in with that video, and there are only ten days left to order one in the style and colour of your choice.