Hello everyone and welcome to Halo Spotlight, the place that shines a spotlight on the Halo Community and its creations.
This piece will be somewhat of a hybrid between a standard Q&A and a Machinima feature piece. The Writing Spartan had a chat with 4 key people involved with the ongoing creation of the Machinima DEAD SILENT.
This Machinima currently only has one episode out (not counting the prologue), but that’s certainly not the end of it. We’ll let you find out more about the Machinima from the answers below.
Question: How did you get involved with the project and what’s your role in it?
NightAvenger01: I had met Green Hygiene through Kawecki22. We helped him on a set for episode two. After helping him, I built him a set and not too long after that became the “Lead Forger” of the project.
Green Hygiene: I’m the director and creator of the project.
Spartan Blood 1: I had known nightavenger01 and had talked with him a little bit. One day I was hanging out with Kawecki 22 and he asked me if I wanted to join a party, and that party had nightavenger01 and green hygiene (in).
So we got to talking about everything and that’s pretty much how I got started on the project. My main role is forging environments like landscapes terrain and plant life.
WARD0G7: I hadn’t played Halo in over a year when I got a lengthy message from NightAvenger01 asking to use some of my prefabs. I said sure go for it and he immediately sent me a party invite.
He explained how they where using my prefabs and talked about the machinima a bit. I asked if they wanted me to make anything for the machinima and been helping out since then.
Question: Out of all the areas you’ve worked on so far, what has been your favourite part?
NightAvenger01: It’s hard for me choose a favourite set/area of Chapter One, as I have forged on almost every set for it. The City would have to be it for me though. 43 individual maps all green screened together to create a city…that’s never been done before in a machinima.
Green Hygiene: My favourite part so far to work on, has been the swamp scene towards the end of the episode. I really liked building up the suspense of the warthog being stuck in the mud.
Furthermore I really enjoyed the set that was made for the scene. All the thin branchless trees look very creepy, and I love how they fog consumes a lot of the set and helps silhouette a lot of the background action.
Spartan Blood 1: I’ve worked on so many environments it’s kinda hard to pick a favourite ha ha, I’ll just have to say there is definitely a lot of interesting places to see in the world we have made together.
WARD0G7: Of all stuff I worked on my favourite is yet to come. I’m not primarily a set builder but I try to put my best into what I work on. I would say the bank lobby came out pretty good, as for a favourite prefab you will jest half to wait and see.
Question: So far only chapter 1 has released. Are there any upcoming scenes or plans that you’re excited about that you are allowed to share with us?
NightAvenger01: With the way Chapter One ended, the only things we can say about Chapter two is that we will see what happened to Apollo. If you became a fan of Jet in Chapter One…You may not like what comes next…That’s where I’ll leave that…
Green Hygiene: I’m really excited to showcase chapter 2. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but the next episode begins to introduce a few new faces…
Spartan Blood 1: I don’t know how much I should say, there are some things that come to mind, but I hope people dig the next chapter.
WARD0G7: No spoilers but chapter 2 is shooting for maintaining the bar set by chapter 1, in its own way that is. Are goal Chapter 2 and all of the chapters to follow for that matter, is to maintain if not surpass that level of detail, action and suspense.
Question: What has been the hardest part for you so far whilst creating Dead Silent?
NightAvenger01: Hardest part has honestly been the body acting sessions. Finding a large amount of people who will listen and not be ignorant has been a lot harder than you’d think. But we are fortunate enough to finally have a group of regulars from our discord that are fantastic!
Green Hygiene: The hardest part of episode one in terms of difficulty was definitely the city. It was quite an ambitious task to begin with, and I was very new to the whole “green screen” concept. But with some practice and ingenuity, we managed to make it work!
We built a camera rig system that allowed us to position the camera in the same spot every time we loaded into a map. Which meant we could take multiple shots of each map and stitch them all together to create one big shot.
Spartan Blood 1: The hardest thing for me so far is probably in chapter two, it’s been hard work but I’ve been chipping away at it.
WARD0G7: For me the hardest part has been dealing with the limited “small object” list of Halo 5. Trying to make detailed small props using only the objects within Halo 5’s Forge and making the prop instantly recognizable isn’t always easy.
Question: How many chapters are expected to launch for Dead Silent, and is it expected to air throughout the entire year?
NightAvenger01: 15 Chapters in total, Five Chapters per season. Our goal is to release it all in 2021. For anyone who stays with the series, this is going to be a crazy ride and we hope you love the story and its characters as much as we do!
Green Hygiene: We plan on releasing 15 chapter in total. We aim to try and get them all out before Halo Infinite.
Spartan Blood 1: We are planning on releasing 15 chapters all up, plus the prologue we already released late last year, we are hoping to get everything out at a good rate, we have been working on a lot of sets for a bunch of different chapter’s here and there.
WARD0G7: I’m pretty sure they all covered this but 15 chapters, all aired by Halo Infinite release.
Well there you have it. In case you didn’t quite catch that last answer, there are 15 chapters currently planned for DEAD SILENT. We feel a little silly that we asked the team that same last question expecting a different answer, but it all worked out in the end.
A big thank you to NightAvenger01, Green Hygiene, Spartan Blood 1 and WARD0G7 for taking the time to answer the questions provided and to show off their amazing Machinima. If you haven’t seen it yet, we’ll post a link to episode 1 below, so be sure to give it a watch.
Be sure to keep an eye out at Last Second Films YouTube channel for the future episodes of DEAD SILENT. You can also check out The Writing Spartan’s Twitter account if you’re interested in getting involved with a Halo Spotlight, or just want to talk to the person who writes up these pieces.
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