Wow, it’s been another whirlwind month. Here’s the news:

STROWLERS IRELAND

First, we tried something a little different for this month’s production. Since we’re raising supplemental funding for our next big Gamers episode over on Kickstarter while we finish post on Gamers Season 0, when the opportunity to shoot a short film in Ireland came along, we took it!

We’ve been wanting for years to figure out how to travel to where our fans are, spend a week making a film with them, and then release it. For example, imagine how cool it would be to take the Gamers cast out to Germany to shoot at a castle with a bunch of hard-core LARPers.

This month we tested that process, thanks to a bunch of saved-up airline miles, a generous host family, four gung-ho cast and crew members, and a personal contribution from Ben to cover the extra costs.

The picture above is a frame from the footage we shot last week on the Browhead Point in West Cork, Ireland, on the same location that Star Wars wrapped out of the week before. (Yes, we literally were walking around where the Jedi temple set had just been torn down.)

The project was a Strowlers short film, featuring Samara Lerman and Lisa Coronado. Ben Dobyns directed and shot, while Tony Coronado filled in as a grip/gaffer/packhorse.

We’re happy to announce that the test run went great! Our local hosts scouted amazing locations for us, including a haunted lake, a crumbling castle, an abandoned farmhouse, and more. The footage is also beautiful, despite shooting with such a tiny crew.

Based on how this went, you can bet that we’ll be making future plans to do this again. If you’re located somewhere with amazing locations and want to spend a week shooting a film with us, go take some pictures and let us know. This was an amazing way to build the fan community, make awesome connections, and get the kind of fantasy-film production value that’s so expensive to build from scratch in Seattle. And who wouldn’t want some of our cast members invading your homes, eating your cereal, and shooting a movie just around the corner?

So yeah… let’s start talking about shooting a Gamers minisode somewhere amazing after “The Shadow Menace” wraps. Who can host? We’ll make the waffles!

GAMERS PROGRESS

Rogar’s episode is almost done. Steve should finish up the score by Friday, Brendan’s audio team is standing by, and we’re hoping to release to all of you by Monday! We’ll follow that by completing post on “The Incident”, which will be a Patreon/Kickstarter exclusive.

The big unknown right now is if the current Gamers Kickstarter will succeed, and by how much. If it does, our next step will be production of the next episode “The Shadow Menace”. If it does not, we’ll revise the script for the size of the Patreon budget and do it in smaller, slower chunks.

While our goal had been to start producing at $10,000 a month, we’ve been managing to scrape together enough to get Season 0 done. We’ll have to look carefully at the numbers afterward and decide if we want to go back to monthly sketches or larger, Gamers-style episodes every other month. What’s your preference?

GEN CON

And of course, Gen Con is almost upon us. Let us know if you’ll be there so we can say hi! We have two Gamers Live shows, tons of screenings (including a Strowlers sneak preview), and a State of the Union panel on Sunday.