#that video is one of the best one of these rant videos

[nickssidewitch]

I know I’m adding my tarot two-cents in on something y’all didn’t ask for 😭😭, but I’ve seen so many posts like these across platforms and I have something to say about it based on energy channeling. (Also this isn’t hate to the OP, it’s me adding onto it! I love the original post and it’s a good talking point! 🙌🏾)

The triplets miss those things too!! 😭 They do, but not in a sense of “I want them back”, but more in the sense of nostalgia. The triplets actually lived those moments and experiences, whereas you as the audience member simply viewed it as a valuable piece of content and entertainment. And while of course you all also experience nostalgia, it is more from the place of entertainment and comfort rather than nostalgia in the sense of a moment in the past that the triplets (and a portion of fans) grew out of.

They grew out of these things for a multitude of reasons, such as safety and privacy of themselves and loved ones, timing, and simply just getting older and things just not hitting the same way. And this is all valid.

And what is also valid are the emotions of nostalgia and wanting these things back and missing them. What is not valid is harassing the triplets and their loved ones to bring these things back. Those things are simply just not where they are at in their lives anymore, and you as not only fans but also as human bekngs should understand and respect that.

The triplets hope that their fanbase understands and respects their wishes as well as the wishes of loves ones that simply don’t want to be in their videos anymore or that they’re not close to anymore. That’s all they could ever want! They know and resonate with your feelings, trust me! Trust them! But they’re simply not the same as they were before. Think of “As It Was” by Harry Styles. ❤️

The old videos will always be there for your comfort and for you to reminisce. But there are new ones that are coming out consistently for you all to learn, live, and grow with them as time progresses and we all get older. That’s the way life goes! 🤷🏾‍♀️✨

(Sorry for this rant, it’s just that energetically I feel like this needed to be said, and the triplets have wanted to say this for a while but never really knew how to articulate it to the best of their abilities! 😭🤍✨)

i miss the podcast. i miss Wednesday videos. i miss the intro. i miss madi. i miss the streams. i miss alahna. i miss mikayla. i miss the og minivan.

[pangolin-404]

The Don Thacker QnA

Continuation of this post; tldr: I emailed Don Thacker and he was kind enough to answer some questions about Jazzpunk's live action trailers. :) everyone say thank you don thacker

This includes his words about working with Necrophone Games, the production of Project Pigeon and Project Switchhook, and their scripts. Here's the full thing (it's quite long!):

How did you start working with Necrophone Games, and what was it like? Did you work more with Luis Hernandez or Jess Brouse more?

Jazzpunk was originally brought to Imagos through Adult Swim Games. We had done several live action spots for ASG and I think the Necrophone Games guys may have seen something they liked? Most publishers we work with regularly basically lay out a marketing strategy and we're on the menu. "Do you want something from these guys," kind of thing.

At the time, we were an agency of record for ASG, and they put us together. To ASG's credit, they mostly stepped out of it once NG and Imagos were working together, though. It was an incredibly cool deal from them.

All of our work with ASG was like that; they would come to us with a project or a nugget of an idea and say, "go wild!" and we would, of course, go our particular brand of wild.

The Jazzpunk IP moved away from ASG, or at least the marketing side of it did, between the first spot, "Johnny," and the the second spot, "300-1200 Baud Buyman."

To both ASG's credit and NG's credit, the process was prettuch the same both times: awesome.

Did you work with Hernandez to compose the soundtracks?

Not at all. All in-game music was done without any influence from Imagos, and Imagos commanded the entirety of the music side for live action. Obviously, NG had notes/ input, but the two worlds remained mostly separate. 

This is actually intentional most of the time that Imagos does a live action spot. We need to keep the game proper and the hyper-splatter of crazy images in the marketing close enough to be causally related, but distant enough to neither give away the experience you would get from playing a game or try to express in 90 seconds what a game takes 90hrs to say.

How much free reign did you have over the creative direction? 

This is an awesome question for this project in particular. NG was the most hands-off absolute dictatorship we have ever worked with IN THE VERY BEST POSSIBLE WAY.

Essentially, they hit us with a hundred thousand little details and asked us to go ham and cheese on them. They were open to almost every one of my wild pitches, but the details were fine tuned by them to an incredible degree.

Imagos's process, when asked to pitch a story for a spot, is to put together a deck of several ideas that we feel would best serve the project and present them as a menu from which a client can choose ideas from; even mix and match elements from all of the presented ides (which happens). We do this to limit the infinity of choice. It helps with clients who don't know exactly what they want, but know things they DO want, and know very clearly what they don't want.

The NG pitch wasn't like this at all. I had a few lightning strikes and we hopped onto a video conference and I just ranted a bunch at them about my weird concepts and they rolled with them almost immediately. It was in the details that they really pushed hard to make sure what we were doing was going to live in the world of Jazzpunk. 

Looking into our archives, I see the notes we came up with during those meetings. Here they are, pasted:

Pitch 1

Noir detective enters office/closet

Pulls out briefcase

Gun, parabolic mic, bluebox

Banana, lobster, blender, ping pong ball

Dumps a pile of cardboard hands

"I'll be there in 10 minutes."

Pitch 2

Keanu reeves enters facility

"I've got to check my email"

puts on helmet, gloves, puts bit into his mouth

"hit me"

seizure

cut into: checking email, facebook, etc

Pitch 3

[Look Around You - but 1960s]

1960s style educational video

"the computer, invented in 1932 by James Bromely--"

"robots are used in many homes for--"

As you can see, we used a lot of bits from those. As I've said, this is 0% how we usually ptch. Usually there's a whole proposal with notes on tones and imagery and stuff.

Do you still have the storyboards? 

We didn't board Johnny - we listed. The time and money didn't really allow for it.

I worked with the same Cinematographer on both Johnny and 300/1200 Baud Buyman, one with whom I had collaborated on several commercial projects as well as a feature film before this point, so we had a bit of a shorthand going. We made shotlists and went into the day with a clear vision once we saw the set.

The set took seven days from concept to film ready. It was built in front of a greenscreen cyclorama, so the outer windows could show through to the city, TOKYO DUO. It was an incredible endeavor from a production designer I had worked with on some other ASG spots (and more), and it benefited heavily from his understanding of the Imagos look. It was entirely built, with wild walls (we could move any wall at any point) and an incredible level of set dec.

Once the DP and I stepped in, we knew the lists would work and we just went wild.

For 300/1200 Baud Buyman, we used a practical location (the interior of a grocery store) and boarded some of the action for clarity. Not as much as we'd board normally, but, again, the budgets for both of those spots was limited, and the timelines so short, that boards were a luxury we didn't get to play with widely.

Here is a set from 300/1200 Baud Buyman:

Was there anything planned that didn't make the final cut?

For Johnny, only one beat; a comedy beat where the agent gets all geared up to CYBERJACK INTO THE NETRIX and then we hit a cold drop. He's forgotten to push the button. Then he pushes the button and it's ON LIKE TRON.

I think we cut this beat as redundant. Once we got to filming, it felt a lot like cyberjacking into the netrix was going to be enough. Watching him unwrap the thing and follow all but one instruction felt like it might be dead space. 

That, or we just ran out of time. That's always an option in production.

Otherwise, it was all 1:1 the script.

For 300/1200 Baud Buyman, nope. Nothing. We shot what we wrote :) Well, we didn't do the tongue quarter gag.

Interesting note for 300/1200 Baud Buyman: The split-screen section, with The Director talking to the Cashier in one frame, was entirely a practical, in-camera effect!

What happened to the props and spoof items used? 

For Johnny:

The CRANIAL REFRACTION HELMET was destroyed. Several of the parts that made it into that beast were either rental bits or owned by one of the crew/creatives. The rest was auto butyl and bits of rubber and piping and stuff.

The set was struck and, as with the helmet, the bits went to their respective owners or the trash. Even the wall flats.

The stuff in the attache' case:

The prop pistol was returned to the armorer.

The POLYBLANK POINTING HANDS hands 

The parabolic microphone lives in a storage unit with select props from other projects.

Sadly, the pigeon is likely dead. It was a well taken care of racing bird, fully trained and treated like royalty, but they don't live very long and it's been more than a decade :/

The 2600htz whistle was kindly donated to the project by an unnamed source whose possession of it I will neither confirm nor deny. If you wonder what this means, look up 2600hz cap'n crunch whistle on the intertron.

We're especially curious about the fate of the Director prop(s).

For 300/1200 Baud Buyman, The Director was made out of foam board, and, unfortunately, didn't survive the transition into present time.

The rest of the set dress and props are, as well, all disposed of. Except for a giant cereal box front, that lives in storage.

I'm also curious about any remnants of old PAX East 2014 props and merchandise, but that might've been more in Necrophone Games' hands than Imagos Films'.

All of that is with NG. The only thing we had to do with their presence at PAX was a few pictures of us stopping by their booth and bumming around with them.

The 2014 trailer is called Project Pigeon in the Flickr album documenting the set. In the 2016 trailer's behind-the-scenes video, the composer Ryan Ike refers to it as Project Switchhook. Who named them and how were the names chosen? 

Imagos has a tiered naming structure for commercial projects:

CLIENT  -> PRODUCT -> PROJECT -> TITLE

CLIENT = Client (obviously) PRODUCT = Thing the spot is about PROJECT = The specific spot. We may do several spots for one product, so this is how we differentiate. TITLE = The actual spot title.

For the FIRST Jazzpunk spot, the breakdown is like this:

CLIENT = Adult Swim Games / Necrophone Games PRODUCT = Jazzpunk PROJECT = #projectpigeon TITLE = Johnny

For the SECOND Jazzpunk spot:

CLIENT = Necrophone Games PRODUCT = Jazzpunk PROJECT = #projectswitchhook TITLE = 300/1200 Baud Buyman

Who named them and how were the names chosen? 

Anything you see with a "#project" prefix is the PROJECT name. These project names tend to be silly or abstract. This is mostly because some of our projects need to be secret as we shoot them.

I write all of our work, and, as such, name the projects. Much to the confusion and frustration of my business partners :)

In the 2016 trailer's behind-the-scenes video, the composer Ryan Ike refers to it as Project Switchhook. 

A switchhook is an old phone term. It was a physical switch set into a hook for hanging your receiver on. It was an analogue electrical circuit, and could be manipulated by phone phreaks to, you know, DO TEH HACKINGZ. 

Similarly, where did the other title for the 2016 trailer, "300-1200 Baud Buyman," come from?

A baud rate is the rate at which a modem transfers data. Analogue modems used to use these baud rates as indicators of speed or bandwidth, in marketing, much as modern broadband connections use megabit or gigabit ratings.

Without getting too technical, analogue modems transfer data as 1s and 0s by flipping signal frequencies to represent state changes. This is the dumbest way to say this, but a baud rate of 300 means that 300 signal changes can take place per second of connected time. 1200 baud is 1200 signal changes per second.

A top of the line phone modem in the late 80s/early 90s could band between 300 and 1200 baud. Kingmakers and 1337 h4x0rz might have been able to convince their parents to get into a 1440 baud modem. If they were lucky.

This is all pre-millenium phone phreak/hacker stuff. I was exactly the right age, in exactly the right place to have been swept up into all of that as my form of teenage rebellion.

The Jazzpunk world is a cyberpunk inspired pre-digital hackerverse, and I grew up in the height of that, and leaned on those things for the scripts.

The Director is jumping though time, buying goods at a low price and selling them at a high price in the future. In the spot's narrative, that's how the entire endeavor is being funded. He is, however, causing massive inflation in the process.

And he's using a 300/1200 baud modem to transfer himself back into the past, because that is the technology that existed.

#projectpigeon is named such because the pigeon. In the spot. The spot has a pigeon in it.

The 2016 trailer's IMDB page lists someone named Chris Morson as the voice actor for the Director. Is this true? Additionally, do you happen to know who voiced the Editor in the game, or any other voice actors?

Chris is an INCREDIBLE actor. I've worked with him several times, and every one of them has been incredible. Yes, he plays the voice of The Director in the spot, but has nothing to do with the game. 

As well, I also have/had nothing to do with the VO in the game. A shame, because I would be super proud if I had!

Did you/Imagos Films make anything else for Jazzpunk?

Unfortunately, no. I would love to, of course. That series of spots is truly a wonderful time.

I have attached the script for both Johnny and 300/1200 Baud Buyman as a little gift. Enjoy.

[ganondoodle]

lets reverse back into tloz for a bit, found a new totk rant video that almost exactly points out everything i hate about the game in a really easily understandable and entertaining way

[lumiereswig]

I'm still seeing a lot of angry takes in the tags about how excessive Watcher's current costs are and how all fans really want, apparently, is "just shane and ryan sitting in a basement" back again. While I do think Watcher is probably spending over budget and that's a real issue, a lot of the takes I'm seeing show a fundamental misunderstanding of how video production works and where costs actually lie. So a few quick things that I just keep seeing that are bothering me:

It was never just Shane and Ryan in a basement. BFU did a great job selling that conceit and making sure you never saw anyone beyond them and maybe TJ, but they absolutely had other crew members with them on ghost hunts and they didn't do all the work on BFU themselves. This Q&A from Season 2 lists 36 people on staff for Buzzfeed Unsolved. It's fair to make arguments that Watcher may or may not need 25 people, but those arguments should not be coming from a place of "before it was just Shane and Ryan and nobody else."

If you don't know how many people are needed to make a professional video from a TV/film standpoint, you will not have a reasonable grasp of why Watcher wants to keep 25 people on staff. Sure, some YouTubers get by with a ring light and a contracted editor. The Watcher team have stated repeatedly that they do not want to work as just YouTubers and see themselves more as a production studio—so why do people keep referencing the YouTube model to understand their business? This is like asking the local shake shop why it doesn't function like the kids' lemonade stand down the block. The item category is similar but they're not trying for the same products or process.

The "gold dusted food" is not the big budget sink you think it is. On most TV shows I've worked on it's normal to partner with businesses that are shown onscreen and work out a deal where the price of the product (in this case the gold food) is reduced or eliminated in exchange for the free publicity. Watcher very likely made a deal with every restaurant it worked with to make the Korea trip affordable for the company. The real budget spends are on things you're probably not seeing but that still matter: camera and lighting equipment is expensive, insurance for that equipment is expensive, business overhead and paying your staff are expensive. So again—it's fine to critique Watcher for the streaming plan and the perceived budgetary issues, but go into this knowing the costs might not be coming from the things you see onscreen.

My source is that I work in TV and film and actually have a clue on how the industry functions. Again, 36 people worked on Unsolved (and those were the people mention in Season 2—who knows how big the team blew up past that in later seasons). Entertainment work is real work, and demands decent equipment, competent staff, and the same types of business and budget problems you'd find in any other business (overhead, staffing, etc.). Feel free to critique Watcher's business model, but first try to understand where that model is coming from and what goals it's attempting to serve.

[beta-adjacent]

PSA to all alphas: let us take care of you, goddammit!!!!! Y’all don’t have to be at your strongest all the time. I don’t care what the stereotypes say; you’re not the sole leader of the pack. We are a team that relies on each other for support!!!! So let us fucking support you!!!!!!!!!!!

[saltylovesvessels]

ranting on tumblr

why tf would they make a LIVE ACTION MINECRAFT MOVIE omg they could've animated it and made it like Minecraft Story Mode but they DIDN'T!! Also Steve isn't steveing he's literally just Jack Black with a blue shirt SUUSTSISBSUAJHSHD literally just making shit to make money I WANT GOOD MOVIES BACK THAT HAVE LOVE PUT INTO THEM ARHJJH BRING BACK ANIMATED MOVIES FROM THE 2010S

They literally reanimated Sonic bc of the backlash like.. WE WANT ANIMATION! WE WANT CARTOONS NOT LIVE ACTION MOVIES. I HOPE THIS FUCK ASS MOVIE GETS DELETED LIKE TOY STORY 2 EXCEPT NO ONE RECOVERS IT

thank you for coming to my Ted talk I just want to watch a cartoony game adaptation that's ANIMATED with actual love put into it instead of live action shit made purely for money

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[comradecowplant]

so things are not going well with my new elderly socdem friend unfortunately.

[gloriasato]

the duality of moody teen girl music

[doors-worstenemy]

one video has completely turned my view of night mind around. I'm not a huge fan of night mind, I'm a fan of horror and mystery. but I'm not smart, so i watch explanation videos so I'm sure I understood 100% of the plot. Night Mind did a great job of this- mostly- with Marble Hornets, EverymanHYBRID, and things like this house has ppl in it, so I've started looking into his videos for more. Things like Chainmail Chasers, POSTcontent, Rapid Eyes, they were all fine videos from him, treated fair and explained well- praise and criticism where it was due. But it's videos like his "case file" or whatever he calls it on the series "JustAcquaintances" that pisses me off. When he started laughing at them in part 2 I couldn't keep watching. It's rude, it's pointless, it's mockery. No explanation or defense at the end of the video can make up for that. JustAcquaintances is what most arg/found footage fans want to be. A fun homemade series with friends, something made with passion and genuine interest- not professional and trained. Marble Hornets is good found footage because it's professional, they knew what they were doing and planned every step months or years ahead. If I'm not wrong, some members of Marble Hornets were in school working on film/acting. Either way, it's professional. JustAcquaintances is an example of well preformed fanwork in the best way possible. Their acting is amazing, a bunch of stupid guys looking for trouble end up in deep shit with the paranormal and a cult. The police, real or fake, time and time again leave them in either deeper shit or the same as before. Now people are dying, being kidnapped, stalking, beating, torturing our protagonist. It's good. It's a good series. It's what I want every found footage fan to create, i want a dozen million fans to go out with their ideas and do this. Because I don't expect every series to be another EverymanHYBRID. I don't want another Marble Hornets. I want raw passion of creativity woven from horrific inspiration. And I've seen the Slenderverse/yt horror community. They are critics, expecting the best, expecting all of the creators effort into these series'. But these are free. They are on Youtube, somewhere that's very famous for not giving creative- esp horror related- projects the attention and monetization they deserve. These are projects filmed by humans for the sake of letting their dark little project out of their heads and onto your screen. They deserve praise, they deserve your attention, they deserve your patience, and they deserve your criticism NICELY. THEY DON'T GET PAID ENOUGH BY THESE VIDEOS FOR YOUR SPONSERED, MONITETIZED, WELL RECEAVED VIDEO TO LAUGH AT THEM. THEY DESERVE TO BE PRAISED FOR THAT SCEEN REALLY, IT LOOKS AND SOUNDS LIKE HE'S REALLY BEING BEATEN BY A BAT, THEY AREN'T HITTING HIM IN THE HEAD OR SPINE, THEY AREN'T HITTING ALL TO HARD, THEY'RE BEATING HIM FOR THE SAKE OF BEATING HIM. AND IT'S WELL PREFORMED. HE'S CONFUSED, HE'S TRYING TO PROTECT HIMSELF AGAINST SOMEONE HE KNOWS KIDNAPPED AND HURT HIS BROTHER. HE'S SCARED. HE ISN'T FIGHTING BACK BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE'S ALONE, DEFENSLESS. HE DOESN'T DESERVE YOUR LAUGHTER. Even if poorly acted, he is on the floor, rolling in dirt, with bugs and germs in a public area, crying and whining, all for your entertainment. Not for money, for you- a supposed fan of found footage- to enjoy his act. He's willing to roll and scream in public, in the dirt, for you to laugh at him. It seems unfair, to do all this and expect nothing in return. JustAcquaintances is a good series, it's not hollywood, it's not professional, but it's exactly the passion I want to see every artist put into their work. It's what I want from anybody that's been inspired by horror or found footage, it's art and I wouldn't ever want them to change it. I'd want them to learn from it. Take what they've created and keep creating- just for the sake of creation. Criticism is necessary for art to prosper, but criticism isn't an hour and a half of copy and pasted footage occasionally interrupted by laughter or high expectations.

[fitzrove]

I think I'm struggling creatively because as time goes on I find less and less motivation to write (and read, tbh!) stuff that's

good wholesome queer representation

escapist everything-gets-better fantasy ("because life is hard enough why would you write about miserable things")

palatable to people who disagree with me

And obviously I'm nowhere near finishing even a single original thing yet ahdfhajf but I've been looking at publishing videos that people who have experience in the industry have made and. Man no wonder that so much milquetoast stuff gets put out nowadays

[just-about-nothing]

oh my god fall out boy

[piglii]

I think the reason most video game to movie adaptations (and book adaptations, too) suck is that most people in charge of making movies just do not give a shit about video games as a medium and literally see it as a 1:1 conversion of money. like, “hey that hot new mario or zelda game came out this year and made $800 million dollars! if we make that into a movie, surely it will make the same amount or even more!” because most literally just see other forms of media as crude oil waiting to be made into gas. like it’s crazy to me that it seems really hard to understand the appeal in engaging with a piece of media personally yourself (or like with friends in multiplayer) as opposed to just watching it play out on a screen.

[knackeredforever]

Seriously why is baldur’s gate 3 200GB I’ll probably get the game at some point in the future cause I know how good it is but I wish I could just get a version of the game with none of the high quality graphics installed in it even if It looked significantly worse because the graphics are absolutely not what I care about the most when playing the game.

I’ve said this before but Ives said it again the entire triple A games industry should go back to making games that have graphics similar to the PS3 and Xbox 360 because video game file size and graphics requirements have made a lot of amazing triple A modern games inaccessible to a lot of people.

[aria0fgold]

I'm staring to think that my phone is just anti-me at this point. Is it the name ya dipshit? Do you not like the name Puffy? Or did you decide to embody that and just wanna puff outta existence?

I've had 3 phones before this. All samsung phones, unfortunately can't remember their models but 2 are dead (they're very old tbf cant get em to start up anymore. in fact i dont remember where i put their corpses at but theyre in a box) Named em Pinkie and Polka.

1 is still alive and kicking, older than the current piece of shit that I have and yet it's alive, well, and functional with barely no problems, didn't even had to send it to repairs that one (it's currently my mom's phone now) Named that one Pearl.

And ofc my current one is giving me the most problems. The problem child of the family, I'll be introducing my phones and just, these are my children, Pinkie, Polka, and Pearl. And this is their sibling, Puffy. I'd disown Puffy if I could, but alas, I'm too broke to buy a new phone.

[casperghosty]

it's so interesting that you're a gmm and watcher fan because a) i am too and b) there's so much stuff i wish the channels would take from each other - like i wanna see rhett and link borrow from watcher's creativity and more exciting release schedule and i really need for watcher to learn from the ways that rhett and link connect with each other and the audience and constantly pull you in through their bond. i feel like they're two halves of the perfect channel idk

Yes I love watcher! They both have very diffrent types of content (I'll be honest I haven't been keeping up that well lately 😬) I love watchers schedule and that they post once a week, but I get that Mythical had this format of posting everyday since the beginning (correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that'd how it was).

Now there's nothing wrong with an everyday posting and that's a bug reason they're successful, but I feel like it puts waaaayy too much pressure on their writers and they can't come up with too creative stuff and gotta stick to some old things (plus there is this whole; food content gives them more views so let's stick to that instead of keep pushing non food till we connect with new/old audience that likes the non food stuff)

I did see a change in Mores like they let it run longer sometimes even longer than the main which is great because they let loose and have fun.

what I like about watcher is that the majority is scripted but the joking and banter isn't,plus they have some established content they rotate around (watcher has some too and I think we all love the darts/shuffle board/scorn hole games) those are gun because they do some games and not just sit down and eat, which is why the vibration challenge or the task master or bring it back is so much more fun to watch than fuckin gut check 🙄

Mythical also needs to focuse more in the society,and not just on the app!! oh and tiktok they used to do sketches now we just get scenes from an episode we just watched?? maybe they wanna promote the episodes to others but to fans who watch most of the time it'd just so boring.... why are they not doing anything on Mythical bits anymore?? This isn't me hating on them please don't get me wrong. I just wanna see them have fun acting and make jokes they can't on gmm. All we get is the same old gmm videos some longer More and occasionally a 5 minutes special round of MS society and maybe a btm of an episode, they at least kept car biscuits cause its one if my favorites but to be 3rd degree is just not worth it anymore because they decided to take out so many lives and loft vlogs.

now watcher doesn't have that much exclusive content either but I did see that they're trying to do something new with watcher weekly+ so I'm excited about that (plus their tiers are cheaper 🫢)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you mean by watcher boys connecting with each other, like do not scripted stuff like eheh they went to Knotts and were the berry boys ? (I find those episodes very sweet)