We’re back!
Long is the way, and hard, that out of darkness leads into light…
Welcome back friends of the Shadow! After a long and lamentable absence, we (the Midnight Chronicles staff) are back in cyberspace and eager to fan the flames of our fires! Much has happened in the world of Midnight over the last several months, so pray lend me your ears and I shall tell thee of our saga…
First and foremost, an apology to all of our friends for our extended absence and lack of regular updates with the Midnight Chronicles website. I can only hope that our new site and renewed sense of purpose can help make up for lost time. That said, we are very excited about midnight-chronicles.com as it is going to make regular updates substantially easier for our busy staff! Please stay tuned!
But back to our story…
The Shadow, as you know, is a powerful adversary and lesser adventurers than ourselves might have been consumed by his malice. Fortunately, we’ve persevered and kept the Landroval Studio home fires burning! Dimly they glowed, yes - and for many months. But never extinguished!
To better understand our current situation with Midnight Chronicles, we need to go back in time to GenCon Indianapolis, 2007. It was at GenCon that we, for the first time, screened completed scenes from Midnight Chronicles to a public audience and unveiled the second of our three trailers. Post-production was already well underway, but photography was still needed for our opening scene and many visual effect shots had not yet been started. Despite this, the GenCon screening went over well. We had our first opportunity to speak with our target audience and answer questions about the project.
Shortly thereafter, and just before Halloween, we found ourselves on the cliffs of Taylor’s Falls, shooting a new opening sequence for Midnight Chronicles. On the second day we journeyed south, bringing our shoot full circle when we returned to the fields of Pepin, Wisconsin. It was here that our principal photography began over a year earlier when Christian, our director, called “action!” and we filmed the very first shots of Mag Kiln discovering an ancient obelisk in the heart of an old forest.
With our new opening scene in the can it was back to the editing room to assemble the final picture. As the days and weeks rolled by we began zeroing in on the heart of the story and by December 2007 we at last had picture lock.
Picture lock allowed our 300+ visual effect shots to be put on the fast track, and our small team of artists began full-time effect work in January 2008. An incredible amount of effort went into rotoscoping, pulling keys, painting mattes, and compositing final shots and after several months of work, Midnight Chronicles was finally ready for color correction and sound mixing.
By this time GenCon 2008 was quickly approaching, so we re-doubled our efforts in order to deliver a first screening to our fans in Indianapolis. With color correction, scoring and sound mixing blazing ahead, we raced to turn in final effect shots and get everything ready for our premiere screenings.
The first screening took place here in Minneapolis at the famous Riverview theater on July 31st, 2008. All cast, crew and friends were invited to the show and we had an amazing turn-out. Midnight Chronicles was still a work-in-progress at this point, but we desperately wanted to show our work to those who were involved in the project and had been waiting patiently for so long.
A month later we traveled to GenCon Indianapolis and screened Midnight Chronicles on three separate occasions over the course of the weekend. It was an amazing opportunity for us to finally show our completed work to our fans, and also extremely rewarding. We were, at last, able to open ourselves up to all the questions, praise and feedback from our target audience and put it to use with our next round of editing. Yes, there was still more work to be done!
Which brings us to the present. A post-GenCon edit of Midnight Chronicles has already been finished and we’re proud to say that it is by far the best version we’ve made to date! (And also, THE LAST!) Once completed, Midnight Chronicles will be out of post-production and into the hands of our capable executive producers who will soon find a home for it. Where that home will be remains to be seen, but rest assured that once we know, you will know!
As of this entry, Jason (our re-recording mixer and post-production extraordinaire) sits tweaking the levels on the sound design with his mixing board. A clap of thunder and the clatter of crossing blades rings through the corridors of Fantasy Flight Games (much to the chagrin of our co-workers!) and a smile creeps across our faces. We know that our journey is nearly at an end, and that the empty DVDs and Blu-ray discs sitting next to us will soon be filled with three years worth of hard work and unwavering dedication - all in the hopes that you, good friends, will be entertained!
Welcome back to the Shadow!
