Posts with tag comedy

Oh, Lore Sjoberg, will you ever stop being awesome? I sure hope not. I've been a fan of his Book of Ratings and his webcomics (NSFW language, I guess) for a while, but apparently he's been writing for Wired as well, and his latest column brings us Sam Raimi's production diary from the Warcraft movie.

It's pretty hilarious throughout. If the real movie is as good as this production diary, in fact, it may be watchable. Some favorite bits:

• "Nerf Shia LaBeouf"
• Why is it that every time we wrap for the day, one of the extras asks me to "open a portal to Dalaran"? Is he asking for drugs?
• If I didn't know better, I'd think someone was paying them for detached body parts.
• ...it turns out I can just give them, like, five things and let them fight over who gets them.

It's a great read altogether, so click over if you have a spare minute.

On a side note, I'm certain there has been at least one good video game movie, although admittedly I can't figure out what it might be.

Folks that paid attention to BlizzCon 2008 last year will remember the comedian Jay Mohr acting as host and funnyman. And while Blizzard has yet to announce it, WoW.com has been able to independently confirm that Jay Mohr will be back for BlizzCon 2009 this year, August 21st and 22nd at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

This year's BlizzCon promises to be big. The WoW.com staff is pretty much all in agreement that we'll have to hear something about the next expansion, and the recent trademark registration of Cataclysm really lends a lot of credence to that.

Of course perhaps the best part of BlizzCon is the costumes. After all, who doesn't want to see a pirate girl, two demons girls giving a kiss to a surprised kid, a turtle mount?

[Thanks to Sean Bryant for the original tip!]

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Last week, we went behind the scenes with Boubouille of MMO-Champion to learn more about the non-stop pace of bringing readers a never-ending stream of fresh news tips and datamined tidbits. Serious stuff – and readers expressed some serious appreciation for his efforts.

This week, however, we're off on an entirely lighter tangent: a standup comedian (and WoW player, of course) who brings both his WoW sensibilities and experience as a game programmer to the stage. Jeff Reitman (aka Drelana of Azuremyst-US) is all about geek entertainment, whether it's playing games himself, working on them for others to play, or yukking it up over the whole package.

Read our interview with Jeff, plus video of Jeff on stage (sending up WoW plus wives, Rock Band and more), after the break.

Warning: Mild cursing at the end.

Do you remember BroncoTV? They're the same guys who created Who's the Tank? Michael Schroeder dropped your intrepid Moviewatch team a note to let us know they've released a new video -- World of Warcraft: Lost Within. To sum up the plot, a WoW player finds himself transported inside the game. He must quest, grow, and ding, all en route to rescue his princess.

It's definitely a WoW vs. reality theme. The gags are suitably funny, and I found the acting to be over-the-top in the right places. (The gag at the end worked for me, I think in part because I knew it was coming. C'mon, who hasn't tried to whack someone with a plastic sword, only to be sorely disappointed with the effect?)

I really liked the WoW interface laying over top of Live Action acting. It gave a neat surreality to the comedy, and kept me firmly rooted in the escapist joke. Of course, if there's a part two, it'd be neat to see some UI Mods and such start making appearance. (Maybe an Omen Kiss meter or something.)

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ..

Some movies are created using machinima -- finely honed in-game graphics, tuned to tell the author's story with sizzling detail. Others are creating using more traditional media, like hand-drawn art. And some, like Leeroy 4 - The Wailing Caverns, are created in Live Action, using nothing more than a pure sense of fun and obvious love of the game. It's the creation of Herculean Productions, and I've rarely had so much fun with a fan film.

The acting is over-the-top, scene chewing goodness. I like to think that even William Shatner would be proud of these boys. The story is simple enough to support this kind of shenanigan performance. In a quick summary, Leeroy is putting together a group to go to the Wailing Caverns. This is the LFG phase of that endeavour.

The costumes hit the right tone, in my opinion. If the clothes had been much fancier, then they'd be calling into the question the genre of the piece. This isn't meant to be high, Shakespearean art. It's supposed to be funny and tongue-in-cheek. You're not supposed to be gauging things like production values; you're supposed to be having the same kind of fun the actors are having.

My hat's off to Leeroy. This was great. Click here to go check it out yourself.

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ..

The Adventures of Thaddius Gallina - Part 1 had me at "Hello." Or, rather, it had me at its production swipe, emblazoned with the logo for "Drunken Dwarf Productions." You can't go wrong with that kind of production title. The six-minute movie is a teaser/introduction to sterivers's machinima film, "The Adventures of Thaddius Gallina."

The nominal hero barely shows up in this bit, since this is a prologue piece. It's setting the tone for Thaddius's world and genre, prepping us for the comedic film. In summary, the Horde were doing pretty well and in charge of things. Then, the Alliance got together, and through rigorous "Questing," have been driving back the Horde.

This prologue really sets up the Alliance to be a bunch of silly, jingoistic dorks. They show up to an Undead's cave to retrieve a stolen artifact. The Undead apologizes immediately, claiming he'd just bought the porch light from a Goblin. He even offered to give it back with no hard feelings. The Alliance completely ignore him, and hijinks ensue. I look forward to seeing the Gnome get punted after this behavior.

The next part should be out fairly soon, and hopefully it can continue the good work.

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ..

Sylphine suffers from a problem that's very close to home for me: her character's name is often pronounced incorrectly by others in game. And while it's close not only because I routinely mangle names on the podcast (both accidentally and sometimes, I'll admit, for comedic purposes), but my own name is of questionable pronounciation. When I was creating my very first character ingame, I was stumbling around for a creative name, and I ended up going with a variation of the word I saw on the "Random" button in front of me: Rande. Truth be told, I have no idea how to pronounce it -- I guess I prefer "Rand" over "Randey," only because the second sounds so close to "Randy," so usually I'll just go what whatever someone says in the game. But I can see Sylphine's issue: it's probably a pain to spend so much time on a name only to have it wrecked daily.

And of course, this epidemic isn't only connected to character names -- being that this is a virtual world where text is the usual form of communication, it's very common to see place names and NPC names mispronounced more often than not.

In the end, you just have to do what I do: try your best and hope you get it right. And from the other side of it, don't be too angry when people mess up your name. There are 12 million of us out there, and nobody's going to get everything right.

And now for something completely different, a comedic short titled Wrath Shorts 11 - Rather Be Playing DS by Apt-T Productions. You might remember them from a short time ago as the same guys who did Frank and Beans and Dude, Where's My Mount? Or, maybe not. These guys are doing a lot of neat short-and-sweet joke reels, and their style is really growing on me.

I can't really talk a lot about the plot of "Rather Be Playing DS," because the movie is really short. ("Wrath Shorts" isn't just a clever title, you see.) To sum up, Healer and Tank argue about stepping into an instance. Tank's nervous because of the healer's past performance. There's a punchline, and comedic justice is served.

Okay, the graphics aren't fancy. The soundtrack isn't rocketing rolling metal. But, this is a perfect example of "all things come together." Whether you find the jokes funny or not, I think everything in the mis en scene comes together just right for short's formula. Anything more involved than its current graphics would probably distract from the jokes. I did happen to laugh, and I look forward to the next installments.

[Via Machinima.com]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ..

(Warning: This machinima contains insinuations that will probably offend you. While nothing outright is dirty, we'd like you to approach caution when viewing this video. Also, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day!)

Ahoy, me Moviewatch beauties! We have a special treat for all you land lubbers out thar. Mike "Spiff" Booth, the scurvy scaliwag that he is, has created a new music video for the Paul and Storm song, "The Captain's Wife's Lament".

Spiffworld be no stranger to controversy, havin' been a key player in the V-Day Riot o' '08 (Very NSFW). However, comparatively, this music video looks like a Disney film. If you enjoy Seamen everywhere, though, then you'll definitely get a kick out of it. Arrrrrr!

[Thanks, Joshua!]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Check out the video after the jump ...

It looks like Oxhorn's WeGame gig is paying off for fans. After nine months, he has released the sequel to Orcs in SPACE! Since Stage6 is gone and Oxhorn is exclusive with WeGame, the best extra we can link to is the script.

Orcs in SPACE! 2 is about two orcs, Dr. Strange Orc and Dink, in ... (You guessed it!) space! They trade witty banter back and forth, and put on a song and dance. Along the way, a strange moon joins in on the action. While this is definitely not my favorite Oxhorn machinima, I enjoyed the rap in the end.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Those loony guildies of The Guild are back for episode number 6, and things are rocky after the real-life meeting at Cheesybreads. We get a (scary) glimpse into Codex's romantic past, Zaboo still won't stop with the weirdness, and Clara needs some help with the kids, which leads to even more friction between Vork and Tink.

But things promise to get interesting next time around-- someone shows up at the end who might finally have the ability to set Zaboo straight once and for all. The Guild is always a good time, and this episode is no exception.

We have discussed ways in which World of Warcraft is not only full of audio-visual art, but presents in itself a gaming experience that can reward players the same way that art forms like music or film can. For some, however, WoW is not only a game, but a stage. For them, the gaming element may sometimes fade into the background, when it becomes only a means to an end; they use WoW as a combination of acting and creative writing, telling stories and making performances all their own. They call it roleplaying.

One kind of roleplaying that is getting a great deal of new attention these days is "machinima." For those who don't know, machinima is basically a kind of film in which people use the game's existing 3D models and environments to make their own movies, and then share these movies with everyone on the internet (or very rarely on TV). As we have seen here at WoW Insider and elsewhere, these movies are especially powerful as comedies and music videos, especially for viewers who are already familiar with the game that they're made with.

But for most people who roleplay, it is not a scripted performance, but an improvised one; it is not carefully lip-synced, edited recorded and for all to see, but imagined, written out, and remembered only among those who played the parts. Someone not familiar with roleplaying might wonder why people bother with it.