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Neverending Nights - A Machinima Project

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk

Neverending Nights - A Machinima Project

It took very little time for fans to break the boundaries of what the Aurora Toolset was designed to accommodate in pursuit of telling their personal stories when Neverwinter Nights was released. Some excellent fan fiction, new game content, comic strips, and video trailers all have sprung up in the last few years to showcase the talent of this community, and now a pair of creative souls have teamed up and created a Machinima project using Neverwinter Nights. Adam Freese and Tawmis have produced a series of video shorts that bring out the humorous side of being a hero through their bedraggled protagonists.

Do you have a website where we can view your work?

Adam: You can find us at http://www.neverendingnights.com.

Can you explain what a 'Machinima Project' is?

Adam: Machinima is the art of taking someone else's hard work and using it to make movies.

Tawmis: Machinima's a fairly new form of filmmaking that uses computer games to 'shoot' films using the game engine. For poor people like Adam and myself, Machinima is a way of 'filming' the movies we have always wanted to make, but lacked the funds, sets, people, and well, mostly the funds.

How did your project get started? Why Neverwinter Nights?

Adam: We are both big fans of another hugely successful Machinima project out there, done by another company, that features all these red guys and all these blue guys on this big ring in the middle of space. We both really wanted to do something like that, but neither of us wanted to use a first person shooter to use as the engine. We had played NWN through all the expansion packs and loved what the world looked like. The world building aspect was incredible.

Tawmis: For me, there are so many factors as to why we decided on Neverwinter Nights. We were always into making fun, odd, silly movies. We'd get our friends together and film bad ninja movies with a camcorder. So, when we got introduced into Machinima, like Adam said, we are huge fans of NWN. I also think a lot of it goes back to the fact that we were also those 'Dungeons & Dragons' players for so many years and there was a lot of material to draw from. Neither Adam nor myself were the serious kind of players. If it moved, Adam's character was throwing Greek fire on it, and I was pouncing on every chance to either make fun of a character's name that the DM gave to an NPC, or just taking something the DM said and running with it. (Once, he had mentioned seeing a band of kobolds. I had an art book that I drew in, and I drew these kobolds playing musical instruments and passed it around the group for giggles). So, there was definitely a lot there to draw from.

I also had a vast interest in having an ongoing NWN world, but it's a pretty long task to keep coming up with quests and maintaining the world. So, when we wanted to decide on what game to use for our project, Neverwinter Nights was the easiest answer. The incredible toolset for world building, the emoticons, the customizing of characters, weapons, cities, landscape, you name it - Neverwinter Nights gave us complete control. The most difficult part was doing the "Camera Man." We could use the "Scroll In/Out" from a single character's view, but that was limited. So, of course, with the incredible toolset and the incredible community, we got a script to render an NPC invisible then used the DM tool to seize control of the NPC and used that as our camera man. And, I'd like to extend a special thanks to Netriak on the BioWare forum for providing the Invisible Script to me.

I hear it has been quite the wild ride. Can you tell us about where you started and what has happened since? What's this crazy talk about PC Gamer UK? :)

Adam: We started in my garage with 4 computers on a LAN. In the early years we also did the entire voice recording in my garage. Now we do the voice recording at Tawmis' because he has a karaoke machine that filters our voices really well. As for the recording, it is done with 4 computers in my garage on a LAN.

Tawmis: Indeed. With PC GAMER UK, that was a complete surprise. As is this! Mark, from PC GAMER UK (same Mark who we mention in our PC GAMER UK episode!), contacted me via Private Message on the Neverending Nights forum. He had inquired if it would be okay if they used the first five episodes of our series to put on the CD/DVD that comes with the magazine. Naturally, I was completely floored. Then he asked if it was all right if they wrote up a small article on us within the magazine. I think it took about 2.3 seconds for me to call Adam and scream into the phone like a little girl! So we appeared in the Jan 2005 issues of PC GAMER UK, along with the first five episodes of our series! (They also reviewed the newest "Modules" from Bioware, which I might add, they scored highly! So anyone out there who hasn't gotten it - get it now!) Needless to say, this has already been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. When Adam and I started this, we "tee hee hee"'ed to ourselves, thinking we were funny but felt that no one else in their right mind would find us funny. And here we are, five episodes in, and PC GAMER UK wants to features us. Now working on Episode 7, the gods of gods, BioWare asked us if we'd be interested in their BioWare Wednesday. Excuse me while I pinch myself again.

What is the process to create one of your episodes?

Adam: I run naked through the streets until I get inspired or the police arrest me. It might seem like a crazy way to write an episode, but with a 50% success rate you can't argue with the results.

Tawmis: While he's doing that, I am often working on the series itself. I am kidding; I think this is a perfect marriage when it comes to working on the series. The first thing we did was write an "overview" of "Season One" (which ends with Episode 21). So we had a game plan, so to speak. Then, we started sitting down and writing the episodes. Neither of us is solely responsible for that. If I write it, I send it to Adam, he makes changes and adjustments, and vice versa. Once we have a script we both think is funny, we go to the voice acting portion of it and record at my place. More often than not, we will improv some dialogue that is "loosely based" off the script in front of us, because we will just get into the characters/moment.

Once we have the audio track down I usually edit it; add ambient background sounds such as tavern chatter, noises in the woods, and so on (all sounds strictly used in Neverwinter Nights). Then we go to Adam's and do the filming. We film a lot of raw footage, Adam being the main "camera" man on what angles to shoot, and how to do specific scenes. That's all then burned onto a DVD and I take it home, cut through the footage, and try my best to match it with the dialogue. Because of the wide variety of emoticons available to us through Neverwinter Nights, it's no problem finding an emote we need to match a mood or bit of dialogue. Once that's all done, we add the intro and ending credits, upload it, and pray to whatever deities that might be listening that the masses will enjoy it! And sometime after that, I usually have to go bail Adam out of jail for running through the streets naked.

What are your plans for the future?

Adam: Total world domination. And hopefully seeing you at the E3 booth this year.

Tawmis: We have all the way to Season 1's ending planned out - 21 episodes, plus SideQuests (which is an episode that happens outside of the story continuity, sort of like a special announcement), as we come up with them). After that, I don't see us stopping. This is one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Having always wanted to get into voice acting, this gives me the chance to do that - even if it is on a much smaller scale! I just hope that we can keep making new episodes, and keep having as much fun as we're having! We'd love to get into E3, see you guys there, and check out Neverwinter Nights 2, as I am sure that's going to be there! But most importantly - just to keep doing this, and keep having fun!

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