Where do I start? I’m just gonna push through this blog post, because if I don’t do it now, when the hell am I gonna get to it?
I just got back from a trip to LA for the E3 convention and Salt Lake City for the FilmQuest Film Festival. At E3 I got to play all kinds of new video games, check out the latest advancements in Virtual Reality (while plugging “An Unseen Sky: The VR Experience” … more on that later), and meet lots of people. At FilmQuest, I got to go to a Composer’s round table discussion and see a bunch of films, including a screening of my “Shadows on the Ceiling” music video on the big screen… Spoiler alert… It looked and sounded great (save for a few technical difficulties). Lets tackle all of this one piece at a time…
So what was some of the best stuff during the E3 portion of my trip? Well I usually stay with my friend David Michor (director of some great films I scored like “Snooze, Charlie” and “The Hoarder”), and this time was no different. Well I did get bit by a dog he and his girlfriend were dog sitting… That was different. Little rascal. Don’t worry, I’m fine… haha. But it’s always great seeing them and their whole crew of people. Then I spent three days at the convention.
I’m not going to make this into a full E3 run-down, so how about I do a speed round of some of the best stuff I played?
- Super Mario Maker – make your own and download original Mario levels… amazing.
- Unraveled – an absolutely beautiful game in which you are an old lady’s little yarn guy. Favorite game I played this year.
- Earth Defense Force 4.1 – a perfect next-gen update to the Earth Defense Force series. EDF! EDF!
- Chronos – A virtual reality Zelda-style game. Absolutely awesome, although the limited time made it difficult to really get into.
- Lucky’s Tale – A virtual reality Mario-style game. I’m going to buy an Oculus Rift just for this game.
- Super Hypercube – A VR puzzle game for Sony’s Project Morpheus. Very cool.
- Nuclear Throne – I’ve played it at another video game event before, and can’t wait for it to come out.
- Kings Quest – a great remake of the classic series. Can’t wait to get this.
- Chasm – Another great Metroidvania style game… This one reminds me of Faxanadu from the NES, which means I can’t wait to get it.
OK that’s enough video games for now. VR was a huge part of E3. Getting to check out the final consumer version of the Oculus Rift was awesome and I’m pretty sure I am a believer. I love Google Cardboard, and will continue to use it, but i am definitely gonna want an Oculus Rift… Or maybe the Sony Project Morpheus… Ahh, I hate having to make decisions, but luckily I’ve got until next year to decide…
As you all know, I recently released the awesome “An Unseen Sky: The VR Experience” Virtual Reality Music Video (developed by Elemental Spark). It’s still one of the only music videos to take advantage of this new technology, and we’ve been downloaded over 1000 times in the Google Play store. An update which increases performance was just pushed out for it too. If you have a Google Cardboard, make sure to check it out. I promoted it all over the show floor and people seemed to be excited to check it out.
So that covers E3… After a 3am drive through LA (actually pretty beautiful at that time of night), I got to my flight to get in early to Salt Lake City.
Some of you may remember that I went there last year for FilmQuest too for my video “Broken Circuits,” which was nominated for Best Music Video. This year, I was back for “Shadows on the Ceiling.” I was only able to stay for a day and a half unfortunately (I’ve been out of town ENOUGH lately), but I had a great time. Saw some of the people from last year, met some new people, and had a great screening. There were some technical difficulties in our block, but they were fixed in the first 15 seconds of my video (which kind of gave it quite a dramatic boost haha). I was told that they would try to play it again later to make up for the mistake in screening at the beginning, but either way, it looked and sounded great once it got going. We won’t know if we’re nominated for anything until the end of the festival this weekend… Fingers crossed. But regardless, I got some great feedback from people at the fest, did a little Q&A, and it was all good.
Now I’m back home and finally cleaning up my studio. It’s seriously a multi-day job, that’s how bad it was, but I’m almost done. This week is the Las Vegas Lift-Off Film Festival which I have TWO music videos in… “Shadows on the Ceiling,” on June 25th and “If Only Tonight I Could Sleep” on June 24th (tonight, if you’re reading this when it goes up). I’m also doing an interview for Fox 5 News with April Kagan (the director of “Shadows on the Ceiling”) at 9:30am. It’s almost 8am. I should shower and shave…
– David