-
5 Years of ABP: 2009
2009 was the first year since the founding of ABP when we didn’t release a single machinima. This happened for several reasons. First of all, college work had severely limited the amount of time I could spend making machinima. Secondly, we were hard at work on Clockwise, the epic sequel to Clockwork. I wrote Clockwise as a 45-page script, but we planned to cut it up into five 10-minute episodes and ultimately recombine them. We filmed much of Clockwise: Part 1 during the summer of 2008, but after reading some excellent critiques from Ricky and Phil, decided to reshoot sections of the film. School got in the way and we didn’t finish production until the end of summer 2009. We released a poster and a trailer but Ricky (who was doing sound design) and Phil (who was writing the score) became swamped with work so we put the film on hold until 2010.
-
5 Years of ABP: 2008
I had always been interested in the crime/gangster genre, but in the summer of 2007 I fully immersed myself in it. I watched classic noir like Double Indemnity and modern gangster classics like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. It was after watching Goodfellas that I was inspired to write the script for Clockwork and after almost a year of on-and-off work the film was finally completed in April 2008. It was the most intense filming experience we had ever gone through, but it paid off in the end.
-
5 Years of ABP: 2007
2007 was a very momentous year for ABP. We won our first major award (Best Student Machinima at Machinima Europe for Machinima! With Officer Dan) and completed our last Jedi Academy film, The Parable of Foot-in-Mouth, which was our first collaboration with Ricky Grove, who narrated the film. From then on, we produced films entirely within the Source engine.
-
5 Years of ABP: 2006
In 2006 we submitted Star Wars Gangsta Rap: JKA Edition to Machinimasia, the first machinima festival in Asia. Our machinima won 1st Runner Up Best Student Film, losing first place to Ross Scott’s Civil Protection. Although it was a second place win, it was ABP’s first machinima award and we were immensely excited. The win motivated us to continue to improve our work.
We then became a subdivision of Hyperdrive, a popular two-man Jedi Academy machinima group known for its high production values. Under the Hyperdrive name, ABP produced The Anger of the Guns, a WWII music video filmed online in Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Meanwhile, one of the Hyperdrive members created ABP’s current animated intro logo. However, the guy in charge of Hyperdrive didn’t like our film and was upset that we were not making Star Wars films, so he rudely kicked us out of the company without warning. ABP was independent once more.
-
5 Years of ABP: 2005
We’re entering our fifth year here at Amorphous Blob Productions and so we thought it might be fun to look all the way back to the beginning and do a retrospective on how far we’ve come. We’re going to be covering one year of ABP history every few days.
Pre-2005: Before Amorphous Blob
Before 2005, I ran a clan called {SITH} in the PC game Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy . The clan had a machinima production division called {SITH} Guild Productions which was originally geared at creating clan promos. Over time, as we became more interested in telling stories than promoting the clan, we began to make narrative films. It was around this time, during the making of a film called The Legend of Solaris, that drivel became my main conspirator and second hand man. He served as the main ingame actor and the principle creative advisor on the project. Soon, drivel’s brother, Pickle, joined the team as well.
Continue Reading »
