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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 9, 2023 16:25:46 GMT -5
YouTube takes a bat to the quality with their terrible compression. It's always been a pain.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 8, 2023 15:47:22 GMT -5
If they're presumably all furloughed or laid off or whatever, I find it odd that they would continue to log in and browse quietly but not say anything, particularly when people bring up their absences on the forum itself. Particularly during the campaign which went as badly as it did and could have really used one of them to chime in.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 5, 2023 11:47:09 GMT -5
That's why I frankly prefer Emily to Jonah. He literally has no personality other than "Aging hipster that's vaguely pleased to be here".
At least with Emily she's kinda sarcastic, she's...she's...well, she's kind of boring, too. But she isn't freakishly tall and they don't have to struggle to fit her and the bots in the same shot. She looks more natural standing next to puppets. So that's something.
Its kind of like preferring whole wheat bread to white bread. At least the whole wheat bread has SOMETHING.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 3, 2023 14:13:21 GMT -5
Also - I don't see the passion from the fans. SciFi was going to drop the reruns in January 2003, and apparently enough people wrote them nice e-mails that they said what the hell and did it for one more year. These were fans fighting to keep the same 15 episodes running in a loop at 9am on Saturday mornings. The Reddit/Facebooks have largely gone back to discussing the original series. There's no attempt to share the episodes, make new fans, "save MST3K'. Back before YouTube, all there was were those re-runs, tape traded copies of dubious quality and Rhino, who didn't start releasing the DVD 4-packs until November '02, and none of the Sci-Fi episodes until November '03. And those 15 episodes were actually *good*. And that's where the major miscalculation with season 13 was. Apparently Joel and Co thought that new content by itself was enough to keep fans engaged and willing to pay for more. But it's the *quality* that the fans would follow MST to the ends of the earth for. I've been formulating a thought experiment in my head over the last week or so. Imagine... say for some reason time and space get all mixed up and somehow the 13 episodes of season 9 never existed in our universe. And for season 13 Joel and Co magically somehow produced episodes that are identical to the 13 episodes of Season 9 we all know. Same cast, same everything. Hypothetically. Projected Man, Phantom Planet, Puma Man, Werewolf, Deadly Bees, Space Children, Hobgoblins, Touch of Satan, Gorgo, Final Sacrifice, Devil Fish, Screaming Skull, Delta Knights MSTies would walk over hot coals to raise money for a Season 14 if Season 13 looked like that. But the Season 13 we did get...doesn't foster those kinds of feelings. There's a reason no one is meme-ing on the new episodes on Reddit and Facebook: They aren't as memorable or well-made. And until they realize fans want high quality new content and not just ANY new content that's called MST, they're going to keep bleeding fans the further we get from the kind of episodes people still obsess over 25 years on. Its really that simple. And I know it sounds like living in the past, but if I were Joel I would be moving heaven and earth at this point to try and rebuild that formula that worked so well in the 90s. Maybe you can't get the people, but you can get the same kind of setup. You can make them the way they used to be made. Because he's essentially wasted 8 years, 3 seasons and ~$12 million dollars on what's now essentially a creative dead end, with the failure of the last campaign. But I'm getting off topic... That's another thing that Joel should emphasize in the next campaign to win back fans; a stripped down "return to our roots" approach to making season 14.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 3, 2023 13:38:39 GMT -5
Unless... That corporate partner is Shout. But there are certainly questions about how much Shout is willing to actually pay for new MST content considering their history of... not paying for anything (besides the initial investment of securing the rights from Jim).
If they somehow are willing to throw in 3 million dollars, they already control the IP, Joel wouldn't have much of a choice there.
But even if its Pluto or Tubi or whatever, they 100% need to publicly indicate what percent of the total tab that partner is picking up. Anything less than half, or if it seems like the fans are still picking up the majority of the costs... wouldn't do much to address one of the biggest issues that even Joel addressed in his message after the end of the campaign.
It can't just be a token "Tubi is going to pay a license fee for Season 14, but we still need 4+ million dollars."
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 3, 2023 12:11:55 GMT -5
Its gotta be on Kickstarter again, that's pretty clear. And it'd be smart to do around tax season, somewhere between March and June.
Its also pretty clear they can't come back and ask for 4+ million for 6 episodes.
It's also pretty evident at this point they need a "partner" that publicly picks up a significant part of the check.
"We've signed a deal with Company X, they're going to fund half of Season 14 if the fans raise the other half of the money up-front."
The question is...who's the company? And what's the minimum total the fans would need to raise?
7.4 million for 12 episodes, minus 800k (assuming they're committed to eliminating the PA office space), divided by half is 3.3 million.
Is that kind of money still attainable?
Does Joel NEED to confirm who the cast is (and isn't) up front?
Lots of moving parts.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 3, 2023 8:48:40 GMT -5
Let's steer the conversation somewhere else.
What are our thoughts on if and when the next campaign is? What do we think it's going to look like?
Is there a chance it just doesn't happen at all?
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 16:23:35 GMT -5
And as you can see from all of the behind the scenes stuff and explanations and production videos... they spent an incredible amount of time and money on something that somebody within the first few hours of talking about it should have said "Hey this is an interesting concept, but doesn't sound like it'll make a good show."
They shot at least two pilots, had at least two different casts and crews for those pilots, built two different X-box/tv wheel rigs and presumably spent at least a year's worth of development time on it...and that's the result.
Sometimes innovation for the sake of innovation isn't the path to go down. Sometimes the conventional way to do things is the best way. And that's the lesson Joel apparently didn't take away from the TV Wheel experience, since he's spent the last decade trying to reinvent the MST wheel.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 15:51:14 GMT -5
Joel's TV Wheel pilot popped up on my YouTube feed. Haven't seen it in years. Its really...very Joel. For better or worse. I'll let you decide why I'm posting it in the MST reboot and Season 14 post-mortem thread. (Although the Pumpernickle sketch is good)
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 14:19:01 GMT -5
View Attachmentnot a slam dunk but at least we know baron and hampton were the puppeteers for the riffing segments for season 13. The question is whether that was posed or taken during actual production. Here's to hoping they actually did do it themselves. It changed so much between season of who did what that it's hard to keep track of.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 14:12:39 GMT -5
So they're very slowly moving back to the classic way of doing it, as far as how the bots are controlled.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 14:11:22 GMT -5
I seem to recall for the theater segments in season 11, the riffs were recorded separately by each riffer in their own booth and laid in later. I don't know how they did host segments in Season 11.
For season 12 all 3 riffers recorded TOGETHER, but in a sound booth, and then laid in over the theater segments. The host segments were done by multiple puppeteers per bot with the actor standing off to the side, voicing their lines.
For season 13, I seem to recall that they were physically present during theater filming, but spoke into mics that controlled servos on the bots' mouths. And they filmed both host and theater segments this way. And the bots now only had 1 puppeteer each.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 13:12:53 GMT -5
Moving on. I'm interested that you were asked about Robot Wars after the premiere (I'm not scrolling back to find the exact user, ha). I've done surveys before where they ask if you've seen a certain number of episodes of a season, and then you give feedback. Obviously you can't rely entirely on the data and can't let it dictate your show - but it would have been some great anonymous feedback from actual fans after the season ended. That was me. I'm genuinely surprised they never did a follow-up at the end of the season. It would've informed them about how to proceed with the Season 14 campaign, at least.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 13:02:30 GMT -5
Just so everyone else reading this thread understands this, just stop responding to kracker.
Bob, dudehitscar, everyone.
He just wants to make you mad, he just wants to get a rise out of you, he wants to argue and he wants to waste your time and fill up pages with nonsense. Because he's just amusing himself. He's not interested in genuine discussion. He doesn't care what your answer is. You won't win.
Just talk around him. Pretend he isn't here.
There's a phrase about wrestling with pigs that seems apt here. Just stop. If you keep giving him attention, it only empowers him.
Its mildly irritating that I need to remind anyone of this, when its pretty clear he's just here to...yes, troll.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 1, 2023 12:49:24 GMT -5
Ah, the Bill Maher method. Stir the pot with clearly incorrect takes to make other people mad. Got it.
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