Moving pictures

Summer is chugging along and so is hoodo and many things we're doing at Camp Hastur. The last week was mostly spent hacking with geoCouch, coding javascript and negotiating, writing proposals and things like that. Our man in England, Basim, is getting ready to dive in proper, invaluable resource for marketing and ideas, really looking forward to meet up with the Baz in a few weeks.

I'm not going to start a 'so you want to produce a game' rant here but oh boy, there's so much work you wouldn't believe..

Besides all the mechanical things related to game production and decision making, camp Hastur has had it's share of visitors. Last week we talked with jo-jo the dog films about producing a cool infomercial about hoodo. Very lifestyle, very in your face kind of approach with the short film. Jo-Jo hails from my home town Tornio and they have produced excellent stuff in the past, including a short film called 'Bunny the killer thing' that got international publicity and high acclaim across the board.

We talked about some ideas for the film with Mr. Makkonen and again I noticed the benefits of not trying to do everything yourself. His questions and ideas about the narrative and so on were fed back into our game, there's so much to say about collaborating with people from various fields.

I remember the long years I tried to do everything by myself and think back, collaborating with other creative individuals is the best way. If you dear reader, still have the silly notion that you've going to get your thing (game, movie, what-have-you) exactly the way you envisioned it, stop immediately, get in touch with other creative individuals and find ways to collaborate. It's so much fun and you'll have to think from a bigger perspective. It's great to hear how other people see your product and yourself promoting it, bouncing off ideas and the like.

Everybody that came to camp Hastur that I talked about hoodo had many good ideas, information was passed back and forth. I've been talking to a couple of youth councillors over the years and even more this year, we got Mr Miku to visit our camp and we had a good chat about what he's doing in his field and what we could work out together to get the shy kids out of their rooms and out there to play and make friends and to collaborate. A few new ideas for collaborative gaming on hoodo popped up, some involving rescuing penguins. Interesting stuff..

The weather's been good this summer. For saturday nights kickback, we took the camera and went to an old abandoned warehouse to film a short. Too much inspiration from bunny the killer thing maybe. Anyways, lots of fun acting like a teenager with a video camera. ;P

More interesting things happening this week, a local radio is coming to interview us, the word has spread about camp Hastur and they're doing a feature about our space. Trying to think of interesting points to talk about, should be good!

Catch you all soon in the next installment!

Mr Makkonen, jo-jo!

the camera rig all set up. lights, cameras, action!

Mr Miku grabbing the attention of troubled teens =)