Spriggs: a Halo 3 Machinima

In the unlikely event that you’re reading this entry before seeing it on YouTube (not likely), Episode 12, Part B is currently up for your consumption. Mad props go out to Rob for more original graphics work. And I think everyone will agree that Dave (Willy) plays the best drunk ever, and that Erin (Vollin) could give lessons in sultriness.

In other news, I’m currently working on getting our entire run of videos subtitled on YouTube, thanks to the .srt subtitle support they added recently. A wonderful feature, which will help not only our international viewers, but also those of us who simply can’t understand the Elites. I’ve only put up a few subtitle tracks so far, Triple M at the Pulpit, When Willy Met Hammer, and for an example of Elite only subtitling, Episode 5, Hammer Time. To enable them, click on the upward pointed arrow in the bottom right corner of the video player.

Also, in case you missed the details in our channel description, we intend to release the third and final part of episode 12 this weekend, either Friday or Saturday, and the following following Friday or Saturday we will be releasing the short “Road Trip”.

With official business completed, I’d like to take the opportunity to spotlight a fellow YouTuber by the name of Bryan Simon. With the aid of a mere acoustic guitar, and a bountiful music wit, he has written several amusing songs about Halo 3 you may enjoy. In particular, I’d like to highlight “He’s One Shot On My X”, which speaks deeply to me, as I have never ever managed to kill anyone with the Battle Rifle.

Aaron Clark
Assistant Director, Webmaster, & Voice of Rogir
Chief Creative Officer, Running Gun LLC

You don’t wanna know. We were lucky we could save your hands.

In the interest of consistently producing content, consider this the first installment of the regular Spriggs slash Running Gun slash machinima slash Halo slash Castle Crashers update. So every Monday, regardless of whether we have produced a video or not, I’ll be serving up a regular news post, even if it’s to remind you of how exceedingly ineffectual we are at producing videos on the internets. So now that we’ve broken the ice, let the lack of news commence!

We are so awesome at not producing videos. In the production of this episode, I managed to wreck my car, and then Mike had to be zapped and scanned with so much radiation that the half life of the isotopes in his system has to expire until they can look inside him again. Lesson learned: getting hit by a car sucks, even several years down the road. Those alone have spurned our productivity enough as it is, but then we had a hurricane, and then once the hurricane cleared up, Mike had an allergic reaction to whatever pills they gave him to prevent him from turning into the Incredible Hulk. So he spent a good portion of one evening hopped up on Benadryl. I swear, the guy is like the combustible director, all you have to do is toss a lit match at him, and hilarity ensues. Shame we don’t own a video camera.

In short, we are incredibly unlucky. This is why we’re avoiding providing release dates in the future. Sorry.

Episode 12b, 12c, Road Trip, as well as a few other things I’m not cool enough to tell you about are all in concurrent production. So in all likelihood, we’ll finish all of them at the same time, which is precisely what we’re trying not to do. Oh well. On the upside, it gives Rob a little extra time to work on the 3D elements. Which I have to say we are all very proud of. It’s allowed us to both expand and realize what we want to do with the story by and overcoming the limitations of Halo 3’s assets. Creating ACM3 (Acolyte Choir Model 3) to get around the inability to play teamless in forge is something we are particularly proud of. And let’s not forget Kitty Killer Bot and Agent Dodd.

Other stuff we want to mention that is not directly Spriggs related is as follows.

Our friends over at Smoothe Few Films are actively working on being known by their production name, and not as “The Leet World”, so I highly recommend taking a look at their new site. They have a few productions coming up that look noteworthy. You might know them for their Counter Strike machinima series, as well as some of their shorts, most notably, “A day in the Life of a Turret”, and my personal favorites, “The Bag Boy”, and “The Gunstop Way”. They’re working on a short Halo 3 series and given what we’ve seen of their other stuff, you’re going to want to check it out.

That’s about all I have time for this week, so I will conclude by saying to hang tight, and keep your ear to the ground. But don’t hang on the edge or your seat or anything, the next video still needs some more work before we’re ready to put it out.

Aaron Clark
Assistant Director, Webmaster, & Voice of Rogir
Chief Creative Officer, Running Gun LLC