Mr. Pendant

It’s always something.

Today it’s two somethings. Neither of which I needed. Enough of this crap.

Checking out for the day. Off to spend some time with my wife and son.

So I revised the release schedule on the FAQ page today to reflect the premiere of “Genesis Avalon” on Sept. 28 and all of its remaining release dates for 2009.

I also spent probably around three and a half to four hours working on the “Genesis Avalon” logo. I’m going to run it by show creator/writer/director/all-around wonder girl Kathryn Pryde before I show it to any of you, though, and she’s on a well-deserved vacation for the rest of the week. Still, pending her thoughts on it, I should have it ready for public consumption by next week. I’ll probably toss up the subsite for it soon after.

I hear rumblings from Kristen Bays that the promo art for “Ex Tempus” should be ready soon, and so the subsite for that should be coming soon as well (which is good, since it begins in just a couple months).

“Back to the Future” won’t be getting a subsite anytime soon, though I do hope we can move into casting on it sometime in the next few months. If we’re lucky we might be able to premiere it before 2009 is out, but if not it should be early 2010. Scripts are rolling in and looking good.

Recorded a bit for the Dixie Season One CD set with Seth this evening, and am now about to record the commentary track for Dixie 34 with Seth and Jim. CD sets are almost there in terms of pre-orders, so it’s time to start pulling all the last little bits together.

Ok, commentary to record, off I go.

I’m now done with the 2+ hours of my day lost driving Clark back and forth to his old school, and we’re settled into the new place, so I hope to get back to regular updates here.

Today consisted of a TWIP interview for next Sunday’s episode, sending the script to Dixie 36 (the last Dixie season premiere ever!) to the cast and posting a casting call for three recurring roles for said episode, and then getting information up on the site for the Los Angeles and Texas Pendant Picnics.

I also did some research for Dixie as well as sent out the Superman script to our new Mxyzptlk, along with a few other “reference files” for him.

Back to it!

Lots going on, lots to post about, no time to post in. Things are insanely tight around here until Clark’s out of school. Which is odd, because then he’s home for three months and it’s going to be hard to concentrate long enough to get a lot of things done (and recording lines? oh that’s gonna be a trick) but it’s better than losing two hours or more every day in the car.

Anyway, one big thing of note was I made good headway on the Dixie season four outline. It’s going to be a 15-episode season.

And it’s also going to be the last.

It’s hard to get things done while trying to move and still not miss any release dates.

I don’t even know where my microphone is, but Batman and Catwoman went up on schedule.

Also now that we’ve moved I have to drive Clark to school for the rest of the school year (three more weeks), and it’s 30 minutes away now, so this means I won’t be able to start getting shows up until later in the morning than usual, which gives me less time to get work done before i have to leave to go pick him up again.

Whee.

So Pendant was quiet for a week… we get the odd week a couple times a year with no new releases due to five-week months and all of our show schedules revolving backwards from the TLSOK release date, which is always just the last Wed. of every month. You can figure out when any show will air based on that knowledge, and can also see how we then sometimes have a week off (this also results in some months with no Kingery episodes, and other months with two Kingery episodes, though they still come out routinely and on time).

Of course this week off was broken up by our TWIP April 1 Spectacular, which you hopefully all enjoyed.

Yesterday we started the furnaces in the mines back up and churned out Dixie 32, and now we’re back in business.

Unfortunately for you dear readers, Susan, Clark and I are now in the process of packing (we’re moving next week) and so updates may be few and far between as most of my time is devoted to that outside of Pendant absolutes (getting Defiant up tomorrow and Blue Harvest on Friday).

That is all. Move along.

Got TWIP up this morning and, of course, made the post here about the new Dixie Season One CD Set. Order yours soon, would you? :)

Wasn’t planning to do much else for Pendant today, but I don’t seem to be able to NOT do Pendant work. So I read over the first draft of Kingery 3×03 for Susan, confirmed the writers’ chat to discuss the episode for this Tuesday night and sent the script to all the other writers to read in preparation for said chat.

Then I read Brian’s draft of Defiant 39, the season-three finale, and sent him my comments on that.

And then I came here and posted this because you folks say you like to know what I do, because you are weird.

Yes.

You are.

So there.

So this is what the Seekrit Projekt I’ve been working on for weeks has been… getting the “Umket Industries Presents: The Dixie Stenberg and Brassy Battalion Adventure Theater” Season One CD set up and ready to go!

It’s now available for pre-order, and I’m really hoping it goes well. We need to get X number of pre-orders in order to be able to afford to get the print run made, and I’m hopeful we’ll get there soon (so people don’t have to wait too long for their CDs to come in), but also worried we might not get enough pre-orders to get the set made. I’m hoping that’s just me worrying about nothing, but there’s a lot hinging on this set.

If it does well we should be able to do subsequent seasons of Dixie and also Kingery, Seminar, Vegas and Shakespeare (as well as other original shows we have in development). I’m also hoping the sales from these will cover our web hosting costs (so we never have to do another fund drive again, that’s my goal as I’d much rather have people get a nice CD set in return for their money than just taking donations which I always felt kind of bad about), and possibly even (if the sales go really well on this and possible future sets) have enough left over to get new banners made, tables at conventions, and maybe even start getting into advertising Pendant to try and increase our audience base.

So, in short… if you like Dixie (and I certainly hope you do!) and if you want to help Pendant out a lot and you want to see future seasons and other shows in these very nice, professional CD sets… please stop by and pre-order your copy soon! These are limited to only 100 copies, so get one while you can. If they sell out and there’s a demand for more, the second printing will still have all the same high-quality versions of all the episodes, but other things about the set will change, so this is actually the only time you’ll be able to get this exact set ever.

You can place your order (and see high-res photos of the front and back covers, as well as the disc (which is NOT just some color label slapped on but is all plastic and MUCH cooler looking than I was able to photograph)) here:

http://www.pendantaudio.com/store.php

Hooray!

Whatcha think?

Did you order your copy yet? :)

The Seekrit Project will be revealed tonight in the weekly Pendant chat!

http://www.pendantaudio.com/chat.php

Starts at 7pm pacific/10pm eastern!

WW38 – released

MM01 – launched successfully, even in iTunes already

Seekrit Projekt – obtained and completed, more news soon…

Superman 56/Ex Tempus 9 is now at 20 pages and the first draft is done.

Also had more progress on the Seekrit Projekt and I should have something to show you folks tomorrow, but tomorrow will be busy so it might have to wait until Thursday.

Most certainly later this week, though.

Seekrit project? -> Progress

Oh yes.

Got some more final directing tests in (or revisions thereof), and assigned two assistant directors AND got Catwoman: QoT a new main director. Had to get all of them set up with their respective shows, and that took exceptionally long for QoT as setting up a main director takes a lot longer than setting up an assistant. Had to figure out the schedule, a new schedule to get the show caught back up, forward on buckets and buckets of lines… I think that was a two or three hour job.

Still some more final tests to come in and more assistants to assign. woo.

Now I have to go make some sound effects DVDs to send off to our new directors to give them a good base to start from.

Next Sunday’s TWIP interview? Done.

So, busy week.

I got the Blue Harvest season one CD-quality torrent up on Monday, and then yesterday a lot of things blew up.

This resulted in me, after getting Bats and Cats up and going today, having to direct half of Catwoman 8. My goodness that was fun.

I haven’t directed anything other than TWIP since… Superman 27, I believe, about two years ago. Anyway, it appears I’m still just as quick as I used to be, as I got my two scenes mixed in about 90 minutes.

The first scene I had was relatively straightforward, but I layered in a lot of different things that I’m really happy with. The second scene was shorter but took longer to do, due to more complex SFX calls needed. Anyway, you’ll be able to hear those scenes in early April, because yes, they are for Catwoman 8, which is out next month. Oy.

I didn’t, of course, really have those 90 minutes to spare, sadly… which means something else fell by the wayside. And that is the little thing I’ve been hinting at here for a week or so. I’m still working on it but my time was all eaten up today, so I still have nothing to show you. Perhaps next week if I’m able to get it finished and ready tomorrow sometime.

This also means the Shenanigans merchandise isn’t up yet, but of course you’ll know as soon as it is.

I should have between 6 and 8 different final mixing tests coming in by Friday, from the directors I trained last Friday. This is a Very Good Thing, as many of our directors really need the help. I KNOW you need the help, if you’re reading this, and it’s coming! Soon!

Now if I could just go get rid of this headache.

Not what I needed today!

Shit.

Been a bit of a slowdown to my posting here. I hit one of those patches of “too much work to do, can’t do anything else” for the last… oh… three days in a row. What did I miss posting about? Hrm.

Defiant 33 and Blue Harvest 16 both went up on the site during that time, and last night I held another Director Class that went about six hours. But I had eight participants and so far NO ONE has dropped out, so this could put Pendant in a very nice and comfy position indeed.

All of them are just angling for assistant director jobs now, but that’s good because we have three directors who’ve asked for assistant, another who really needs one, and, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt to have them on other shows, too, or even to have a couple in reserve for emergency help if needed here and there. Whatever it takes to make sure we hit our release dates, that’s our commitment to the audience…

GOOD shows. ON TIME.

And… that was like all sickeningly positive! Back to being a grumpy ass! I have an image to uphold!

Recorded and mixed TWIP last night, which included doing some casting for Superman: The Last Son of Krypton. Had far more auditions than I thought I would, and a lot of them from new people. We’ve had a recent surge in new members, which is nice. Keep auditioning, people! There’s always more shows, more episodes, and more roles coming.

Agh, there’s that creepy chirpy positivity creeping back in! Damn it! Can’t have that!

You’re all fired! No wait, then I have to do all the work…

I’m fired! Goodnight!

Here’s a preview of the logo:

The background isn’t necessarily going to be blue, I just tossed something up there so you could see the other colors. I’ll probably end up putting it on a variety of different colors, since it’s not like a show logo which is tied more specifically to just a few colors.

Enjoy?

Y/y?

Just (finally!!) got to revising the BttF outline and going over Russ’ notes in detail. Hopefully we’re good to go now, but even if not we’re a whole lot closer. Mostly little detail changes, but one semi-big change to one of the episodes that both of us didn’t realize didn’t make sense at all before. Hooray.

I also recorded lines for two episodes, though i’m sure I have more due AND more credits to record.

Just found out the Shenanigans design was approved by our shirt printer (they check all of these style of design to make sure it will print properly, none of the elements are too small, etc). Hope to get that up on merchandise later this week or next week sometime.

I have a TWIP interview to conduct shortly, and then… I don’t know what. Possibly on to trying to advance CONTENT REDACTED to the final stage so I can tell you all about it soon, we’ll see where I get to before the day is over.

Got TWIP up yesterday and Dixie up today, and also sent off emails about next week’s TWIP interview and setting up two different commentaries that need to be done this week.

Spent a good portion of yesterday working on a logo for our next T-shirt, and I’ll just go ahead and say this is for a “Shenanigans” shirt from “The Kingery” (Shenanigans, of course, being the legal mob-owned whorehouse that operates out of the resort).

For a long time I’ve wanted to do more “shirts from places/things within shows”, like I did way back when with the AeroQuest Dynamics shirt from “Dixie”. Of course, that time thing always gets in the way.

Anyway, I think I’ve finally got the design down after a day and a half of working on it, so I’ll let it sit and look at it again later and if all seems good, hopefully it’ll be on shirts for you folks to buy next week or so.

I also spent a bunch of time yesterday working on something for the thing I’m not yet talking about, and probably another 3 hours or so on it today. I *think* it’s finally done, though, so I’ll have Susan check it over tonight and get some feedback on it, and if all is well then hopefully I’ll have something to show you all about this by the end of the week or next week sometime (and this is completely unrelated to the Shenanigans shirt/logo).

Onward!