Greetings adventure fans! The moment is finally upon us, the conclusion of the Double Fine Adventure is here! It's been a long and unprecedented journey, and we can't express how lucky we feel to have captured it. From before even being a germ of an idea to Tim holding a retail box in his hands, the Double Fine Adventure has tracked over three years of game development.
Now that shooting on the Double Fine Adventure is wrapped we’re transitioning into full blown production on the Blu-ray. This is a fairly lengthy and complex process but the road is clear for us to power forward. All the work being done for the blu-ray release will also be integrated into the content here on VHX, so video files will be updated to reflect the new features like improved color and commentary tracks. We're going to hold off on making per-episode updates and simply let everyone know once the full package is finished.
The major steps are as follows-
Whiteboxing menus, creating navigation - Setting up different layouts in photoshop with placeholder art, trying to get a feel for the best way to present content on the disc.
Creating/Formatting subtitles - We currently have transcripts for 16 of the 20 episodes in the series. We’re currently proofing the ones that are already in hand and prepping the last four to be processed. These trickle out to Youtube as they are finished, but we’ll make an announcement once the series is complete.
Selecting Special Features - Paul Owens is going back through all the footage from the series and pulling out deleted scenes and “bloopers” to include on the discs. Through testing we’ve determined that we have about 6 hours of space per disc; 4 hours for the series and 2 for special features. We’ll do our best to make sure each one is packed. At 3 discs that makes for a 12 hour series with an additional estimated 6 hours of special features.
New Color On Episodes & Blur Removal - Asif is going back over the entire series to update the color grading and noise reduction. We’ve learned a few things since the start of the series and have access to more software tools, so even though we changed production gear halfway through, we hope to get a nice sense of consistency across all the episodes. All the spoiler blurs are being removed now as well.
Uncorrected footage
As presented in original episode
New version
Commentary recording - We’re settled on recording two tracks for each episode, one track featuring a selection of Double Fine staff and one just for 2 Player. We managed to get a few of these done earlier before Oliver left for Germany, and we’re going to be rolling in to recording on the rest very soon.
The Double Fine Adventure launched on February 8th of 2012, placing the production schedule at well over three years now. The point at which it really started can be traced back a bit further though, back to a series of fortunate circumstances that found us in the right place at the right time.
I was just looking back through my email to find my first correspondence with Tim, and I had to keep hitting the back button until I was in the high 900’s; June 16th of 2011 to be exact. We were introduced in email via Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade, who we had developed our first major series for, “Penny Arcade: The Series.” Robert had remained our friend, and one of the few people in the industry we knew that was connected to nearly everyone.
At the time we were shooting our second feature length doc, “Minecraft: The Story of Mojang.” Markus “Notch” Persson had just swept the GDC awards with numerous wins for Minecraft. It happened to be a year that Tim was hosting. We knew Tim was a charismatic voice in the industry who had embraced a philosophy of experimentation and adaptation to market challenges. While he had no direct connection to Minecraft, we thought he would have some interesting things to say about its success.
This trip would be our first time at the Double Fine offices, a place we would later get to know so well. After our interview with Tim in the Cold Room, we went out to lunch. The primary topic of conversation was our experience with Kickstarter as a funding platform for our Minecraft film. Our experience with Tim at Double Fine stuck with us, and as the Minecraft project drew to a close we started thinking about what we really wanted to do next.
From November 8th, 2011-
Hey Tim and Greg,
I wanted to drop you guys a line about an idea we're working on. Over the years we have wanted to produce a more in-depth development documentary, but it's been difficult to get it off the ground. We feel we're at a point where we could successfully use Kickstarter to independently fund a project like this.
Our visit to the studio gave us the impression Double Fine has the kind of charisma and environment we're looking for. If you guys plan to continue working on smaller games the development cycle could be short enough that funding through Kickstarter could be within reason. Ideally we would want to cover something from beginning to end.
Depending on what you guys think of an idea like this it could be approached a few different ways. I'm just curious to hear if it's something you would be interested in pursuing with us.
Thanks again,
-Paul
