I’m not the best person to talk about this video, I didn’t write it, and I didn’t even get all the jokes until Jeremy explained them to me, but I can tell you about shooting it!

Originally, James was going to be doing the lines Jer ended up with, but was unavailable. As a result, Jer had to change the character from Andy Collins (who I’m told James looks a bit like) to Scott Rouse (another Wizards of the Coast staff member) whom Jer resembles more. Jer had Matt in mind for Mike Mearls from the beginning.

According to the blogs of Rouse and Mearls themselves Matt completely nailed his portrayl of Mearls, even down to his hair and mannerisms. Full disclosure, we hadn’t even seen a picture of the guy before we started shooting. Maybe he and Matt are long-lost twins?

We shot Jer’s bits on a Wednesday, with Paul shooting most of it while I went to buy the smiley ball. We shot Laura’s scenes on a Friday morning full of weird scheduling headaches, but everything came together and we shot it in about 15 minutes. Matt’s scenes we shot that evening Curious Comics, an awesome local comic shop you should check out if you’re in Victoria. The other bits (the D&D game and the gelatinous cube) were shot either the same Friday or over the weekend. The last piece to be shot was the stop-motion orc dancing, which I hadn’t planned on originally, but when Jer and Tally’s jingle came through… well I needed to step up. I edited that sequence while watching Rambo with Matt.

Jer drew up all the monster manual pages, and Paul did the art for “EA’s Monopoly” and “The Splat Book”. Our good friend Derek Hand (Tensen01 to the forums) did the fantastic artwork for those pages, and on surprisingly short notice!

Despite all the graphics and things the editing went quite smoothly, and the gelatinous cube was tasty.

Well, what can I say about that video?

Initially, I thought it’d be hilarious to interview Mr. Boll, so when forum member Tank_Girl told me she would be at a preview screening of Postal and he’d be there at a Q&A, I wished I could go. I couldn’t sadly, but I asked if she could pass on a request on our behalf. I believe she described us as “Local Filmmakers”.

He said yes, obviously, and now I have “Uwe Boll” in my mobile phonebook.

Clearly, we have a history with Boll. We’ve done 5 or so videos on him and his movies over the years, and we’ve said some not very nice things about the man. I know he’d seen one of the videos because I submitted myself to his “fight the critics” event. Gotta say, thank goodness I didn’t get picked because he mopped the floor with those guys, but I hoped he wouldn’t recognize me. Which begs the question… how do I do this? How do I conduct an interview with a man I’ve very publicly been rude to?

The chance to interview him was something I couldn’t possibly pass up though. No matter who I told about the video, the reaction was the same: stunned.

After talking it over with Paul, we decided just to do it straight. Just, you know, treat him like any other human being and ask reasonable questions without trying to attack him or be confrontational. So, that’s what I did. I wasn’t sure going in if he’d actually be a reasonable person, or as crazy as he seems online. Either way, we had a video!

The directions he gave us to the Starbucks weren’t totally clear, so Kathleen and I went for a bit of a wander around Kitsilano, on a very hot day, lugging the camera. When we finally got there we leapt right into the interview. We were then kicked out of the Starbucks patio after two questions. I’m okay with that because the audio was way better in the park, and it looked nicer too. I tell you though, my ass was numb by the end of all that. Kathleen’s nose was running the whole time because she had an awful cold, and to her credit, rather than ruin the shot to blow her nose, she resorted to wiping it on her shirt. I’m sure she’s thrilled I told you that.

The video’s end result was totally not what I expected when I went in. Very much unlike his online persona, Uwe Boll is a reasonable, well-spoken, intelligent businessman. He brings up a lot of stellar points (like why Kung-Fu Panda is screening at Cannes) and it made me look at him and his movies in a totally new light. Admittedly, I still think they’re not good, but I don’t think they’re terrible, and I know why they are what they are. Also, I intend to watch In the Name of the King and Postal before I pass judgment.

All in all, as I said in the video, I have a much, much greater respect for the man. He was honestly fun to hang out with, and I enjoyed talking to him immensely. I hope we get a chance to talk again sometime.

He sent me this photo from the set of Postal, thank Uwe!

Keep making movies, I wish you the best.

Hey all, thought I’d fill you in on some of the video we missed talking about recently.

Firstly, the Uwe Boll video. The actual shooting of this video was pretty much exactly the same as other similar videos (WGA, Max Effect, etc). Essentially it was setting the green screen and the lights, and then letting people do their lines.

Impressively, Morgan managed to do that one big line all in one go. As with everyone, his ability to remember lines has improved greatly since, say, Season 1.

The GTA IV Trailer took a lot more effort. The step-o-meter on my mobile phone tells me I walked 14,000 steps that afternoon. We basically just walked around lower downtown Victoria looking for interesting backgrounds to shoot against. James drove us around and carried all our goofy hats for us. More importantly he told when I was about to walk backwards into something. The real trick was all the shots of Paul walking towards the camera, to get them as close to one another as possible. I think I did pretty well, considering it was handheld. The rest was fixed in post.

We totally lucked out to get the shot of the boat at the beginning. Victoria’s industrial port (such as it is) isn’t really something we can get to, so finding a boat like that, and somewhere we could shoot was a huge boon for us. Apparently that dock isn’t supposed to be public access, but the gate was wide open so… guerrilla film making ftw.

Finally the most recent video, Son of a Bitch. All I have in the way of pictures is some toothpaste in our kitchen sink. The video was actually shot over a couple different days, due to scheduling conflicts. In fact, the bits with Matt and I were shot on Sunday morning, then re-shot on Sunday night, just before Matt had to go out. This meant that the shot of me reading the Cardboard Man comic book (which you guys noticed, right?) I had to shoot by myself.

Shooting it all in little bits meant Matt could concentrate on the delivery (which he nailed) rather than remembering lines. For the fast-forwarded footage, Matt just went nuts with various props and hats and the like. Look for an extended outtakes segment on the Season 5 DVD.

Finally, there’s some photos I wanted to share of a can of Coke Zero that Matt exploded by leaving in the freezer. Smooth move, dude.

Which would have been the title of this week’s video, if it didn’t give away the best part about it.

So, I’ve been making that costume for the past several weeks in the back room at my job. Originally it was just out of boredom, and I never intended it for a video. Even when I finally realized that of course we would use it, I didn’t immediately think of Iron Man. And then… oh yes.

We shot everything on a Saturday. We got a great location for all the Cardboard Man shots, and shot those first. I’m really happy with how the lighting turned out. It was also my first time putting the entire costume on at once. Previous I had sized all the pieces for myself, but I’d never had more than a couple on at a time. I was at work after all.

Then we shot the scenes in Kathleen’s car, standing in for a Humvee. Originally we had planned to replace the view out the back window with some desert footage, but it didn’t work out, and the black worked fine anyway.

That evening we shot my green screen footage for the rocket gag, and around 10:30 that night we went to a club downtown to shot the “party” shots at the beginning. We only had to deal with one drunk! Yay!

Later, I took pictures of every box that comprised the costume, from every angle, and made a 3D model of the whole thing for the final shot, which, in my opinion, was the button on the whole thing. I couldn’t stop giggling whenever I explained that joke to one of the crew.

Finally, I layed in a Commodore64 version of “Iron Man” and recorded the “Cardboard Maaaaan” clip in Garageband.

All in all a fun time, and I’m really pleased with the result.

ZOMG PICTURES FROM THE SHOOT. I WILL DO A WRITE UP LATER TONIGHT OR TOMORROW!