The Guild: Happy Third Birthday – Game On!

By WorldofHiglet
Season 4 takes a little break this week because Felicia Day and company have treated us to a brand-spanking new music video (which doesn’t feature spanking this time), released on the third anniversary of Episode 1 of Season 1 being uploaded to YouTube.

“Game On” premiered at The Guild San Diego Comic Con panel last Saturday and will be released on iTunes and Amazon in HD on August 8th . But you don’t have to wait until then to enjoy the exotic sumptuousness that is “Game On” because it is already released on MSN, Xbox Live and Zune….

What can be said about this new musical number from the people who brought us “Date My Avatar”?

Firstly – it is fantastic! From the opening seconds, where Codex is reading Lisa Shearin’s new book in the Raine Banere’s series – “Bewitched & Betrayed” and first notes with reveal, this music video has it all. A toe-tapping Bhangrah beat, eminently quotable lyrics, wonderful sets, dance breaks, a fight break that includes Zaboo delivering a mighty Hadouken to bad boy Real Life, Vorknu….there are too many wonderful things to list.

It bears repeated watching because the editing is fast-paced and so much is going on. There is a big cast of extras, new technical challenges and yes, a FREAKING ELEPHANT in it. Real or not, that’s one HUGE prop – where they heck did they get it from?

That and many, many other questions were answered by co-directors Sean Becker and Kim Evey in an impromptu UStream live chat yesterday. The chatwas announced only three hours before going live but there were still upwards of 200 viewers tuning in to find out more about The Guild’s new release. Kim and Greg covered a lot of ground but here’s some snippets:

The idea behind the video was all down to Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo) who had said he wanted to do a Bollywood video after “Date my Avatar”. Felicia wasn’t keen on the idea (read her thoughts about the video on her blog) but Kim had it all worked out and they went ahead with it – and everyone is thrilled with the result.

Originally Kim had imagined one bedroom wall would slide away – but Greg Aronowitz wanted to build the whole bedroom, and it looks brilliant [it fooled me at first – I didn’t expect to see the walls roll out like that!]. The curtains on the divide are Kim’s, but her husband, Greg Benson, didn’t want the third panel to be ripped in half so the fact they are small is his fault.

The elephant was down to Greg Aronowitz. I don’t want to spoil anything but suffice it to say that Greg has worked on some amazing films and has props all over the place including some from the live action Jungle Book and Bladerunner (squee!). If you’re not bothered about spoilers check this picture out from Mark Donica.

All the vocals on the song are done by The Guild themselves. Felicia can really sing that high and Jeff is really speaking Hindi!

Much of the inspiration comes from Benny Lava. That’s why Vork takes his jacket on and off again, why Vork is wearing a suit and why there is a foreshadowing of Real Life in the gazebo.

Victor Lopez was Sandeep’s stunt double – but it’s only Victor when he jumps out of the crows nest and the vaults over Real Life – the rest is Sandeep.

The video was all shot in two days but there was a lot of pre-production involved. The fight was already shot in essence because the stunt co-ordinator Thom Williams had already worked everything out, then shot it and edited on his iPhone to show them what it would be like.

Sean and Kim had not worked together as co-directors before worked but they knew which bits they were in charge of. Even though Sean was really ill on the days of shooting, he was a real trooper and he directed the fight sequence and the other parts he was down to do and Kim took a step back. They worked really well together and everything was totally thought out and prepared apart from the gazebo scene, which they worked out on the day.

Sean confirmed he was sorry that Boba Fett was not in the video and mumbled about licensing and things. He then said the next video will only have Boba in it. Artist Jeff Carlisle, who was in the chat room, then told them to get in touch with the Lucas people via Bonnie Burton because a crossover was a real possibility. Bonnie is already a fan of Felicia’s (see this lightsaber video). This then turned into this request from Jeff: “A love ballad between Wil Wheton dressed as Boba Fett and Felicia dressed as Princess Leia…”

We can only hope….

It was Felicia’s idea to have Zaboo typing on her butt.

The hardest bit of the video was the dancing, particularly in the temple where they were losing light and needed costume changes etc. There were two weeks of dance rehearsal and two full days before the shooting where Sandeep and Felicia worked with Chantal the choreographer. Amy learned her steps in an hour – her dance training really helping! There were 10 dancers with 2 men and 2 women in the background, too.

The editing was really tough to do in time for MSN to do all the things they do with it. There were about 19 versions/cuts in the end with each of them doing their areas and then going through the whole video. The last thing to do was a frame by frame look through to get rid of black frames and make sure the lip synching was spot on.

By the end of the chat it was confirmed that there had been over 100,000 views of “Game On” already.

Earlier Felicia Day was on Net@Night with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur talking about how she got into webseries creation, The Guild and Game On.

WatchTheGuild.com has more information about “Game On” including all the lyrics.

For more great interviews with the cast and crew about Game On listen to Knights of The Guild Microcast #19: The Quest for Bollywood. This has more amazing insights into the filming from the actual set and is a great listen.

Next Tuesday we continue with Season 4 but for now – what were your favourite parts of Game On?

WorldofHiglet is the online persona of writer Mary R. Higgins, a born-again geek reclaiming her heritage bit by bit. A youth filled with sci-fi, horror and adventure in TV, films, computer games and books was crushed by years of office grind. Buffy brought her back into the fold after years of denial. Discovering Firefly sealed the deal. Now she geeks fulltime on her blog ‘the last geek bus home’ . Her first novel ‘Turning left at Albuquerque” is complete and she has just launched HigletFilms.com, a new webvideo entertainment site serving new, original videos every Monday.

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