Knightmare RPG

Knightmare inspired creations from the community.
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Pooka
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Knightmare RPG

Post by Pooka »

I'm dredging up this cranky old cobweb-strewn thread, for old time's sake.

As some of you may remember, or have been wondering, Knightmare RPG Series 4, 5, 6 and 7 never saw the light of day. In its wake came other community-sourced Knightmare projects with a greater level of success, mainly on a smaller scale than what we intended to do with the RPG.

Hypothetically, with the Magic Mirror technology we had at the time, Series 5 could have been run, but with difficulty - there were seven quests filmed for that Series, and with the scenes available, there could have been something run similar to Series 3.

(Series 4 could have also been run, although very few of the scenes filmed for that Series were related to the planned gameplay - they were mostly plot-driven spyglass scenes, and would work better if edited together into a movie, IMHO!)

Series 6 and 7 were the best things we did, but the number of quests we filmed for (20, if I can remember correctly!) was perhaps a little over-ambitious; the number of characters, scenes and locations were also huge, although as a team we did a hell of a lot of work on it. In truth, although there were references to a 'game engine' during later series' filming, nothing was really decided upon: we had written a filmable fantasy series, but very few of us had the technical knowledge to move any further forward!

The simple truth is that, to broadcast the scenes, we decided that we needed to use Chromakey blue screen technology, because that's what Knightmare did. Very little editing was done on the scenes in the end - Forester had a fair crack and did well, but as was said:
Forester wrote: 07 May 2006, 14:22
Kieran wrote: Editing for blue screen is quite a lengthy process, especially when you've got three seasons of it to edit.
And only one person bothers to do anything about it and receives no support from anyone else in the process.
Protracted inaction on our part - especially as a lot of us drifted away to do other things - basically halted production. So that's why, although four more seasons were filmed, Series 3 was the last of the Knightmare RPGs to be played.

Why am I saying all this? Well, I'm currently doing a clear-out of my computer and have discovered I have the rushes for Series 4, 5 and 6 on my external HD. (I'm still upset at having never seen Series 7, as it's the best thing we did for a country mile and, although I believe that either Forester or Myatt may have the raw footage, getting hold of it may be a bit of a pipe dream!) I'm not going to be so forward as to suggesting I share absolutely everything filmed by a group amounting to around 30 people through time, but just in case anyone's wondering what happened to the footage (or any of the cast or crew want to see it), I do have at least some.

What hasn't been mentioned on this thread is that we did also film some side projects involving our characters from Knightmare RPG. Treguard and Frégo Do Blackpool was actually finished but never edited together, The Bigger Job was filmed but never released, and we cancelled A Knightmare Big Brother as our filming for Series 7 was so packed we couldn't fit anything else in.

For something that started looking like this, maybe we were a bit over-ambitious at the time, but my God, did it feel good to be a part of with costume on and camera rolling.
Pooka - teacher, writer, comedian, musician, geek, and full-time Knightmarian.
Snowcat
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Re: Knightmare RPG

Post by Snowcat »

I must admit, it was a damn shame seeing the KMRPG nose dive like it did. Though you're quite right in saying the majority of us only have ourselves to blame for it doing so!

I must admit, I think back to many of my own mistakes during the filming sessions I attended and cringe. "Collie cam" during what should have been static SFX shots. Lighting that makes the chromakey effect difficult, if not impossible, to actually pull off. There are probably many others that I've forgotten about.

I MIGHT have some of the old footage laying around. Though it will have survived multiple HDD failures if I do. As such, I'd love to get a copy of what you have, so I can refill a few gaps here and there.

There's also the fact that technology has come a noticeable distance since we did the original filming. Shotcut ( https://shotcut.org/ )allowing for basic chromakey effects without the complicated multi-masking of old for example. There's even the possibility of doing basic things within OBS ( https://obsproject.com/ ). Opening the tantalising chance of doing Knightmare the same way we originally saw it. Live...

THAT would require a lot of work and pre-planning to pull off though. Given our previous history, I'm not sure if the KM community would be up for such a production. :(
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