<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-music-video-game-on/y0da39gh?from=sharepermalink&#038;fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Season 4 - Music Video - "Game On"">Video: Season 4 &#8211; Music Video &#8211; &#8220;Game On&#8221;</a>

MANY people need to be thanked, including@sandeepparikh for co-writing the lyrics,@jasoncmiller for writing and producing the song,@lisashearin for allowing me to use her book cover at the top of the video,@uhr our line producer for putting everything together,@gregaronowitz for getting us amazing sets (including an ELEPHANT!), Chantal Robeson for choreographing, Thom Williams for fight choreographing, Chris Darnell for DPing and@kimevey and@seanbecker for co-directing. Whew! So many other ppl to thank as well, but I should probably give some insight into the video now

I did not want to do this video. There, I said it. I was in the middle of MAJOR writer’s block for Season 4 and the idea that we’d ever make a music video after “Avatar” was just ridiculous to me. I mean, half the comments about Avatar were “How are you gonna top this?” Which is probably the most creatively stifling thing you can say to someone. (Ironically the FIRST TWEET TODAY I SAW WAS “HOW ARE YOU GONNA TOP THIS NEXT YEAR?” HAHAHA).

Anyhoo, last year Sandeep actually said, “let’s do a Bollywood themed video.” And I was like, there’s no way we can afford that. Our budget is pretty low, and we were maxxed out on Avatar, which was shot on one stage, so I was like, it’s never gonna happen. Cut to April 2010, and Microsoft and Sprint asked us if we have a music video this year, and then Kim emails me and wants to co-direct a Bollywood music video with Sean. Errrrrrg. Eep?

Kim already had the concept for the video down, the walls flying out, the dancing etc. and that seemed cool, but I was skeptical because I didn’t have the song in place yet, and everyone knows a music video without a good song isn’t gonna be great! So I watched a TON of Bollywood videos on YouTube, and the craziness of the genre (and watching some TERRIBLE fight scenes from Bollywood movies) convinced me to at least TRY to come up with something. I guess the key to overcoming creative blocks is to just release the need to “top” or “equal” or “dazzle” and just create. All those pressure are extraneous and don’t allow for anything good or great to happen. It’s my mantra now

Sandeep agreed to write the lyrics with me (because I am not well-versed in Bollywood), we sat down and brainstormed, knowing we had to avoid Avatar comparisons at all turns. I also wanted to avoid indicating that Zaboo and I were romantically attracted to each other, since that would confuse ppl, but since Bollywood is ALL about a girl and boy in love, we decided an outright parody would work and not be confusing. Then we sent the lyrics to Jason Miller, who, with his production team, came up with a crazy slick tune and awesome electronic touches that make me laugh to this day!

I just want to say, Kim and Sean pulled a miracle out by getting all this done in time and on budget. Gabe Uhr, our line producer, pinched every single penny, and Greg Aranowitz did INSANE things on almost no budget. That elephant has a MAN INSIDE IT! And that temple was built on a friend, Travis Oates’ BBQ area, lol. Also, the costumes were spot on, Michelle scraped up great colors that stayed true to our Avatar-selves.

The day of the shoot was probably the most stressful day ever. We had 3 cameramen, Chris Darnell pulled in every favor ever, and we had a JIB, which we’d never had before, and allowed us to do those cool overhead-y shots. We actually shot two days, one for the temple/fountain and one for the fight/gazebo. The scale of it was enormous for web video, and the whole time I was excited but on edge, because with a crew that big anything can go wrong at any second. Thankfully everything but a generator blowing up went awesome. Thom Williams, our fight choreographer, brought in a trampoline and Sandeep actually did those flips! I was so impressed!

My favorite parts are: Vork coming out of the fog (Why does he take his jacket off and THEN PUT IT BACK ON?!?!) and Bladezz coming BACK THROUGH on the end vocal. It makes me laugh SO HARD. The most comments I’ve gotten though are about Zaboo using my butt to type on, which I just pitched out during one of our MANY dance choreography sessions. It was totally ridiculous and exactly in the spirit of what we were doing: Not taking ourselves seriously and trying to have a good time.

The video will be for sale on iTunes IN HD next Tuesday, along with the mp3 everywhere for sale and streaming on iTunes. I’m extremely proud of it, and it turned out to be a collaboration that everyone helped make the best possible. Thank you to my Guild team, the best co-workers in the world

WEDNESDAY:
Drove down to San Diego early in the morning because we had to set up our booth. Had banners and DVDs and posters in the car, along with 12 pairs of shoes (half of which I didn’t wear, but I was comforted by the fact that I had them with me ) Took several hours to get everything arranged for the booth, extra table and chairs (thanks@egspoony for scamming about a dozen chairs for us, and a backstage pass somehow!) After the booth was set up, I rushed back to the hotel to get dressed, and then ran BACK to the convention center to do a preview night signing from 6-8pm. Then Jeff and Sandeep and I went to perform with our improv group@hammerimprov at 9pm. The whole group was there,@brookseguin,@alexalbrecht,@tonyjanning and@taraperry! We had a great night, and Jeff Lewis playing a character called “Butters Johnson” will forever stick in my mind. If you’re in LA, be sure to follow us on Twitter and come see us perform, we do it pretty much every month and it’s a blast!

THURSDAY:
Our morning 11-1pm signing was PACKED! We had our booth facing a major door this year, so literally the lines were so long we had to turn people away towards the end, I’m sorry guys! Mid-day I ran over to do a photo shoot for EW and interview with Ausellio, then back to the booth for more signings and some interviews. That night we had a great birthday cast dinner because Sandeep and Robin and Jeff all celebrated birthdays recently, so that was a nice evening within the storm of the con.

FRIDAY:
BUSY! Signings, then my panel “Girls Gone Geek”, an amazing panel with inspiring women, including Marni Noxon. I feel like that panel could have been an hour longer, I forgot I was actually ON it a few points because I was so interested in hearing what the other panelists had to say! Then I went to meet the Sprint/Xbox sweepstakes winner for a little Guild party, screened some secret episodes with the winner, Shawn, then rushed back to the convention center at 11:00pm to intro the premiere of the RED Syfy movie trailer. So excited for people to see it, I hadn’t seen the trailer beforehand, so that was exciting! Here it is embedded for your pleasure!

SATURDAY:
PANEL DAY! Omg I was so nervous. While waiting for our time, we hung out in the green room back stage, and saw the whole cast of Community. Strangely enough, Kim and Jeff knew Joel McHale from ACME theatre, and I knew Danny Pudi from a pilot we did years back, so it was a weird reunion of sorts. (And I saw Chevy Chase from afar, that was a thrill!)

Our panel started pretty much on time, Kim went on stage and introed Episode 3 preview. And, during the episode THIS appeared:

The sound of the crowd laughing made me soooo happy! This is my favorite gag of the season, and I can’t wait until all of you see the episode on August 3rd to know exactly what I’m talking about, hehe! FARK has already done some funny mashups (and typical internet comments, lol).

Then Kim and Sean brought us on stage! The whole cast arranged to wear a custom Squid Hat (a-la Episode 1 Season 4) from Obey My Brain and we walked out to over 2000 people cheering. Um, that was AMAZING GUYS! I announced that everyone in the audience was getting a button with Wil and my faces on it from the painting. It was the most expensive piece of promotion/advertising we’d ever done for the show, but the thrill of giving it away and how funny the buttons looked on people’s lanyards was the best reward ever!

Then we previewed the music video. I will write more about that tomorrow when it comes out on Xbox/MSN/Zune (it will be on iTunes/YouTube in a week). Suffice it to say, there was a very warm reception to the video! Sean and Kim co-directed and they did an amazing job! We also did Q&A, announced that Guild Avatar skins are coming to Xbox Live later this year, and I slipped in that I’ll be doing a big guest arc on EUREKA with Wil Wheaton later this season! So excited to work on that show, it’s one of my favorites!!

After another signing I RAN to the Eureka panel to announce officially I was joining the cast for a recurring part later this season. I was so relieved the audience cheered because I had an anxiety dream the night before that no one would know who I was when I walked out. I wake up in cold sweats with neurotic thoughts like this a lot, actually. After that I ran to Dark Horse to do a signing with Joss and Jed and Maurissa and Zack for the limited edition DOLLHOUSE comic poster, available if you pre-order the DVD set. The colors are BEAUTIFUL in the poster, so it was a neat, unexpected Comicon experience, I didn’t know I was on the cover until a few days before the con! NEAT!

Saturday night I went to the awesome SyFy/EW party with my penguin purse , and then danced until 3:30 am at Zachary Levi’s (Chuck) NERD party. My feet still hurt, but favorite party night I’ve ever had! Ran into Michele Boyd (Riley) there randomly, shows how small this world is!

SUNDAY:
11-1pm we had our last Guild signing. Posters of the “Team Cawkes” painting were flying off the table, which is amazing, and it was neat that Greg Aranowitz, the artist, was there to sign them too. See what a funny whim of an idea gets you? On someone’s wall, haha! After that I FINALLY got to walk the Con floor and buy a non-virtual edition of Carcassone, some comics and I ran into@nerdist and@paulandstorm on the floor. We took turns photo bombing each other as we walked around, hehe.

After that we had to break down the booth and I drove home! Whew. After a year of prep, this was an amazing 5 days. Thank you to everyone who stopped by. Now…it’s back to work to get more stuff to show for next year!

<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/browse?mkt=en-us&#038;vid=&#038;from=LKVR5&#038;fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Season 4 - Episode 1 - Epic Guilt">Video: Season 4 &#8211; Episode 1 &#8211; Epic Guilt</a>

A few things. If you’ll notice, the episode looks a bit different than usual. We shot this season on a different camera, the Canon Mark 5D, which I NEVER EVER WILL TRUST BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE A STILL CAMERA SO HOW IS IT TAKING VIDEO?! (/oldwomanrant). Honestly, the quality looks AMAZING, it’s in 1080p for the first time with the Guild (we were shooting 720p before) so it has a clarity to it that is pretty spiffy.

Story-wise, when I started this season, the thing I wanted to avoid most of all was the whole “Codex sneaking around with Fawkes behind everyone’s back and getting caught later in the season.” That seemed like the automatic go-to as a result of the cliffhanger, so I knew immediately that I would have Codex do the opposite and come clean at the top of the season. She’s a pretty guilt-ridden person (as am I, that part is a bit auto-biographical ). Everything else fell into place from there. Getting Codex into trouble this season was much easier because she’s definitely coming out of her shell a lot, her interactions with The Guild face-to-face are making her more assertive and more confident, so her point of view about things is much easier to write now.

In addition, I introduce the idea of a Guild Hall for the Guild, because, as an in-game activity, it is something that would theoretically bring the Guild TOGETHER, unlike last season when they were torn apart. But bar-none my favorite moment in the episode is Bladezz sneezing SO disgustingly on the kitchen grill. Sean Becker’s idea ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to Amalfi for letting us use their kitchen and cleaning up EXTREMELY WELL afterwards, that place is a great restaurant and had a very clean kitchen which we abused a little bit

Small side note: When you write something crazy like “Clara wears a goofy squid hat”, Kim Evey (my producer) can take care of it for you. She found a man who ACTUALLY MAKES SQUID HATS. So weird, but thanks Kim for making my “vision” a reality. Also thx Sean Becker for getting Clara to belt out that opening song, and making me write even MORE than what was in the script for her to sing. The opening shot is really really funny and well-done.

For more in-depth analysis of this episode (and ALL of them really) our show fan-podcast Knights of the Guild was on set for almost all of our filming, interviewing cast and crew about each episode. I believe they will upload a mini-cast with every episode (today’s goes up tonight@knightsoftheguild said), so check them out! We’re very lucky to have such amazing fans!

Lastly, Maureen Ryan over at the Chicago Tribune did a set visit and an in-depth article about me and The Guild that I’m really proud of. She’s a smart and insightful lady, and it’s an honor to be profiled by her. Check it out, and the accompanying article she did on Web Series Coming of Age.

Hope you enjoyed the episode! Next episode has some really funny stuff, I think Bladezz is kinda stealing the season, hehe

Also if you missed it, AutoTune the News made an AMAZING recap of Season 3, so you can refresh about where we left off. They did us a huge favor by doing this, so check out their channel on YouTube and see how brilliant they are!

Lastly, all our Comicon info was compiled by our Guild Media Guru Brian Kameoka, so click over to The Guild website to get all the times for activities we’re doing there. We’ll be signing in the booth every day and have DVDs and Tees and everything! And due to our immense overflow last year in a 500 seat room, we have a 1600 seat room this year, so PLEASE come see the panel and prove that a web series deserves just as big a room as TV shows and movies!
I absolutely promise you it will be worth it. That’s all I can say

Also, I’m doing a fantastic panel called “Girls Gone Geek” about women writing in Genre fiction.  There are some brilliant women on the panel, I’m very excited to be participating.  That panel is from 5-6pm on Friday.  More info can be found over at io9.

Ok, off to answer emails, it’s Friday night, what else would I be doing?

It’s been a while since I updated the blog and putting aside the guilt I feel, there is no possible way I could have posted something before now.  From January to June has been a complete blur, to the point where at a few points I wasn’t sure I could keep going (FYI, being hospitalized for exhaustion is something I COMPLETELY sympathise with now!  Before, I just thought it was an excuse for drug addition or something, LOL.)  But the woods are now clear and the whole of Season 4 of The Guild is now on hard drives and being edited as we speak!   We’re up to episode 5 and I am so extremely excited to share this season with you, I really love the episodes and feel like we’ve added some really fun storylines and characters you’ll enjoy.  Release date is July 13th on Xbox/MSN, if you haven’t heard.

Also the comic books are all three released now, and we have a new shirt coming out for Season 4, so we have lots of great stuff to offer in our Comicon booth this year!  Thanks to Jamie Chambers, our booth sharer, we got a corner booth in a really prime spot, so for those of you who visited our hole-in-the-wall tiny booth last year, I hope you’ll be pleased!

I haven’t been doing a lot of interviews lately, because frankly I’m sick of talking about myself.  I love that people are interested in what I’m doing, but if I don’t have something new to say I feel like I’m wasting people’s time.  That’s why I’m just concentrating on getting The Guild season made as great as possible, and developing new web series.   Yay!  Kim Evey and I are working on several things and are inching towards the time we can get funding and announce stuff.  Just the idea of working on something new in between Guild seasons makes me excited to keep plugging away.  Thinking about new characters and getting a chance to breathe from 24/7 Guild for 3 years is actually making me excited to GO BACK and starting thinking about season 5.  Weird how a break can inspire you like that.

Anyway, I did do the below interview over A YEAR ago, and Mortified has finally released it.  If you don’t know about it, Get Mortified is a hilarious stage show about people reading embarrassing things from their childhood.  They have two great books out and are branching out into video now!  I was one of the first interviews, but they’ve just recently gotten around to releasing them.  I admit, I’m a bit embarrassed about the video, but I guess that’s the point, LOL.

I will be blogging a bit more now that I have some freeER time, I still have those sci-fi books that you recommended to review, as well as some great fantasy books I’ve picked up.  Cracking the whip on myself, I promise!!