Brian Kameoka's blog

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 4: Moving On!

"I said nothing corpse."  Jeff Lewis has a great season.  So far he and Clara have my favorite lines.

I neglected to mention Frank Ashmore's debut as Ollie in last episode. You may recognize him from the original science fiction mini-series V. He's an incredibly nice guy and gives a great performance this season. Here's a pic of Frank looking much less pirate-y:

NOTES:

• First episode this season without the full Guild (Tink and Clara do not appear).
• A website dedicated to the Palm Pre posted a "Palm Sighting" for this episode since Bladezz uses a Pre to snap the photo of Fawkes kissing Codex.  Because of the Sprint sponsorship, when you see a phone on The Guild it will be a Sprint phone... in this instance, I remember that because we were on location, we didn't have one of the Sprint-provided prop phones on hand, so director Sean Becker's Pre was used.
• We see the Cheesy Beards office for the first time... big thanks to Archie McPhee who gave the show tons of great pirate stuff.  It allowed the production designers to really go overboard (heh) with the set dressing for this fictitious pirate-themed restaurant.  Spotted in this episode:
  
  Pirate Wallet, Pirate Organizer, Pirate Sticker Collection (and Pirate's Life), Pirate Pencil Toppers, Pirate Magnets, Pirate Grog Mugs, Mini Maurading Pirates, Pirate Clock, Calico Jack's Pirate Flag, What Would a Pirate Do? (on the door), Deluxe Pirate Eye Patch (water heater), Pirate Notepad with Stickers, Poor Yorick Skull. Did I miss anything?

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 3: Oversupportive'd

Episode 3 of Season 4 of The Guild.  Ahh, the "Team Cawkes" painting. My Season 4 blogging dropped off as Comic-Con approached and I had tons of other Guild work to do, but now I'm back and playing catchup.

This episode debuted at Comic-Con at The Guild panel, which meant once again Wil Wheaton helped make the panel epic (at SDCC 2009 it was first announced that Wil was joining season 3). The "Team Cawkes" painting which appears here was painted by Greg Aronowitz (check out his blog entry here for a great behind the scenes look at Comic-Con) and the image of it on The Guild's Flickr page has almost 100K views.  While filming the behind the scenes for Season 4, we captured Greg as he arrived on set with the painting, and got reactions from the cast as they first saw it.  Hopefully some of that will make it onto the DVD in the bonus features.

I love the teaming of Clara and Tink, especially because it's great to see Tinkerballa back in The Guild after last season. 

NOTES:

• Reminder - don't forget to check the great episode reviews from Pinkraygun.com, and of course the CompanionCast of S4E3 from Knights of the Guild, the official fan podcast of The Guild.
• Zaboo is wearing the J!NX shirt "Sorcery and Technology" and Fawkes is wearing "Caffeine Molecule" from Think Geek.
• Codex's bathroom, at the end of the episode, is actually the same bathroom where Two Hot Girls in the Shower is filmed.  And you can see a Pwned Pennant and Devil Duckies from Archie McPhee in the background.
  
  
  
  

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 2: Strange Allies

Episode 2 is up, with some really great quotable lines.  For all that Felicia is known for (actress, gamer, geek goddess, social media power user, web series pioneer), I think it's easy to forget that she's a great writer.  Producer Kim Evey has told me about being impressed with her writing way back when they first met at Acme Comedy Theater (hopefully she'll share those stories in the future).

<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/browse/originals/the-guild?videoId=d0fa6983-84d4-4ab0-9bbd-933e400be67b&fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Episode 2: Strange Allies">Video: Episode 2: Strange Allies</a>

For more episode commentary, see Higlet's the last geek bus home blog and her reviews on PinkRaygun.com, new fan site TheGuildBank.net, and of course, the new CompanionCasts from Knights of the Guild.

NOTES:

• The opening webcam was shot on a Flip camera.
• "Raiding!" Fawkes answering the phone with what he was doing was not originally in the script, but added on set.  A great little character detail.
• Who stores marshmellows in little jars?  Vork, apparently.
• I love the return of the Zaboo "thumbs up" (from Season 2).
• On Twitter, a few people noticed the rack of DVD's in Codex's room, though this is not set dressing (or product placement), but simply the DVD's that are in the bedroom of the room where that's shot.  If you listen to last week's KOTG CompanionCast, you'll hear Sean Becker talk about how in Season 4 he's trying to open up the world for each of the characters in their webcam shots.
  
  
  
  

The Guild - Season 4 Episode 1: Epic Guilt

Season 4 has finally arrived.  I'm super excited because in addition to my other duties with The Guild, I joined the production team as the behind the scenes (or EPK, "electronic press kit") guy, inheriting the job from Kenny who is expanding the coverage of The Guild via the Official Fan Podcast, Knights of the Guild.  Be sure to go subscribe now via iTunes or other podcast software to catch great behind the scenes stuff.  There will be a weekly "Companion cast" to accompany each new Season 4 episode.

<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-episode-1-epic-guilt/y0ytgrbc?fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Season 4 - Episode 1 - Epic Guilt">Video: Season 4 - Episode 1 - Epic Guilt</a>

For more episode-by-episode blogging (I plan on blogging with each episode's release), check out Higlet's the last geek bus home blog, and there's a new fan site on the scene at TheGuildBank.net that is worth checking out. Also, check The Guild's Flickr account for some behind the scenes photos like this one of Gabe, Tyler and Chloe testing the "exploding Codex computer":

NOTES:

• Zaboo wears the Arcade Zombietron shirt from J!NX
• Clara is wearing a squid hat from Obeymybrain.com (I ordered a purple one for myself for Comic-Con, for when I have to do line wrangling for signings)
• Tymberlee Hill, who plays Bladezz's co-worker, can be seen in a really funny episode of "Drunk History" on Funny Or Die.
• Sean Becker loves his burgers, so I know he loved making that burger cut at 1:25.  If they do a "Best Burger Work" Streamy Award, Sean's a shoe-in for his second award, to go with his  2010 Best Director award (click to watch an awesome acceptance speech!).  Oh, and burger photo (taken moments before the one Sean has on his twitter profile):
  
  
  

The Guild - Mucho Grande Burrito (a social media success story)

A couple of weeks ago a fan on Jeff Lewis's Facebook Fan Page asked, "has anyone else seen the Taco Bell training video that Jeff starred in?" Jeff replied that he was "speechless" as the video was probably ten years old.  According to Robert (the fan), he worked at Taco Bell at one point and thought this video was hilarious so he asked his manager if he could have the extra copy that had been sent to his store.  This was long before there was a web series called The Guild or a character named Vork.  Unfortunately, Robert had no way to convert & upload this gem from VHS.  So I messaged him and said "hey, I do have a way to convert & upload - if you send it to me I'll get it up on YouTube and mail it back to you."  So, through the magic of an Elgato Video Capture Device, social networking, a super cool fan of The Guild, this brilliant gem can now be shared.

I know that social media has made it's mark on global politics, changed the way we communicate, and done things like help an independent show like The Guild reach new audiences daily.  But it also helps unearth such rare gems like this Mucho Grande Burrito video.  Remember, it is by far the largest burrito on our menu:

YouTube Decides for You: Always Show Captions

One of my duties as marketing coordinator for The Guild is to manage the show's YouTube channel.  On Friday I uploaded the first episode of Season 3 and added the English and Portuguese subtitles.  Everything seemed to go smoothly, but I noticed that the English subtitles seemed to be on by default, and I wondered if I had configured something wrong on the video or channel.  After some investigating, I discovered that this is not configured at the channel level, but at the individual user (viewer) level.

What's worse is it appears that YouTube has decided to default all users to "always show captions" as part of the new implementation of auto captions announced here. (link to YouTube blog post).

So, quick user tip, here's how to turn this off* (with screen shot below):

1. While logged in to your YouTube account, go to "account" (under your username)
2. In "Account Settings" scroll down to "Playback Setup"
3. Under "Captions" uncheck the "Always Show Captions" option
4. Hit the "Save Changes" button at the bottom

 

While this may only be a minor annoyance to the individual user, this decision by YouTube really affects content creators who are already using captioning.  The Guild has a large international following plus a significant number of deaf or hard of hearing fans who rely on the subtitles.  YouTube is great for sharing a show like The Guild worldwide, and because of the hard work of a lot of dedicated fan volunteers, the show is available subtitled in many languages.

However, the decision to set captions on by default without announcing it is effectively blindsiding users and content creators with a change in functionality.  While I applaud YouTube for having easy to use captioning capability, and believe the auto-captioning is a really cool development, this poor decision has made captions a sore subject and will potentially annoy many users.  The Guild has over 170,000 subscribers on its channel and we're now fielding tons of "why did you turn captions on?!" complaints in comments.  What's worse is that if a user is not logged in, the default is also to run captions.

Not cool, YouTube.  It would have helped if you had given users a heads up to this.

* Note that as of writing, I've turned this off on my personal account yet YouTube is still serving captions to me.

And, shout out & thanks to @worldofhiglet and @osiramon for replying to me on twitter when I first was trying to figure this out, and to @maxsummers, The Guild's translation coordinator.  Also, the amazing and brilliant Gina Trapani mentioned this issue on TWiG (I had emailed her suggesting this as a possible tip of the week).

The Guild as a Community

First, in case you didn't see it, Kim posted a really interesting comment on my first blog post that fills in some of the detail behind the scenes on the genesis of the show and it's transformation from sitcom pilot to web series (along with lots of other stuff such as my original tweet that got her thinking of hiring me).

One of the really striking things about coming on board with The Guild is the sense of community that surrounds it.  The photo here is one of my favorite pictures from Comic-Con, featuring a bunch of the fans I met there (there are 4 countries and 3 continents represented in that pic, btw).  This community vibe comes from combination of factors, in my estimation... first, the show is good and people like to support it.  It's independent, and it was really built by Felicia spending hours upon hours on various fan websites (Buffy and other Whedon-related sites) asking for support.  The fact that most of Season One was fan-funded made scores of people invested (literally) in the show.  Working on the social media part of The Guild's marketing has been an interesting ride.  Where most companies big and small are playing catchup with the social media world, The Guild has been out in front for two key reasons - social media is affordable (and thus the only marketing that the show can really afford), and Felicia herself is an early adopter of such technologies.  And while the companies playing catchup are entering social media to engage their customers and audiences, The Guild is doing that but also using it to keep the dialogue open with the already engaged fanbase.

There are so many great examples of how The Guild has emerged as community, but I'm going to highlight two that I really love.  First, there is the Knights of the Guild podcast, hosted by Kenny and Jenni (pictured right with Felicia during their recent one year anniversary podcast).  The show is produced from the rare and unique perspective of hosts who are both fans of the show and insiders, as both have worked on The Guild.  Kenny is one of the most passionate geeks I've met and does clever things that make me grin, like using the conceit of broadcasting each episode from a location in the fictitious world of The Guild, complete with background sound effects.  Kenny's personality is also very organized and thorough, which plays in hilarious opposition to Jenni who has boundless energy and is constantly ad libbing little quips and jokes.  On the podcast she reminds me of a little kid who gets to goof off into a mic unfiltered, and doesn't care who's listening.

The second example is what I'll call Guild Chat, which is technically the "forums" or "community" built in to the Guild's website and powered by Ning (a platform for creating your own social network).  People can create their own profiles, blog, create forums and more on the Guild's site.  And there's a live chat room too which has it's regulars.  One of my personal favorite memories of the rollout of Season 3 was that I often hung out in Guild Chat with other fans as we awaited the new episodes to be posted Monday nights just after midnight.  There are tons of examples of impressive community goodwill from Guild Chat, such as a group of fans who scrambled to post transcripts of each episode that came out for deaf fans.  And the cast and crew of this show interact with the fans quite a bit - I remember for the finale of Season 3 there were several cast and crew in Guild chat and everyone was tweeting about it, there were 100 people in the chat room, if I remember right.  Check out Guild Chat yourself - see my badge below.

Visit Watch The Guild

What is The Guild?

Yesterday I blogged that it was one year since my affiliation with The Guild began.  I thought I'd back up and give you an introduction to The Guild, and start with the simple question "What is The Guild?"  Sure you could go to Wikipedia or The Guild's website, but here are my words on the subject...

What is "The Guild?"

The Guild is a comedy web series about six online gamers, created by Felicia Day, who writes, produces and stars in the show.

What is a "web series?"

A web series is a TV show, but on the internet.  In the case of The Guild, it's like a sitcom.  Think "Friends" but shorter form (four to eight minute episodes).  In fact, Kim Evey (who produces The Guild with Felicia) has called The Guild as "'Friends' but with gamers" and I think that's apt.

There are now lots of web series out there.  Sometimes web series (or webisodes) are extensions of traditional television shows, like "LOST: Missing Pieces" or "Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy" but there are a bunch of great web series being produced independently that are standalone series.  There are two websites that are great starting points to learn about these many web series, NewTeeVee and Tubefilter.  You can also search Twitter every Wednesday to look for web series suggestions from Twitter users.  The first web series I saw was Kim Evey's hilarious Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show, which you can see here.

How did "The Guild" come about?

The Guild, looking back one year

Exactly one year ago today, I went to WonderCon in San Francisco to meet up with my friend Kim Evey who I had stayed in touch with over the years but probably hadn't seen in three or four.  Kim was there with Felicia Day, creator and star of The Guild which Kim produces with Felicia.  I knew about The Guild from Kim and I think early on I had even downloaded it when it was available via iTunes in podcast form, but I fessed up to Kim that I hadn't gotten around to watching it.

It was also my first experience seeing how popular Felicia was at conventions.  We walked around a bit just before the show opened, and Felicia in search of some 20-sided dice (to no avail).  Kim and I were catching up on what each of us had been up to, and I remember after about five minutes of walking with Felicia we essentially ditched her because she kept getting stopped by fans wanting photos with her.  This wasn't surprising, Season 2 of The Guild had just finished "airing," and this was 7 months after Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. 

Catching up with Kim was great.  We hung out (along with my friend Avi), saw the Watchmen panel (Kim knew nothing about the movie except that "the guy from Grey's Anatomy is in it!"), and checked in with Felicia throughout the day (she was being hosted at the California Browncoats booth signing photos and DVDs).  I was about to start grad school and had recently been laid off from my job at B Street, so work-wise I really had no idea what was next.  Just a few months later, Kim would ask me to help with marketing The Guild, starting with helping manage their twitter account.  I look at the picture above of the three of us and have that strange juxtaposition that often comes with photos - that it is simultaneously "just yesterday" and also "so long ago."

I remember I also met Sean Becker and Doug Luberts that day, my first step in meeting all the amazing people involved with the show.  So, in honor of the anniversary of my first introduction to The Guild, I'm going to blog this week about the show and some of the interesting projects I've done for it.

Funny sidenote that day: Out of the blue I get a phone call while at the Con from my parents saying "we're here!"  They were visiting my family in the North Bay at the time but I had no idea what they meant.  "In San Francisco?" I asked.  My dad replies, "No, at WonderCon."  See, my parents are old friends of Ron Turner of Last Gasp books, and they had called them to see if they could meet up.  He told them about WonderCon and they assumed it was some kind of publishing trade show (which, technically speaking, it is, right?).  So they just wandered over to the Moscone Center and walked in.  No one even checked them for badges - I guess they're not really the demographic of the Con.  They actually had a blast seeing all the cosplayers and cool art.  And before they left I asked two nice fellows from the 501st if they would pose for a pic:

Five days in LA

Last week I went to LA for five days.  Here's my trip in photos.

Wednesday:

Thursday: 

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday: