Loads of Progress

Not only did I spend Tuesday in a fervor of editing, I also just spent most of today (Saturday) doing the same thing, and boy am I on a roll!

A pretty good segment about Monopoly and the "Ameritrash" concept has coalesced, as well as some more outtake bits for the credits roll (I just really love those). I added material to the segment where people talk about community, and cut in the story of the rise of Unity Games. I integrated a bunch of the Z-Man interview from PAX, as well as the Geek Nights boys, who are very good at stating things in a provocative and intelligent manner.

I added the cutaways I shot of the Microsoft Surface D&D demo to the tech sequence I'm working on (all about the board game port-overs to Xbox, iPhone, iPad, etc.).

Oh, and last Thursday, I ran home for lunch to do a Skype interview with Michael Fox, the creator of the new UK gaming podcast, Little Metal Dog (I'll let you know when that's live). I don't know if the interview paired with taking a vacation day from work to edit had some kind of catalyst effect, but things are moving forward a great deal faster at the moment than they have been in the last couple months.

It could also be the hemp brownies I bought at Lull Farm this morning...

Homework

Guys, today is a full-out day of editing. I will report back tomorrow and let you know what all happens! :)

Happy 8th Birthday Days of Wonder!

Days of Wonder, the designer board games publisher that brought us games like Ticket to Ride and Small World, turns 8 today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

PS - You can try out Ticket to Ride free online at their website, here.

Just a cool Catan commercial

PAX East btw

PAX East was a couple weeks ago, and I couldn't go there and NOT film. Things I filmed there for the movie:

• The Dungeons & Dragons demo on the MS Surface. I think Eurogames on the Surface would be a lot of fun, especially since you wouldn't need the DM driving the game forward like you do with D&D (granted, the interface to do that looked pretty cool if rather technical). I will have a section in Going Cardboard about technology and board games, ports to platforms like the XBox 360 and iPhone, so I wanted some footage of the Surface in action. It lends itself especially well to board gaming, I'm sure we'll start to see Eurogames on it soon. And I still really really want to own one, $15,000 pricetag be damned.
• Zev of Z-Man games was in attendance, so I did an interview with him. I'd been bummed to miss him at Essen, and life doesn't hand you second-chances like this very often. Or maybe it does, because while we were chatting, who meanders over but...
• Rick Thornquist, creator of boardgamenews.com and currently finishing up a book about Infocom games. He did not escape uninterviewed.

I also recorded a board game panel called Beyond Candyland. I was lucky enough to get a follow-up interview with the panelists, Rym and Scott, who host the Geek Nights podcast show I mentioned in my last blog entry, great insights and a unique perspective on the hobby, you'll definitely be seeing them in the movie!

Geek Nights podcast FTW

One of the best things that came out of PAX East for me was meeting Scott and Rym, the dynamic duo behind the Geek Nights podcast series. These guys were hosting 3 panels at PAX East, but the one that caught my attention was "Beyond Candyland," really the only panel discussion about designer board gaming.

Since they were in town for the whole week after PAX to also attend Anime Boston, I actually got a chance to sit down and interview them. These guys seem to know something about pretty much everything geeky and/or cool, and an awful lot about game theory, which was a subject I hadn't heard anybody talk in depth about. Bottom line, they had an interesting perspective, are fun to talk to, and are just all-around cool guys.

The Geek Nights podcast is divided into 4 themes. From their About section:

Mondays: Science & Technology
Tuesdays: Gaming
Wednesdays: Anime, Manga, and Comics
Thursdays: "Anything goes"

If you haven't heard of GeekNights already, check it out!

Going Cardboard teaser clip

This week I've put together a teaser clip for the board game documentary! In this segment, people talk about collecting games.



The segment includes footage shot during Unity XV, and the 2009 Gathering of Friends, all of it was very early-on in terms of development of the story (and really, finding out what the story WAS). It was in many ways the "discovery" phase, which is why I frequently asked the question, "What is the size of your board game collection?"

This makes for a good first teaser, because it's a concept accessible and interesting/fun to both the non-gamer and the die-hard gamer. There are currently several segments close to this level of finished, but last Saturday, this one just wound up being the one that came together and felt "right."

Hope you like it! Stay tuned!