HomeStation Welcomes the HomeCast!
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Creating a Home community media project is, quite simply, a ridiculous amount of work. Maintaining one and keeping it going for any length of time is a labor of love for people who think sleep is overrated. You just really have to be committed to delivering a consistent product on a regular basis, and building up an audience through the virtues of your work.
Home community media projects serve different functions and cater to different demographics; like a well-stocked newsstand, there’s something for nearly everyone. Within this pantheon of artists, writers and filmmakers, however, there are a few names that really do stand out.
One of those names is HearItWow.
It is virtually impossible to be a Home citizen and not be, on some level, aware of HearItWow. The creator and host of the HomeCast, HearItWow achieved a remarkable feat: creating a product so good — so informative and entertaining — that it made it into Home itself.
If Home had trophies, that would be a platinum.
The HomeCast is, in the world of Home community media, A Big Deal. Which is why it gives me great pleasure to announce a new association and partnership between the HomeCast and HomeStation Magazine.
And, since HSM works with AlphaZone4 — the most visited Home fansite in the world — that’s a pretty awesome combine-to-form-Voltron trifecta going on here.
We touched base with HearItWow to gain some insights from him on this move:
HSM: You have one of the most high-visibility projects in the entire Home community media scene; why choose to work with HomeStation?
HIW: It comes down to what marketing folks like to call “synergy.” HomeCast is a nice little five-minute (or so) guide to some of what’s happening in Home, but that time limit means I can’t ever really go in depth about things, or hope to cover everything. So with HomeCast, you get a lot of “well, here it is,” without the chance to really explore what it means. HomeStation covers that part of the Home experience exceptionally well, so it just seemed a natural fit for me.
HSM: You now have a team that works with you on HomeCast episodes; can you give us some insight into the production of a typical HomeCast episode?
HIW: Two things most people don’t know about HomeCast: It’s unscripted, and it’s largely produced in two days. A lot of times footage gets shot before the narration is even written, or I’ll have everyone together for a shoot with only a rough idea of what I want to see in front of the camera. Shoots are very loose, which normally doesn’t work on such a tight deadline…the average production time is about 25 hours, and that doesn’t include research.
Saturday is writing, audio recording and shooting day. Typically, I’ll start writing the script at 10 AM, record at 2 PM and have a finished audio master at 4 PM. Then it’s into Home to start shooting everything. Sunday is editing day. That usually goes from 10 AM to 8 or 9 PM.
None of this would be remotely possible without the support of a very dedicated cast and production team. There’s a few people who’ve been with me since the first epsiode, including VirtualKandi and Stephypeachz, people who’ve joined along the way, like christophersteve, Medic4you and destinysanctuar, and people who just found there way into a shoot one day and became indispensible, like BorderBrother and BooBoo. I’ve also had a tremendous amount of support from people like Jersquall, Sophronia, the Homelings, Hamster Freedom, the Grey Gamers and, of course, Avatard Productions, which has had a pretty big role in some recent shoots. There are about 100 other people I could mention who’ve jumped in to help with a shoot or offered some information that I needed. I might be the guy narrating and cutting things together, but HomeCast reflects the contributions of a lot of voices from both the user and development communities. I’m really nothing without them, and I’m always thankful for what they contribute.
Anyone who’s been on a HomeCast shoot knows what it’s like…there’s very little direction. “Dress for a cocktail party” and “give me some emotes that look surprised” are about as much as I give. The regular cast knows to just run with it, and a lot of times I’ll just let the camera roll to see what they do. Sometimes I’ll see someone do something in the background and throw it into a shot. Nothing staged in HomeCast is ever random, but the actions of the cast can be. It adds a little documentary touch to things that’s only possible because I’m burning bytes and not film.
HSM: HomeCast is notorious for having some very complicated shots — the infamous one-hundred cactuars, or the Demon War Horse fight. What would you say has been the hardest HomeCast episode or sequence to pull off?
HIW: The recent Cutthroats episode was probably the most challenging to pull off. First, it’s loaded with effects shots, including almost all of the narration shots, Gingerbeard in the cage, etc. The other challenge was getting the cast to focus. Put a bunch of gamers on pirate ships and they’re going to spend half of the time blowing each other up. Those shoots really were barely managed chaos. A heck of a lot of fun, but extremely stressful for the guy behind the camera.
Hands down, though, the single hardest sequence was the Demon War Horse vs. Cactuar Street Fighter parody. I had to shoot the companion against a green screen, and the only way to get the angle right was to use the old Menu Pad camera, which is notoriously shaky. Companions are hard to shoot because they do what they want, and they don’t care where the camera is pointed. It took nearly 90 minutes of shooting to get the right 5 seconds of footage for that segment, and it took about three hours just to get that 90 minutes of shooting.
HSM: You are unquestionably one of Home’s top filmmakers. Wish-list time: what sort of tools do you wish you had that would make HomeCast easier to film?
HIW: Part of the fun of HomeCast is figuring out how to work within the limitations of Home to get the shots that I want, especially in public spaces, where I don’t have the benefit of a Loot Active camera that I can place anywhere. It’s always exciting to find a new costume that gives me a different camera angle, like the Mech Jet Suit or the Urban Camo Trash Can. Would I like to have a go-anywhere camera? Of course, but that might make things too easy.
What I’d really love to have is the ability to turn off interactive popups, the ability to have avatars perform their talking animations without the chat box on the screen and the removal of all that avatar fidgeting. I don’t mind when an idle avatar looks around, but they spend way too much time spitting and shifting back and forth on their feet. That’s absolute murder when I’m trying to set up a shot, because the avatar will suddenly start looking in a different direction.
Also, that closed-mouth talking animation where the avatar waves its hands around has to go. People don’t talk without moving their lips, and I spend half my time shooting around that animation.
HSM: Let’s talk product format for a moment. How do you see HomeCast evolving in the months to come? Where do you hope to take it?
HIW: I think HomeCast will always have that format of a narrator introducing segments, but beyond that, anything is possible. Recently, I’ve had a pirate and his first mate take over the episode as narrators, and spent four minutes creating an in-depth Granzella Great Edo walkthrough. I’ve also ratcheted up the humor a lot more this year, so certainly that’s going to continue to be an element.
Back when I created the audio HomeCast, it was about answering a community need. There were a lot of questions, and the forums had the answers, but finding them could be a challenge. HomeCast grew out of my desire to create a quick, weekly guide to the information that Home users really needed. Since that first episode, and since HomeCast’s arrival in video form, a lot of things have happened in the community. There are tons of personal space previews now, and the Virtual Item Showcase covers far more items in far less time than the HomeCast format really allows. So that’s forced me to dig a little deeper to find things that people really want to see.
My goal for HomeCast has always been to have it be more forward-looking, and I love being able to preview things, or have them covered the same day that they release. That two-week lag between submission and arrival in the theater very occasionally makes me feel like I’m recycling old news, even though it’s new when I’m covering it. I’d like to have a little more “new” news, which is why I jump at any preview opportunity.
HSM: What advice can you offer to aspiring machinimists who might want to get their work into PlayStation Home?
HIW: Find something about Home that you love, something that you can’t stop talking about, then develop it into a show that you can sustain. That’s the absolute hardest part. Once you’re in the theater, your life revolves around deadlines, and deadlines don’t care if you’re sick, if you’re exhausted, if your computer is crashing or if you’d rather be at PAX East. Sooner or later, production becomes a grind, and sometimes an episode will kick the heck out of you before it bends into whatever shape is needed. No matter how much you love what you do, sooner or later those trials come. Being able to stand up to them, survive them and then put them behind you, while still getting out the best product possible, is what separates the true producers from the dreamers. When it’s fun, it’s incredible, but when it’s hard, it can be hell. Three hours of trying to get a companion in the right position on a green screen with a shaky camera hell. If it’s what you really want to do, you take the hell with the good, and you laugh about the hell when it’s passed.
Please join us in welcoming HearItWow and the HomeCast to HomeStation Magazine!
May 17th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 7 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Wow nice interview Norse and welcome to the HomeStation Magazine staff Hearitwow. I love working with you on the HomeCast episodes and look forward ro a long association with you.
Glad to have you on board, HearItWow! I look forward to seeing what we can build together.
HomeCast is very important to Home! The indepth information about Home you bring Wow, really is what makes Home’s theaters tick.
A synthesis with HSM…. Cool!
This is great! I look forward to every HomeCast episode. Welcome aboard, but please remember that HSM is a Cactuar friendly publication!
As A Member of Grey Gamer an Homecast team just like to say good for you Hearitwow an to hsm
Such a long time in the making. Very glad you’re here. Buy me pizza?
Pepperoni or mushroom, Jers?
Thanks to everyone for the kind words, and I hope I can live up to the high standards that HSM has set.
In reading through this, I did notice that one piece of HomeCast didn’t get mentioned, and that’s its history. The show that everyone enjoys would not exist without the support of GlassWalls and Jack Buser, who gave me the shot, DirectorOnDuty, who’s been a fantastic resource whenever I have questions, and Homeboy79, who really established the visual style and pace of HomeCast. I’ve been building on what he began.