I get a lot of YouTube comments and PMs asking me “Wheres the next episode?” or “Why do you take so long to make an episode?”
While I will admit, we have been a bit slow on the progress train, each episode is a bit more then just saying lines and slapping footage together.

• Setting Up: Before I can do anything, I gotta set up a timeline so that I know what to record and how to move the characters so that when we put lines in, it makes sense and reflects the respective characters.
• Filming: Getting the RIGHT footage can be a hassle, whats the point if the shot of Claire running down the hall if shes running into the wall for 10 seconds. Getting that perfect shot can be pretty time consuming and tedious. Some shots in RCS take literally dozens of tries to get perfect. This becomes even MORE tedious since when doing shots of both characters in an area you need to make sure everything is the same on both ends, like items and bodies. (At one point theres an item that dissapears between shots in Episode 2)
• Converting: I gotta convert that captured footage over for use in Sony Vegas. This is just time consuming and annoying.
• Editing: After that, I gotta put all the footage together, editing is actually quite fun, but can be pretty damn time consuming. I mean look at this cluster fuck right here. Thats the first 2 minutes of episode 1. Each episode literally has 18-25 tracks, for a 10 minute episode, thats quite a bit.
• Music & Sound: Next I gotta get music and recreate every sound for every movement, area and action. I’m a bit of perfectionist when it comes to music, I like the music to reflect the scene, especially with shot changes.
• Writing: Once the episode is put together, the script comes next. While I did setup a timeline and a baseline script for filming, we always write a second version of the script for when it comes to the final edit. This is actually the longest of all the steps. Since writing RCS is a joint project, it doesn’t mean we literally can work on it every waking moment, let alone be free exactly when the other is free.
• Recording: Next is the line stage, this part can be fun and tedious all at the same time. The lines usually need to be perfect, or else they’re no good. Sometimes the first take on the lines will be perfect, sometimes it can take literally 10-15 takes before you get the one you want, and even then it’s not totally perfect. Then you have the issue of finding time between yourself and the voice actors to get those lines too.
• Finalizing: Once writing is done, I put out a rough draft, review it, fix any mistakes then finally it goes up on YouTube.

So… An episode literally takes about a month of dedication before it’s released, and even then it’s not perfect. I’m still releasing updates on my website to episode 1 and 2. I just released the Christmas Episode with annotations for download.

So on that note I won’t leave you completely in the dark on episode 3′s progress. We’re getting there, we’re hoping to have it out in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

- Andrew

I’ve been considering the fact that YouTube might eventually remove the audio from one of my episodes because I use copyrighted material. It IS a machinima after all.

I’ve been thinking of different solutions to the problem such as just writing all original music for the episodes, or just switching out that one song due to the fact I have the raw footage and materials for all the episodes. But what I think I’d rather do is just make a trailer or preview of the episode on YouTube, then just upload and host it on my site for viewing to be both streamed and downloaded. And unlike hosting on YouTube, I wouldn’t have to worry about some stupid nazi regime censoring my creative works. So if it ever comes to that, I’ll be sure to let all my subscribers know.