Who is your daddy and what does he do?
Well, my name is Bryan Smith ; I currently live in Fresno, California. As of this interview, I work at a restaurant by the name of Applebees (glamorous huh?) but within a matter of months, will be the lead Graphic Design Artist for a startup company my roommate is the co-president of. I'm currently 20 years old, but if you ever play with me, you should know that sometimes I'm very mature but most of the time I just like to joke around and have a good time.
lolemo
Lies, everyone knows that all 20 year olds are immature jerks. Please explain what HaloGrid is and what role you fulfill in that community.
HaloGrid.com has been a large part of the Halo community for well over a year now. The site was founded after Arabian Camel (co -overlord of our clan) contacted me while I was running an up-and-coming machinima clan called HollywoodHalo ... Arabian Camel proposed the idea of joining forces and HaloGrid.com was formed. We originally began revolving the site around our machinima movies in particular... but we we grew, we broadened our horizons by taking the focus off our clan and more on Halo itself.
Since that day, the site has revolved mainly around the machinima movies by our clan (HollywoodHalo) but has since strived to create a community of both HH fans as well as fans of Halo itself.
This site has gone through many milestones including an event where we exceeded our hosting bandwidth by 500% due to one of our more popular movies (The Jump Tactics spoof series), and were forced to come up with over $2,000 USD (with help from our friends).
Returning to present day, we are trying to aim the site away from HollywoodHalo and more towards machinima itself. We created a place where new as well as veteran machinima clans and production groups can share their work, discuss tips and tricks, and just have a cool place to call their internet home. We, as well as community members post and discuss tutorials for filming, highlight movies from the Halo 2 machinima community and continue to show our own work to the community.
I am the overlord and creator of the machinima clan HollywoodHalo. It's taken over a year to get our clan to where we are now, and I'm more and more proud every time I hear comments from fans. Our clan has brought our fans together who now make up a large portion of our community. I film and edit 99.9% of our movies and as you can imagine, I also run the website HaloGrid.com. I post nearly all of our news updates, spotlight community content, administrate the forums... I designed and coded the website itself with the help of some community members such as JPhan7om (Admin of highimpacthalo.org). Basically, everything you see at HaloGrid.com is my handiwork... but Rome wasn't built over night; our site has gone through five versions over the past years.
What has been the most gratifying moment thus far in your experience in the Halo community?
We (HaloGrid.com and HollywoodHalo) have hit some major milestones over the past year... Here are a few examples:
- HaloGrid.com has been mentioned on G4TV's
Net to know list.
- Weezer.com (official band site) mentioned our music video for their song
Beverly Hills in their news updates which was a first in the Halo community.
- You guys (Bungie) mentioned our Webring JPhan7om and I created in the community news.
- We were nominated for over 10 movies in the 3rd Annual
Rockets on Prisoners awards
- We took home the Best Cinematography 3rd Annual Rockets on Prisoners awards
- We even managed to land an interview with
Burnie Burns (Creator of Red vs. Blue) which came as a great surprise to both us, and the community.
- Recently, two of our key voice actors BastardlyDanny and FrankSixer were interviewed at MLG New York by CNBC for a segment called 'On the money'.
But I have to say... being interviewed for a Bungie spotlight has got to be one of our most crowning achievements.
Which has been the most fun video to produce? Which video's final product were you most satisfied with?
We've made quite a few Halo machinima movies in our time in this community... way too many to count. Some were very short, very dumb movies and others were huge productions that took a great amount of effort from myself and everyone involved. The whole reason we make movies is to have fun with a group of talented and hilarious friends, and to share our hard work with the community and hopefully give them some enjoyment... even if it's a few minutes long. I would assume Red vs. Blue's reasonings would be quite similar.
The movie I am most satisfied with would probably be our movie entitled Frequency . That movie was my Everest. I filmed and edited for a solid week (most of our movies are filmed and edited within a few days). I spent at least 4-5 hours a day filming and a good portion of the following morning editing the footage filmed prior. All of our hard work (those who helped) worth it in the end because after we released it, the community loved it. I don't think I've gotten a bad review from it to this day. Don't get me wrong though, I am proud of every movie I make whether the community loves it or hates it because we have such a great time making our movies.
A dramatic recreation of a scene from Beautiful Needler
Do you have any new projects coming up that you'd like to tell us about?
I've been pretty tied up at work recently which makes filming new movies quite difficult, especially when we all don't have the luxury of being in the same time zone as each other. However, I've always got a few cards up my sleeve, I tend to surprise the community with new movies fairly often like when we released our comical music video Beautiful Needler . No one expected it and virtually everyone I've spoken with loved it.
As a closing statement I'd like to thank a few people....
Bungie: (Big surprise right?) for creating such an amazing piece of art that is the Halo universe. I've made a name for myself in the Halo community, but it would have never been possible if it wasn't for you guys. My hat's off to you.
The Halo Community, mainly the Machinima community: Hearing "Hey Suck, nice job on your new movie.. I showed it to all my friends and they loved it!" keeps me coming back to make more movies. There are very few reasons other than hearing those gratifying responses that keep me doing what I do. I'd also like to thank some key Halo community websites including Halo.bungie.org, highimpacthalo.org, and Halo2Forum.com. Without you guys, I would have never had an audience to share my work with in the first place... Without the exposure from these key communities, we wouldn't be where we are today.
The Red vs. Blue crew: After seeing your work way back in the early days of Halo... I was instantly hooked on Halo Machinima, I was determined to work my way to where you are, to have fans, to have a audience of people who respect my creativity and hard work.
My clan (HollywoodHalo): Thanking you is hard to put in words. Without key members of our clan like Mike W Ciazza (since departed), blackouTT, FrankSixer and BastardlyDanny... HollywoodHalo and HaloGrid.com would be nothing. Not only have you guys been the lifeblood of our growing community, but you have all been amazing friends, and I thank you for that.
To all you aspiring Machinima fans and creators in the Halo community... know that with enough perseverance and hard work, anything is possible. Don't let a few bad movie reviews get you discouraged, my first movies were horrid. It's taken us over a year to get to where we are today, so keep at it.
imSuck's most recent release was HMV Hell , a montage of music videos set in Halo 2 that he just released last week. It's expertly timed and has some genuinely hilarious moments. It's available in the downloads section of HaloGrid.