I told you guys I would post about the crazy flooding that happened in my apartment the other night. Basically, the water heater exploded and dumped water all throughout the living room, the bedroom, etc.

Luckily, it didn’t quite make it all the way back to the spare bedroom, where all of our equipment resides, but it got pretty darn close. The padding and carpet had to be torn out so it could dry, and my wife and I had to move all of the furniture to any spot that was dry.

You should recognize some of this stuff because it’s where we film Web Zeroes. Here are some pics:

Anywho, things are mostly back to normal, though he haven’t moved our furniture back yet. It also managed not to slow down production, as Nick and I are busily editing audio for the first 3 episodes of Season 2. Filming starts this next week.

In other news, downloadable versions are up for Web Zeroes, Ep 1: On Hobos. Have at it.

So I was going to post this last night, but the water heater in my apartment exploded, flooding the entire thing. Kinda nuts. I’ll post pictures tomorrow, but rest assured, I saved our equipment in the ensuing torrential downpour of water.

Anywho, Smooth Few Films now presents Episode One of Web Zeroes, “On Hobos”, for your viewing enjoyment. In this episode, Nate, Alex and Ray try to figure out which game would be perfect for their new machinima endeavor. Episode Two should be out in a couple of weeks.

Video after the jump!

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I thought I’d post to let you guys know that Jace (aka DamnDangerous) has put up a preview of 2 songs from the TLW Season One Soundtrack, due out in the next couple of weeks. I know we’ve been promising this thing for awhile, but getting everything in order is a lot more complicated than we thought, and the album got all the time it needed to be as excellent as possible.

The two songs are on Jace’s myspace page. One is titled “If It Bleeds”, which is from Episode 8 during the hunt of the Domination Man, and the other is called “The End of all Things” which is from part 3 of the Season Finale. He has remixed and fleshed out both of these tracks from their original small bits from the episodes and turned them into fully realized songs.

Remember, this is just a preview, so you won’t be able to download them until we start selling the album. Trust me when I say it’ll be worth it.

Each of the songs that Jace chose for the soundtrack has gotten similar treatment (10 songs in all plus 3 additional versions of the theme), so you can trust me when I say it freaking rocks. Expect a full track listing and price details in a week or so.

Go listen!

Season 2 production is fully underway. We got together and recorded audio for episodes 1-3 the other night, and it was definitely a time saver already to do them all at once. Since the hard part is getting everyone together and then getting started, it really took about the same amount of time as it does for one episode. The method is already working!

The reason I waited so long to update this week is because I was hoping to have something cool to share with you guys, but I’m going to have to wait just a little longer. Rest assured, a barrage of content is going to start coming out next week, ranging from Web Zeroes episodes to TLW teasers, screenshots and even the soundtrack very soon.

Also, I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Ross Scott’s work, but he has put together a brilliant machinima piece called “Oil’s Well” that he produced in Half-Life 2. Give it a watch, and visit his website.

So, here’s the commentary for Episode 3 of The Leet World, which we were finally able to record when Daniel got back. Pardon some of the audio levels, there were a few mic issues, forcing us to record it the way we would a podcast, rather than what the last commentaries sounded like.

On the plus side, it is now attached to the video of Episode 3, so no worries on playing it yourself in time with the audio file. We might get around to the first two eps eventually, but there definitely wasn’t time to do it over the weekend. This whole commentary thing has been trial and error for us, that’s for sure. I think the Ep 4 commentary will be perfect.

So listen/watch, comment and enjoy. Don’t worry if you don’t see any video at first, it doesn’t start til a few seconds in.

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As some of you know, we were nominated for some awards recently. Well, the machinima lords and lasses have handed down the full list of 2008 Machinima Filmfest Nominees, so go ahead and get your browsing on. There are a few good pieces on there- some of it I had seen, some of it was new to me.

Notable among those are several nominations for our friends over at Lit Fuse, a fun short called World of Workcraft that combines cs_office with WoW, and a cinematography nomination for TheDuoGroup. If you’re unfamiliar with that last one, you need to check out Without Providence, which has some stunning visuals for a Halo short. Big fan of their work. Great stuff.

Check out the whole list of nominations here. Seen any of the other entries? What are your favorites?

Wanted to give you guys a couple of production updates, as well as some screenies from the new episode of Web Zeroes that we filmed over the weekend. For future information, 9:30 am-11:30pm shoots were first thought up by the devil. And carried out by his bee-eff-eff Daniel, our steely-resolved director.

The first two episodes of The Leet World, Season 2 are almost written. There are some things we learned from the Finale - namely, that filming 3 “episodes” at once goes a lot faster than the normal method.

The idea this season is to film in 3 episode chunks. It’ll be an interesting experiment. So, by the time we release Episode One, we should be done filming the first three. What’s even cooler for you guys is that in theory, you should be getting a new episode almost exactly every two weeks on the dot, and in the meantime, we’re three episodes ahead, not killing ourselves. I’m a fan of the not killing ourselves part.

Of course, that’s all in theory, which, like Nick’s beard, is the subject of much speculation and myth. Men have died on those furry peaks. We’ll see how it goes. Filming hopefully starts next weekend.

Here are those screenshots I promised thirty seven seconds ago:

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been without Internet for a few days here.

However, I return with some good news. A few weeks ago, we submitted our videos to the Machinima Festival that happens in Novemeber. Well, the results are in: Smooth Few Films has been nominated for several machinima awards!

Here’s the breakdown:

• Day in the Life of a Turret- Best Short Format/ Best Music

• The Bag Boy- Best Short Format/ Best Voice Acting/ Best Writing

• The Leet World- Honorary Mention, Best Series

I won’t pretend that we’re not disappointed that The Leet World didn’t get an actual nomination for Best Series, seeing as how hard we’ve worked on it, or that it wasn’t recognized for the incredible music that Jace has continually produced for us. Personally, I still can’t think of another series save for Red Vs Blue that devotes as much as we do to characters and story, but to each his own.

All that said, though, we’re excited to be nominated for what we did get nominated for, and hopefully we can take home some kind of award come November, when the winners are announced.

In other news, production is starting on The Leet World, Season 2, and we filmed the next episode of Web Zeroes over the weekend. Stick around, because more things are coming this week, including commentary for Episode 3 of TLW!

Just like I promised, here’s a gag reel from Web Zeroes. At one point, you’ll notice that there’s a scene we can barely make it through because I am caught in a fit of laughter that I can’t seem to get out of. It’s pretty embarrassing to see it again.

Also, some of this is NSFW, so keep that in mind when you watch.

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Filming the first official episode this weekend. Looking forward to it. Also, recording either a podcast or a commentary tomorrow, depending on what kind of time we’ve got.

And if you like Final Fantasy, Anthony at Gamersushi has done a pretty wicked write up about the series. Go check it out and be sure to Digg it for him.

After several months of being away, Daniel has finally returned to Houston, marking the end of a production lull for us here at Smooth Few Films. We’ve been working on some pre-production and housekeeping things (new sites, scripts, etc), but now we can fully jump into things like Web Zeroes, G.R.I.E.F. and early work on Season 2 of The Leet World.

Our break for the last few months was much needed, as we had driven ourselves into exhaustion after working on TLW for a year straight (seriously). It was a time fraught with ups and downs, but we learned a lot of lessons from it, and we have a plan to make everything easier on ourselves moving forward. You’ll hear more about that soon.

In other news, the TLW soundtrack is essentially finished. We have to take a few more steps before we can actually put it up for sale. We’ll make a post soon enough detailing prices, but rest assured, it’ll be affordable, and it’ll be worth every penny. In addition, you’ll be able to get individual songs if you don’t want to get the whole album.

Also, a new TLW Season 2 teaser is on the way for hopefully sometime next week, with some Web Zeroes bloopers dropping soon as well. Things are kicking into full gear again, and there will be tons of content coming over the next couple of weeks. Oh, and one other thing…

Who dat?