Mintiversary, Cheesemas, or just plain Cheesemint Anniversary

August 31st, 2010

Hi again,

Dave here, one of the more vocal bloggers on the Mint-blog. Up at a stupid time in the morning as I injured myself during the latest bit of filming for our web series “Unlocked”. Nothing major, just threw my back out, but it’s meant that I’m sat up, unable to sleep, frustratingly on the Anniversary of the proper formation of Cheesemint.

A year ago today we filmed the bulk of our first adventure into video production. Our tribute to Felicia Day’s music video for their excellent web series “The Guild” called “Do you Want to Date My Avatar?” It wasn’t a complicated video were were planning, it was really just a group of us replicating scenes from the music video, adding a “breaking the 4th wall” element as our lead actors became more annoyed at being dressed like Felicia Day (complete with make up and wigs).

Inspired by us messing around with videocameras while we were playing “Rock Band 2″, we thought we do something fun, and post it on the internet to see what happened. So we headed off to the park and acted like idiots with loads of people staring at us, and it all kinda escalated from there.

Seventeen videos on Youtube later, and we’re in the middle of our most ambitious project yet. A full webseries that captures our love of all things nerdy, gamer related, and stuff like that.

For example, today’s filming was in some woods and driving around. We’d not really filmed in a moving car before – so that was an experience! Luckily, the driver had nothing to do but drive, and our actors were all on the back seat, but the wonders of filming in Hi-Def meant that we couldn’t really “fake” driving along as you could see out of the windows. Easiest option, drive around the countryside and the outskirts of the city.

The bits in the woods went very well, and we managed to get all of the bizarre references in there. When Episode 3 hits the internet after the usual mass of editing, music, effects and so on have been added, see if you can spot the references to Resident Evil, Aliens, The Blair Witch Project, Red Dead Redemption, Halo: Reach, Fight Club, and even Hello Kitty…

Our three leading ladies were fantastic, really going for new levels today, and I can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve been working on.

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to rest up a bit more – see if I can get my back working so I can celebrate the Cheesemint Anniversary in style and only way I’d choose – to be in the company of awesome friends like my fellow Mints.

- Dave

Video Blogging

August 24th, 2010

Above is our first attempt at video blogging, just to bring you up to speed with things in the Cheesemint Triangle, and a progress report on the filming of Unlocked. My first go at VidBlogging, I hope you like it!

- Dave

Top Trumps . . .

August 11th, 2010

Been wondering where those hyped Cheesemint Top Trumps got to? No? Didn’t think so.

Well, with filming for Unlocked now officially underway we’ve all been incredibly busy. A prime example is the fact that I still haven’t got the production stills for Dead Duck online and the pre-productions documents for the Six Shorts remain empty — all in good time.

Either way, it’s something I hope to rectify. I have all the stats drawn up and the card templates ready, all I have to do is go through and create 42 unique cards.

Methinks I may be able to get it done this weekend. So who knows? Maybe you could be downloading the greatest card game since Steal Your Neighbour’s Credit Card And Go Shopping in time for Saturday evening!

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . the currently unfinished page for the Top Trumps can be sneakily found HERE

Unlocked

July 26th, 2010

Things will probably be quiet in the Cheesemint camp for a while, as UNLOCKED really gets underway. After months of wrestling with ideas, I finally have the scripts at a state that I think are 90% done and everyone is moderately happy with – barring some tweaks and changes to actual lines and maybe a little motivation in Episode 5.

Basically, UNLOCKED is a webseries that we’d want to watch. It’s about gamers, has lots of in-jokes and game/movie/comic/tv references that geeks like us love.

It has taken a while, and there are still arguments and… “differing of opinions” regarding it, but I think this is a good thing. It shows we’re all keen for it to work, and passionate about getting it done. It may be overly ambitious, it may fall flat on its arse, but at least we’ve given it a go and hopefully, we’ll have fun doing it. I hope you’ll all have fun watching it, and will be begging for us to make a Season 2 (yes, I have many plans for Seasons 2, 3, and more…)

- Dave

Wandering Mind . . .

July 14th, 2010

Cumulonimbus Clouds . . . they’re my favourite.

Incidentally, you may have noticed that the Cheesemint Top Trumps aren’t online yet. I’ll sort them out soon.

Dave is still working on the Unlocked posters and as soon as they are done, I’ll upload them to the site.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . I’ll get round to it

Outtakes . . .

July 9th, 2010

Well there you have it, the Outtakes video for Dead Duck is online and after I get the pre-production scans and production stills up online, Dead Duck will be archived and considered complete.

What next? Naturally, the ‘mints have turned their gaze to Unlocked with scripts being finalised and an upcoming photo-shoot for posters. On top of that, we have our downloadable Top Trumps game which should be online soon and I’m going to try to role out an Angel’s Kiss outtakes video as soon as I find the time.

Plenty to look forward to, so stick around.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . mmm sweary outtakes

Top Trumps . . .

July 6th, 2010

I’m hoping to have the Cheesemint Top Trumps available for download within the next fortnight – probably 16-Jul-10. Featuring each character from every Cheesemint video to date (bar the Do You Wanna Date My Avatar video) and designed to be easily updated for additional bonus cards, CTT currently holds great potential. The stats (which will be marked 0-100) are as follows:

Screen Time
Quotable One-Liners
Intelligence
Sanity
Geekiness
Deadliness

Each card will also feature the character’s name and a brief bio.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . the worst card to get is the YO MOMMA card

YouTube . . .

July 2nd, 2010

YouTube really pisses me off. Don’t get me wrong, I remember a time before broadband and streaming videos (not that long ago) when watching the latest music video meant camping in front of the television all day, praying the one rock song you actually wanted to hear would air. Furthermore, it has helped numerous amateur filmmakers, song writers and other artists get their work noticed. Having said that, it still pisses me off.

I and many other YouTube uploaders have recently become aware of a glitch in the system that YouTube fails to admit even exists. I think Miley Cyrus’ latest music video has something like twenty five million views or something but to the few of us that genuinely treasure each and every time someone watches one of our videos an inaccurate hit counter is simply unacceptable.

You see, many have noticed that once your video reaches around three hundred views it freezes. Sometimes for a week, sometimes for months during which time the views are not recorded before finally becoming unstuck. The only reason I mention this is because I checked the hit count for Dead Duck this morning to see it had shot up to 300 over one night – which is awesome – but I bet it’ll probably freeze now. It’s for that very reason that I don’t believe in hit counts. Sure, Avatar is our most viewed at something like 15,000 but if we were to remove the video or the account closed or YouTube died, there would be no record and it would mean nothing. The value our films have to us is that people enjoy watching them and look forward to future projects as much as we do making them, not some tally stating how many have watched the first two seconds.

So… I suppose the point I’m trying to make is: thank you for watching, hope you have enjoyed what we have made to date, stick around for some truly awesome upcoming material. Yeah, that’ll do; uncharacteristically upbeat but that’ll do.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . “Stuck at 300 hits!? This is blasphemy! This is madness!” “Madness? THIS IS YOUTUBE!”

Dead Duck Delay . . .

June 29th, 2010

Well, the first half of Dead Duck is online almost exactly a fortnight after we started filming. But it was a damned close call.

Yesterday (28-Jun-10) I was camped around Dave & Debs’ house, frowning at their Mac, muttering to myself. Dave came to see what the fuss was about and he too sat there, muttering. Feeling defeated I thought it best to log on to the Cheesemint bookFace page and post an update: ultimately, Dead Duck was going to be delayed and may require a complete re-edit from the very start.

I went home, slumped on my couch, chomped through a cake and watched the last twenty minutes of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Infuriated, I returned to Dave & Debs’ house (it’s literally a minute and a half away on foot) to find both of them peering at the Mac screen. Which, essentially, is why you’re able to watch Dead Duck now. It was a sneaky quick fix (that involved changing the ducking audio settings, ironically) but a life saver.

So, when you sit down, click the link above and partake in the first instalment of our latest piece, take a moment to appreciate that it even made its way online. And if you have any negative feedback or constructive criticism, shove it up your arse.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . it’s possible that having to alter every single cut throughout the entire film is simply the universe balancing out for my latest catchphrase, “Perfect, do it again”

Posters . . .

June 25th, 2010

It has occurred to me that although the individual project pages have a collage image of the feature in question, we’re missing out on one sheets (fancy film terms for movie posters). I have no idea when but at some point I’ll get round to producing pics for all our projects so far, as well as Cluedo themed posters for our Unlocked characters.

Reverend Green     Alex Ryan
Colonel Mustard     Francis Marston
Mrs. Peacock         Pip Wesker
Professor Plum     John Freeman
Miss Scarlett         Zoey Evans
Mrs. White         Dahlia Halsey

Incidentally, I’m still aware that I have yet to upload any production stills or pre-production material for Dead Duck; don’t worry, it’ll make its way online soon.

- Stoghz [rRh]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . . . the first poster is going to be a close-up of my arse