Cruise Vacation
October 10th, 2011

Posted by Matt

CONGRATULATIONS! You, lucky winner, are about to receive an ALL EXPENSES PAID, ROUND-TRIP FOR ONE, to OUR NEW VIDEO! (click here for details).

This video was shot about a week or so ago, and as it happened, on a weekend when both James and Kathleen were out of town. This left a skeleton crew of myself, Paul and Graham to take care of this video, and with one person being responsible for the camera, and another for the boom, we had to call in some friends! So this week you get a dose of Missie and Cam, who don’t show up in videos nearly often enough. The script this week was written by Paul, and the video was shot mostly on location at one of our many favourite haunts, Graham’s parents’ house. Amusingly, they were on vacation in England when this video was shot, and after we inadvertently set off the house alarm when we got there, we had to call them in order to figure out how to turn it off. We’re awesome at this.

Unskippable this week was Space Marine. You can view that here.

Checkpoint is online as well, with Episode 23: HD Remix.

Finally, please note that our new tee-shirt is up for pre-order, if you love Magic: the Gathering (and we hope you do!) you’re sure to love this shirt as well.

Cheers!

All you ever wanted to know about PAX Prime 2011 (but were afraid to ask)
August 17th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Well kids, it’s that time of year again. PAX Prime is a mere nine days away. By now, hopefully, your plans are made, and your hotels are booked – all that’s left is to find your way to the Washington State Convention Center next Friday, and take in all the Convention has to offer. For those of you attending PAX for the very first time (and for those of you not attending for the very first time, actually), I strongly suggest you check out the official PAX Website. The convention schedule was posted at the beginning of the month, and if you’re not sure what’s in store for you, there are few better ways to find out. Are you interested in Panels? Screening blocks? Concerts? Wandering the show floor? Meeting with your favorite internet personalities? The schedule is the place to look to plan your weekend.

Additionally, no matter your preferred flavor of convention experience, LoadingReadyRun should have you covered on nearly every count. The whole of the crew will be in attendance at the con, (with the sole exception of Alex, who’s heading off to Ontario to attend Fan Expo to promote his new project ‘Shards’) so you’ll be sure to see us around. On top of that, we’ll also have a table in Bandland, where we’ll be selling merch and signing autographs (and yes, we do intend to have Season 5 and Crapshots DVDs with us, though that depends on whether or not we receive them on time from the printer). It’s also very likely that we’ll arrange a LRR fan meet-up at some point during the weekend, but as usual we have not planned a time and date in advance. You’ll want to follow the @LoadingReadyRun Twitter account, or check back here during the con for more information. Finally, we’ve also got panels and a screening block! The information for those can be found below:

The LoadingReadyRun Panel
Unicorn Theatre
Friday 9:30pm – 10:30pm

LoadingReadyRun, producers of Unskippable, CheckPoint, Feed Dump, ENN & Daily Drop, and organizers of the Desert Bus for Hope fundraiser, will delight and amaze you with new videos and answers to your questions! Come hang out!

LoadingReadyRun Movie Night!
Unicorn Theatre
Friday 10:30pm – 11:30pm

Join the whole LRR crew for some of our favourite vids and other fun stuff. We’ll all be there to hang out and answer your questions. If you missed talking to us during our panel, we’d love to see you here.

Escapist Movie Night
Unicorn Theatre
Saturday 10:30pm – 11:30pm

Meet the stars of The Escapist’s Loading Ready Run, Extra Credits, Unskippable and more at The Escapist’s Movie Night. You’ll see never-before-seen videos from The Escapist’s most popular web series, including Zero Punctuation and The Big Picture. Plus see favorite episodes from Extra Credits, Unskippable, Daily Drop, Feed Dump, Escape to the Movies, Miracle of Sound, Jimquisition, No Right Answer and more, hosted by Extra Credits’ James Portnow, Loading Ready Run and the staff of The Escapist.

What Women Really Want
Kraken Theatre
Sunday 11:30am – 12:30pm

Join Trina Schwimmer, founder of GamingAngels.com; Kathleen de Vere, star of LoadingReadyRun; AJ Glasser of Inside Social Games; and Tracey John, regular contributor to The Daily, as they discuss what they embrace in female fictional characters and why these attributes are important. They will identify their favorite characters and how they would like more heroines with similar attributes integrated into Geek culture. This fresh, positive approach to female characters shouldn’t be missed. Moderated by Susan Arendt, Senior Editor of The Escapist.
Panelists include: Susan Arendt [Senior Editor, The Escapist], Christa Carter, Brittany Aubert, Kathleen De Vere [Actor, LoadingReadyRun], AJ Glasser [Journalist, Inside Social Games], Brittany Aubert [Associate Producer, 5th Cell]

Gaming as a Lifestyle
Serpent Theatre
Sunday 4:00pm – 5:00pm

Flying in the face of criticism against video games and their ruination of lives, this panel will address the topic of living a life made richer by playing games. From how to keep your job while supporting a game-playing habit, to making your game-playing habit your job. Graham Stark, Jeff Green, Ian Dorsch and James Portnow will share secrets and personal stories, deflate hype and participate in a detailed Q&A. Moderated by Russ Pitts, Editor-in-Chief of The Escapist.
Panelists include: Russ Pitts [Editor-in-Chief, The Escapist], James Portnow [CEO/Developer, Rainmaker Games], Ian Dorsch [Musician – Zero Punctuation, The Escapist], Jeff Green [Journalist/PR, PopCap], Graham Stark [Writer/Actor, LoadingReadyRun]

We’re really looking forward to the con and to seeing you all there. PAX is always a blast, and we have no doubt that this year will continue that trend. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot a message to our twitter account or to post it in the comments below. Internet access is always a little spotty while we’re in the states, but we’ll try to keep you all as up to date as possible about our various goings on throughout the weekend.

See you soon!

Update: I’ve just been informed that there will be a Magic: The Gathering party hosted by Wizards of the Coast on the evening of Saturday, August 27. It’s a safe bet that most, if not all, of us will be in attendance.

Ascend into Darkness – The Magic Innistrad Party

Seriously, you definitely want to be at this party on the evening of Saturday, August 27. You’ll be able to earn an invitation by participating in PAX Prime. Stop by the Wizards of the Coast booth for details!

 

Double DVD Preorder! All across the sky!
August 6th, 2011

Posted by Paul

That’s right! Not only is the long awaited Season 5 DVD now available for preorder, but we are also printing the first ever Crapshots DVD! Check out these amazing features:

LoadingReadyRun Season 5

  • 52 LoadingReadyRun videos – Everything from Season 5 of LRR
  • Commentaries on every video from the entire cast!
  • Extensive bloopers and outtakes!
  • A special 20 minute interview with Uwe Boll
  • 7 behind the scenes Loading Time episodes
  • “Green Screen” making-of videos for High Noon and Emergency Situation
  • AND because you asked for it, every T-Shirt Ad from Season 5!

Crapshots Season 1

  • 100 Crapshots. You’ll find at least one you like.
  • Commentaries on every episode by Alex and Graham.
  • Bloopers! Or “Misfires” as we call them.
  • Crapshot Roulette – Play a Random Crapshot! This was surprisingly difficult to do on a DVD, so please use it.
  • A VERY SPECIAL bonus feature made from footage assumed lost, but then later proven to be simply misplaced… Man Cooking Live! Watch Morgan snort chili powder!

And if that wasn’t enough, if you preorder either of these DVDs before September 1st, 2011, we will throw in a free exclusive button and the whole crew will sign it!

PS: Since we were getting all these DVDs printed anyway, we decided to also do a reprint of Season 4, which has been out of stock for far too long. Buy it today and we will ship it out once the DVDs come at the end of August.


Imagine If You Will
July 25th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Imagine, if you will… that our new video is up. Now stop imagining, because it actually is. Here.

So where did this video come from? Well, Graham explains:

I wanted to write a video about what “the next big thing” will be once vampires aren’t cool anymore, but the tricky part was finding something ridiculous enough. I really wanted Davis (my unnamed character) to get super annoyed, so it had to to be really silly. As a result, Cthulhu!

We went to the “elder god well” once already this season with Discount Deities, but I felt this was different enough that both videos could exist so close by in our chronology. Don’t expect another any time soon though!

When I was writing, I was originally going to have Gills (Paul’s character) pitch the Siren seriously as a suggestion, and then a third silly suggestion (comedy comes in threes, you see). But, as I was writing I thought it’d be much better for Gills to be really trying to make this Cthulhu thing stick, hence him using the Siren to “make Cthulhu look good”.

Once I was done the draft, Kathleen came in to add, what I felt was, some much-needed punch here and there.

Addendum:
In videos we co-write, people often throw out the phrase, “That was totally a Kathleen line!” when it wasn’t. It was just a really silly, often awful, line that sounds like something she would write. For reference, the pedophilia line? Mine. The guy-sexing-a-pie line? Kathleen’s. The “no it was just a guy sexing a pie”? Me again.
That, my friends, is teamwork.

Unskippable’s game of choice this week was an unspeakable horror… You can find it here.

Also Checkpoint is up over at PATV. Please watch in order to help to save 3DS. Or something.

Additionally, please note the announcemnt post for the PSN Featured Game. We’ll be playing the PS3 version of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Saturday from 4-6 (Pacific), and we’d love for you all to join us!

Finally, there are but a few days left in the pre-order period for the Lasers of Understanding tee-shirts! We’ve not quite met our minimum quota for the production of a run of these shirts yet, but we’d really like to see them happen, and we’re nearly there. If you’re waiting on buying one of these, don’t let the opportunity pass you by.

This meeting is over.

Smile
July 18th, 2011

Posted by Matt

This is a thing we recorded and put on the internet.

This week’s video was shot only days ago, up at the University of Victoria. Filming was a bit of an adventure, because the script only really came together in it’s finalized version earlier that morning. Graham had some thoughts to share on the writing process for this one, so I’ve posted them below:

A long while ago we thought it’d be cool to shoot a video entirely from the perspective of security cameras, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out what. It was a cool visual concept, but we never really had a script that made sense in that context.

Fast-forward many moons, probably more than a year: I was thinking again about that concept and realized that a video about video cameras made perfect sense!

I wrote the great bulk of the video, but I wasn’t happy with the ending, and there was a problem with thematic flow around the three-quarters mark. Paul, Kathleen, Jeremy, James, Matt and I sat down for about 20 minutes prior to shooting and hashed it out, everyone throwing in ideas. Not only did this make the video much better, but I love writing as a group, and I don’t think we do it often enough.

Actually shooting it was another crazy matter involving iPhone mics and tripods on desks, but we’ll get into all that in an upcoming LRRcast. Hope you enjoy the video!

Unskippable this week was Dark Void. You can find the episode here.

And the new Checkpoint, “Plants vs. EA” s viewable on PATV.

Finally, please remember that there are now two weeks left in our Lasers of Understanding tee-shirt pre-order period!

Cheers!