The title says it all – we’ve jumped right back into heavy shooting days for the next Earthbound episode!
Last time I updated, I had told you guys that we shot major portions of Episode 6 last summer but put shooting on hold. Since that time, we’ve had a chance to re-think and refine the script, as well as sift through last year’s footage (most of it good, but some chunks sadly had to be scrapped for various reasons). Now, we’re back at it, knee-deep in principal photography for a new chapter in the story of Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo.
I was meaning to make an update yesterday, because that was when we actually resumed shooting for this latest episode. The first day of our resumed shoot took place at Hatfield Park, a faithful standby of a location that we’ve used time and time again, any time we need a wide-open, forest-like setting. And today, we got up at 5:30 to make a 45-minute drive to the Gloss Mountains, outside of Fairview, Oklahoma.
Everything has been going great so far, both with our re-shoots and with the new scenes we’re getting to shoot. The process of re-shooting a scene that we already shot once has actually been very helpful and instructive (despite being rather wasteful), if only because I got a chance to see how the scene played out the first time around, notice what I didn’t like about it, and go back a year later to film an improved version. It’s not a process I recommend, but in this case, it worked out for the general benefit of this episode.
As for the brand-new scenes, all I can say at this point is that I think you guys are going to be pleased with the end result. It really helps that we’re getting into “that part” of the game’s story, when things get real. It feels much easier to film, knowing that we’ve gotten to a part of the game that is inherently so epic (as overused as that word is) that we don’t have to add that much to it.
Obviously, I have no idea right now when the episode will be finished, and seeing what a bad track record we have at making guesses at release dates, I think we’ll wait a while before giving out a release date.