Okay, here we go with Part the Second of my look into the hellish, never-ending… ermm… fun experience I’m in right now called Quest for GC. Nah, it’s all good. Just busy. (I won’t go over the chronology stuff again… suffice to say I’m writing this contemporaneously. At least, I think that’s the right word….)

Episode 3: Languages

This was one of the earliest ideas, and came entirely from Martin Rabl’s brain as I recall. He wrote the first draft of the script, including the Ikea gag and – I think – the headbanging stuff. I might be wrong. Then I wrote the final draft, and tweaked it here and there.

Shooting this was as close as we’ve gotten to a ‘film’ so far (at time of writing, Episodes 4 and 5 are in the ‘virtual can’). We shot it almost completely out of order, except for the first group shot, which was done first just for ease. Jen, the American voice you hear first of all, really isn’t a fan of being filmed up close, which is why in part we sat her at the head of the table and shot from such a high angle. Boy, it was hot up near the ceiling.

We got the whole thing wrapped in about two hours. What I learnt quickly was that when shooting out of order, try and shoot everything for one location in one go. Even though all we were doing is moving a camcorder around on a tabletop, it was a pain to keep doing it.

Toughest moments to shoot? Probably Peter’s Spanish bit – he kept fluffing the lines, so it took a lot of takes – and the opening shot, just in terms of wrangling everybody. Easiest? Jörg’s headbanging, actually. I practically didn’t even need to prompt him; just turned on the camera and let him go. He actually ‘banged’ to his own personal beat… I had to try and find something afterwards while editing that sort-of matched in rhythm.

Speaking of editing, it was a hard one (lots of shots) but quite rewarding. I think I turned a corner with this into feeling more in control of the edit process, especially when I was doing the subtitles (which had to be different for each version, as French and German subtitles weren’t needed on their versions). Thing I’m most proud of in the editing, weirdly, is sound; the tap-tapping of the typewriter at the start, and the timing on the record scratch. Good stuff.

After the first two videos – which both had the same core idea, and were also pretty broad – I was a little worried about how this one would be received… but it went down pretty darn well, internal and externally. So onwards we went…

Episode 4: Setting the Stage

Hands down – my favourite episode so far, and that’s not just because I’m in it. (Hopefully I’ll have another favourite before we’re done…!)

This came about out of necessity, because we decided we wanted one of the videos to promote the ‘Set the Stage’ competition during Games Convention. The idea of that competition is (was?) to have players write dialogue for our ‘real-life characters’ from Aion: The Tower of Eternity and Guild Wars to speak on stage. Essentially, for them to write a scene with them in. Naturally, the idea that we tried it ourselves and failed lent itself to a teaser pretty easily.

James Spafford did the first pass on the script for this, and he came up with the three biggest gags – Tia’s Guild Wars speech, Jörg’s ‘lorem ipsum’ routine, and the idea of quoting Star Wars. I just expanded on each of them, and of course added in the ‘terrifying judge’ bit which I have to say, wasn’t exactly hard to act. (Honestly. I am nice in real life. Hopefully the blooper reel will show this… a bit.) James’ humour is just perfect for this sort of thing, and we riff off each other to build the ideas up, so it’s a good combo.

Filming this was a doddle really. I think our German actors, in particular, are getting a bit used to it now! I only needed a couple of takes for almost everything, and after we had all of their shots, we reversed the setup and filmed me. I of course had given myself the biggest ‘speech’ in the thing (“You’re providing dialogue” etc) which wasn’t deliberate, believe it or not… that was the hardest thing to get down in one take. I managed to do quite a few different takes on my various lines too, which gave me good choices in the editing (and a few bloopers).

Editing this was quite fast, probably because I had good material to work with… because the rough cut assembled so fast, that let me tweak a lot more while editing. There’s a few tricks in there I’m really proud of, where I managed to piece together separate takes to form one seamless piece, or where I have sound coming in under another shot (the clicking pen is the best example of that). Editing’s a crazy-powerful tool, it has to be said. You can’t fix everything but with enough material, you can fix a hell of a lot.

A few extra boosts really put this over-the-top for me though. Chris (AKA Aero) found the music for the ending, which I think it’s fair to say, was perfect. As I said, James’ original gags were spot on, and I couldn’t have asked for better performances from everyone.

Best of all – it’s practically word-for-word identical to the original script. Don’t take my word for it though – download and have a read for yourself, and you too can see what direction I gave myself in how to click a pen.

Download the ‘Quest for GC 04′ script

PS: I did have one moment of worry when Chris pointed out – after seeing the first cut – that he had no idea what ‘lorem ipsum’ was. In case you’re in a similar quandary, don’t worry, just click here.