Seattle Trip 2007 :: LRR + Child’s Play
January 3rd, 2008

Posted by james

Ok so heres the deal with the blog. It is not dead. This last month has just been a very busy crazy month for, well, everyone. So take a deep breath and prepare for write up on our trip to Seattle a couple weeks ago to hit up the Child’s Play Charity Dinner.

LRR takes on Seattle and Child’s Play: A story of truth

So the plan was as simple as a jelly bean on a pile of potatoes.

1. Get up stupid early
2. Get to Graham/Bill/Morgan’s House
3. Get in bus
4. GO!
5. ???
6. Profit

Ok so that last step isn’t actually real, so already my story of truth is filled with lies. Sorry about that.

::The Departure::

So we all barely managed to get to Bills place early enough to get ourself ready and to the ferry terminal for the 7am ferry. I won’t lie again. It was beyond close, the only way we were able to get on that boat was the lady at the booth cut us some slack and put us in with all the larger vehicles and buses (mind you, rightly where we belonged in the LRR Bus) Once on the ferry we headed straight for the all you can eat breakfast buffet. I would urge any and all that have never had a chance to enjoy this feast to do so ASAP. Even if you just fly to Vancouver/Victoria and catch the ferry and then head straight back to where you came from it will be worth it, trust me.

::Vancouver::

After a very boring drive to downtown Vancouver we were set to explore for a little bit before Kathleen was able to get off work to join us down in Seattle. So we hit up the very large HMV among other various stores finally arriving at the VAG to meet Kathleen. I will leave it up to your sick little minds to figure out what that is.

::Seattle::

The drive down to seattle wasn’t all that exciting. We hit the I5 and started south, once we hit our first gas station I think everyone minus Jer and Kathleen were having flashbacks to this past summer and our road trip. We made it into town around 4pm, which gave us more than enough time to find a place to park the bus, check into our hotel (The Grande Hyatt) and get all gussied up for the big dinner. After we got into the hotel (which was fucking gorgeous btw) we all started to get ready for the dinner and once me and Matt were all ready, we headed out to find the kid some shoelaces. Now I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever been in the position of trying to buy shoelaces in downtown Seattle, but fuck was it hard. Every place we went that should really be carrying shoe laces, had nothing. We finally stumbled upon and Payless Shoes store and managed to get a pair, but it wasn’t even the right kind. I think its some sort of conspiracy or something. However that is something we can go into in a later date.

::The Dinner::

We arrived at the dinner just as the cocktail hour and silent auction were starting up. I was blown away by the amount of people present and how amazing the place looked. They managed to transform a little chunk of the conference center into a amazing spectacle. So during the cocktail hour we wandered around and checked out the all the stuff up for the silent auction. Pretty neat stuff if I may so myself, Matt was the only one of us to walk away with something. A Fable package which i will get a picture for you later. We also had a chance to meet Mike and Jerry from PA, Kristen who is in charge of Child’s Play and Wil Wheaton. It was at this point we asked the guys if they could make an appearance in the video that went up on the site a couple weeks ago. They couldn’t have been more awesome about it

During the actual dinner portion of the event, Mike and Jerry hosted the ever popular live auction, which in past years had brought in tens of thousands of dollars. And this year was no exception. To the best i can recall, they managed to bring in just shy of 100,000.00 dollars during the live auction alone. The entire evening saw a total of 225,000.00 dollars. A number that almost knocked me right out of my seat.

After the dinner we stuck around and waited patiently for Wil and the guys from PA to have a spare second to do their little cameos. During this time we had a chance to chat with Major Nelson (the head hauncho over at XBL) and two guys from Harmonix (the makers behind the awesome Rock Band)

::The Video Shoot::

We did the PA cameo first, which we just ended up shooting in a empty hallway not to far away from all the hubbub of the dinner. It didn’t take long at all, and he was really cool about it as well. As you may have noticed in Grahams reaction he wasn’t actually expecting to get tackled against the wall quite like that. But lets be serious, It was freaking hilarious.

The Wil Wheaton cameo we had a bit more time with and just like the previous cameo he was super awesome about it. He let us shoot it a couple times and him and Graham did a few other Star Trek one off jokes that you might get to see somewhere down the line.

After we got through that, it was time to get the rest of the video shot. So we all headed back to the hotel and we shoot pretty much everything else in the hallways outside our room up the 23rd floor of the Hyatt and 12:30 in the morning.

::The Return::

So we left pretty early the next morning as Kathleen had shit to do back in Vancouver that afternoon. Once we got back to downtown we dropped her off, said our goodbyes and the rest of us hit up the Crepe Cafe place (SOOOOOO GOOOOOOD) and then it was just back to Victoria to our boring regular lives. HORAY!

-end

::Pictures::

Change of plans
December 13th, 2007

Posted by james

So due to the fact that a couple of the pictures and stories would ruin this weeks video i have decided to hold off on the write up until Friday evening or Saturday.

Such an awesome evening.
December 12th, 2007

Posted by james

Hello one and all. Just wanted to pop in quickly between a busy evening for us and tell you that as a whole LoadingReadyRun has easily had one of the best evenings of our collective lives. As many of you might know, Penny Arcade put on their annual Child’s Play Charity Dinner tonight and everyone minus Bill (lack of proper ID) was able to attend. And my lord was it fantastic evening. Check back tomorrow night for a decent sized write up of funny stories (and god knows their are) and some super neat pictures!

The Blog is far from dead.
December 6th, 2007

Posted by james

Hey guys.

Just checking in to assure you the blog is not dead. The last couple weeks have been kinda crazy and add in the fact that i wasn’t really present for much of the “Ways to ruin a job interview” I have one picture from when Graham and Paul filmed “Stages” and then there really wasn’t much to take pictures of when it came to shooting the Desert Bus review. And unfortunately i didn’t bring my camera with me to this weeks shoot, and even if i did it would have been kinda hard to take pictures as the 3 people present for that shoot was myself (in the video) Paul (also in the video) and Graham (he filmed the video)

So don’t give up on this yet.

The Truce Write Up
November 21st, 2007

Posted by james

Hey guys. Sorry about the lack of write up. I even wrote it out on my laptop one day and just completely forgot to update the blog. So here it is!

The Truce was a really fun video to shoot. Not only did you guys get to NOT look at Grahams place again in a video, but we also got to really get to use our dolly. Basically this thing is beyond awesome. Getting around with it would be pretty much impossible if it wasn’t for the fact that we decided to keep the bus. And even then the 18′ lengths which we used in this video (along with the set of 8′) just barely fit in our bus. So we ended up shooting the first scene from this video in a field not to far from the guys place. So we set up the tracks all professional like and went to work getting that shot done. Which as you can see from the pictures below is where the majority of shots were taken. Then it was on to Jer’s house. Which is where all the interior shots were done. Was nice for us cause while we have done some filming at Jeremy’s house it was nice to have a whole video shot somewhere other than Grahams. Don’t really have to much else to say about this video. Hope you guys enjoyed it!