Neverending Nights - A Machinima Series.

[Tawmis]

Thank you SO much!!

[BBP]

Want to make an exchange? I have a Zappa-fan-forum at http://packardgoose.ploeg.ws/interactiv ... /index.php. We're back from the dead after much advertising and athmosphere issues at the official Zappa forum, but it's not all that alive either.

[Collector]

Done

[Tawmis]

Want to make an exchange? I have a Zappa-fan-forum at http://packardgoose.ploeg.ws/interactiv ... /index.php. We're back from the dead after much advertising and athmosphere issues at the official Zappa forum, but it's not all that alive either.

I shall sign up when I get to work!

[Tawmis]

The newest episode was posted last night:
http://neverendingnights.com/archives/454

You may want to keep an eye on the next few episodes... in this episode, a beautiful maiden can be seen in the tavern wearing a dress with flowers and looks all ... gardeny... I bet she's going to have a role in an upcoming episode... and on one end of the bar... there's a balding, older gentlemen wearing all white... like a leisure suit... I bet he's going to have something to say later too... and then there's that really colorful dude at the bar... he's probably going to have something to say soon (though most won't recognize who he is, I am sure...)

[Jules]

I’m not sure if I want to see this one! LOL!

However, this leisure suit shenanigans... I *do* want to see! ^_^

[Tawmis]

I’m not sure if I want to see this one! LOL!

However, this leisure suit shenanigans... I *do* want to see! ^_^

Well since the beautiful lady in the floral dress and the leisure suit fella have speaking parts in the same upcoming episodes (two more to be exact)... You might be in quite the conundrum, eh?

[Tawmis]

Neverending Nights – Episode 56: “Funkafied!” This episode features another very special guest to me. This one is Greg Johnson. You may be asking yourself, “Who is Greg Johnson?” Well let me educate you in the ways of Greg Johnson’s Funkafied Fame! Greg Johnson is one half of the team that made the incredible series, “Toejam & Earl.” To say the outlandish humor and zanniness of this game was beyond amazing would be an understatement! I remember spending days on this game, especially with my good friends Tammy & Chuck Stevens! Greg is an extremely busy person, but he took a moment out of his hectic schedule to lend us a voice when I asked! I can’t thank Greg enough for doing this! So sit back and prepare to be Funkafied!

http://neverendingnights.com/archives/478

[Tawmis]

Going to combine the Neverending Nights threads into one... Please hold.

Also linked all the episodes in the first post - so will do updates on this thread and update the original post as well.

And that said...

Episode 61: Reunited And It Feels So Good (Wait... Didn't We Use That Title Last Season?!) - Our would be heroes are reunited with old friends… and meet new friends that help them thrust – quite drastically – our heroes closer to their goal to finding the Forge of Eternal Flame and putting an end to the questionable fate of the Dragon of Silver Lake!

[Tawmis]

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?)

[Collector]

Not to change the subject, but what program did you finally settle on for editing your videos?

[Tawmis]

Not to change the subject, but what program did you finally settle on for editing your videos?

Well for the longest time, I was using Windows Movie Maker throughout the first and second season. For the third season (since there was a 2 year break and time to get to learn a new program before I decided to pick up NeN and finish it) - I am now using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8.0 (which is now out of date since they're on version 10 - but since I don't think there's much video editing for me beyond finishing NeN which ends with Episode 65, I don't see a need to purchase the newest version and drop that kind of money).

[Tawmis]

EPISODE 62: “The Forge of Eternal Flame.”

Writer’s Note: Grayson the Fighter, Peter the Ranger, Amiee the Armorer, Ruth the Redeemed and Pawl the Dorf reach The Forge of Eternal Flame. Learning what Pawl has from Sammy the Smith, Pawl must forge The Blade of Destiny anew as the heroes prepare for the ultimate and final battle against the fabled Dragon of Silver Lake. Is the Dragon of Silver Lake dead, like all the rumors say? Or is the Dragon Of Silver Lake alive, and luring heroes to their death with promises of massive treasure (from a dragon that many think is dead)! These questions will soon be answered; and everything will be made very clear – very soon! This episode, over all, is very short – as it centers on finding the Forge of Eternal Flame; so a large segment of out takes from Episode 61 and 62 was attached to the end of the episode.

www.neverendingnights.com/archives/655

www.neverendingnights.com/video/nen-ep62.zip (Normal Version) - 384MB

www.neverendingnights.com/video/nen-ep62HQ.zip (High Quality Version) - 1.1GB

[Tawmis]

Neverending Nights - Episode 63: The Fall of A Hero.

Our adventurers travel deep into the caverns of the Dragon of Silverlake… and as they do – they must make choices… sacrifices… and some may make the final sacrifice… as the secret of the Dragon of Silverlake is unlocked… is it alive, as some of the rumors have said? Or is it dead? The episode that reveals the secret … and changes the series forever.

[Tawmis]

Neverending Nights - Episode 64. Probably one of the longest episodes to make (if you don't count Episode 43), since the "full" version of this episode is 20 minutes long. I made a non "flashback" version though that's a mere 5 or 6 minutes long.

In other news...

I was on Episode 141 of the Neverwinter Nights Podcast as the main person interviewed.

And then began sharing "Cast and Crew" photos over the years...
2004
2005
2006
2007

With more to come obviously.