T.F.S Part 8 Started

The voices came in, they were on vacation, can't hold that against them.

T.F.S Shoots started yesterday evening and so have started the process of filming. There is still half a script to finalize but I thought you would be happy to know it's kicked off.

I am on Holiday in just over a week and there is no shoot next Tuesday so no filming will take place for two weeks, but, this gives me time to finalize stuff and therefor can come back and commence the creation of Part 8.

Peace out
Darknal

T.F.S Part 8 Update

Hi guys,

Sorry about the long delay in EVERYTHING, but I took a huge break from making Machinima over the summer period plus the personal crap I had to deal with so I'll tell you where I'm at.

I still have only half the script complete, but there is a reason for this. I have filmed the first talk scene, BUT, many of my voice actors, who live abroad, haven't yet contacted me with their lines, plus I have no idea if they are on holiday etc so can't actually start making it properly until I know everyone is still on board. This is the only problem with using REAL people for doing other lines as if they don't come in, I'm a bit screwed.

So at the moment I am chasing some important lines down. If it turns out they arn't willing to do it anymore, I will need to try and replace the characters some how. BIG PROBLEM......

So I'll continue with the script and editing the first talk, and hope that things work out. If they don't I will need to re-write and scrap the whole of Part 8 as we speak and think up another way on continueing the story.

But don't be alarmed. I will definatly think of something, I just don't want to as I want to do what I originally planned....

Don't hate me.

Your favourtie (yet painfully fustrating) Machinima Director (hahahaha)
Darknal

Final Hope Part 5

Hi guys,

One of my young T.F.S Crew members who helps with the large scale scene's has released his latest video of his Movie 'Final Hope'. I have done an Elite voice for him for his hard work on my machinima and his editing skills are coming along just fine. You will recognise the feel as his inspiration is obviously The Forgotten Spartans Episodes but for his age and a new commer to Machinima, maybe you can go check it out and give some constructive feedback.

Link below
Kind Regards
Darknal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=467V17hdGFM

The Forgotten Spartans "Inspiration"

Hello to everyone that loves T.F.S This update is not mentioning episode 8, really giving you an inside story to how I began the series and break down each episode so that you have an understanding to my thinking and maybe find out some of the answers that you would probably like to ask me. How it all began: I have been making Home Made movies for just over 10 years now and love it with a passion. I made my big home made movie called "Black Gold" a James Bond movie that was 1 hour 10 minutes long involving all my friends, it's not on the internet don't worry. A few years down the line and short movies was where I really just made movies because I enjoyed it, not all good but most on my channel on YouTube are old. I hadn't made anything for a few years. One night I was playing Halo 3 with my brothers and some friends and realised that the Theatre mode could be good for making a Short Movie about the Halo Story. Now, I hadn't seen any Machinima's at this point as I never really thought about it, looked on YouTube and saw many many Machinima's, most of which I actually thought were bad. I came across a few Machinima's that I actually liked but still thought to myself that I could do this, and thought I could do something better than some (not being big headed but there are quite a few bad ones out there). So, me my brother and a friend decided to make a Machinima. As I was used to action and just wanted to test to see if I could pull something interesting off, I thought I would go for a serious feel with maybe comical elements. There was me (Darknal) my brother Mike (Conan) and my friend Colin (Cosmic). We thought we would base the Machinima around ourselves as it wasn't going to be that serious anyway. I would do the voices to Darknal and Conan, and my brother did the voice to Cosmic. Reason Colin didn't do the voices was because he wasn't down often enough to play the part and it was easier for us to do all the voices. So, I began thinking of a story, but it was a basic story purely for entertainment. There are many mistakes with Part 1, things like Elites holding Human weapons, using the wrong grenades etc, but remember that every character you saw was only controlled by us 3 over Xbox Live. So I didn't know you could put guns down, didn't know that I could invite more people to help at the time. I also only had a video camera so filmed the whole episode by filming the T.V where I uploaded it to my YouTube account in 2007. The episode was a great hit. People write me comments saying I should do more and continue the series etc. I had only planned on making ONE episode, even though I said it was to be continued, this was not the case. BUT, everyone loved it so much they told me to make more. This is when I got some more helpers and did the second episode, Part 2. BUT, as YouTube could only take 10 minutes at a time, I had to break the episode into two parts creating Part 3, hense the cross over of scenes from Part 2 and why Part 2 seems so pointless. I then invested in a capture card and RE-DID the WHOLE thing. I already had the saved clips so I had to re-capture everything, doing all the angles again, editing all the scene's together again and re-did some of the talk scenes with the guns down, hense why Part 1 had guns lowered at the end talk scene. This method wasn't used for evey talk scene though hense BIG MISTAKES and a DODGY story line, that made sense, just wasn't invloved enough. I had finished the series after Part 3, that was where it was going to end, hense all their "Deaths". Machinima.com liked my series and took me on to host my videos on their page for more views and popularity. I made Episode 4 which was the Pre-qual and episode 5 which was the continuation of that prequal, linking the story back to Part 1 where the story began. This was done for two reasons, I wasn't fully sure how I was going to continue the story and realised that I had killed all the main characters. But, I saw some flaws in their deaths and developed a way of continuing the story. I knew I had to get bigger and better before making Part 6 so sat down and got more poeple involved where it was becomming more of a Crew than just random Xbox Live users. I brought in some more Voice actors that had better acting skills and tried to develop the series further. This is where I wanted a war. So episode 6 was a build up to an episode I had no idea how to approach. I invested in Adobe After Effects, very expensive, and used the tool Masking to create multiple shots. Part 7 was the biggest challenge EVER. I had scene NO Machinima's that had actually used masking to create an ACTUAL BATTLE SCENE, only build up scenes, but not fighting scenes. So obviously, I got planning. Every shot was filmed around 6 to 10 times with people in different areas of the map, I had to cut around each group frame by frame so that people could cross paths in the runnning shooting scenes looking like hundreds of Elites and Spartans. The rocket scene took the most time, and every rocket had to be masked, every explosion had to be masked and every group of Elites had to be masked. I can tell you now, this is not easy stuff. After Part 7 I took a HUGE break as it was so much work. Even now, I have only half a script written and a few lines returned. Do not think this is going to be a huge episode because it's not going to be like Part 7. It is going to be a story driven episode, just I havn't had the time. My week goes like this: Monday - 8am Work, 7pm Home, 7:40pm Football, Bed whatever time after. Tuesday - Work, 7pm T.F.S TIME Wednesday - Work, 7pm visit family Thursday - Work, 7pm Editing and check shoot time Friday - Work, 7pm Have my son. Saturday - With my son Sunday - With my son So as you can see, my week has two eveings of around 3 hours of those nights to do this. That's not a lot of time so things starting to move especially with summer is very difficult. I hope you have enjoyed this update and remember that I am working on Part 8. Just it will take time. I hope you guys have a good week. Kind Regards Darknal