After encountering a meteor crash and visitors from the future, a boy named Ness is tasked with finding eight locations of power to stop an impending alien invasion. And so, Ness sets out to find the first location: a local urban legend known only as Giant Step.
The Ridgway brothers’ Earthbound project began as a way for them to take a mental break from shooting their lengthy feature film, Shadow of the Pink Panther. Because the Ridgways had an annual tradition of creating surprise movie projects and gifting them to family members at Christmas, and because the Ridgways had recently discovered YouTube and UbseyMovies’s EB Saga series, they decided to film a recreation of EB Saga for Anton. And so, on October 20th, 2007, Elliott and Phil snuck out of the house to go to the park and start shooting.
Filming ran all the way up until a few days before Christmas Day of 2007. Footage from this first block of shooting would eventually be used in what became known as Episode 1 and Episode 2, but many scenes were missing or needed to be reshot. This first block of filming also featured Ness with a construction paper hat, a la EB Saga, but the paper hat was replaced with a proper red baseball cap when filming resumed in August 2008.
Episode 1 was completed on August 15, 2008. The first episode was assembled using old footage from the 2007 block, as well as new scenes (a reshoot of the meteor landing opening sequence, and the Lier X. Agerate subplot).
The first appearance of Earthbound Episode 1 online was as a tightened 20-minute film submitted for the 2008 UbseyMovies Fan Art contest, simply titled “Earthbound Saga Parody.” The full 29-minute episode was later released in four parts on YouTube in October 2008.
After arriving in Twoson, Ness begins searching for a kidnapped girl named Paula. Along the way, he’ll encounter combative hippies, exploding trees, and a cult obsessed with the color blue.
As with Episode 1, Episode 2 contains some footage from the original 2007 block of shooting, originally filmed for the “surprise Christmas movie” that was gifted to Anton that year. A scene with Phil playing Everdred was filmed for this version, but this scene was reshot in 2008 so that Anton could play Everdred instead.
The remaining scenes for Episode 2 were primarily filmed in October and early November of 2008, on weekends when Elliott could get away from college to visit Alva. The Burglin Park scenes were filmed earlier that summer at the local Nescatunga Arts & Crafts festival.
Episode 2 alternates between fullscreen and widescreen format due to the cameras that the Ridgways had access to while filming. Their VHS tape camera (used for all their movies between 2000 and 2008) was destroyed once and for all when Elliott tripped and fell on it during the Peaceful Rest Valley chase scene. After that, the Ridgways borrowed a widescreen digital camera from their church, which allowed them to continue shooting.
Episode 2 marks the first appearance of Robert Thomas and Brenen Hankins as an onscreen duo, appearing as Lucky and Gorgeous, the frontrunners for the Runaway Five. Filming was so energetic and productive that day that the Ridgways continued filming random fight scenes between Robert and Brenen, which birthed the Robert and Brenen Mortal Kombat series, and inspired all the subsequent film projects starring the two of them.
Episode 2 was released on YouTube on November 22, 2008. The episode received criticism for so closely copying EB Saga Chapter 3 and 4.
Jeff, a boy from the northern country of Winters, receives a pyschic distress call and begins traveling south. Meanwhile, Ness and Paula work to escape the grip of a zombie apocalypse in the cursed town of Threed.
The Ridgways began working on the Episode 3 script and storyboards during Christmas break of 2008. Episode 3 represented a huge leap forward for them. In addition to being the first episode that they had to write without the template of EB Saga to follow, it was also the first episode to be shot entirely using a widescreen digital camera (finally abandoning their old VHS tape camera) which they purchased in early 2009.
Shooting took place sporadically between January and May of 2009, with most of the scenes being completed during spring break. The Snow Wood Boarding School scenes were filmed on campus at the University of Tulsa.
The special effects required for this episode were more challenging than anything they had tackled before. Tessie the lake monster, the Sky Runner, and a village full of Mr. Saturns were just a few of the visual challenges they had to overcome for this episode.
Ness and his friends travel to the big city of Fourside to destroy the evil Mani-Mani statue, but an unexpected department store kidnapping forces them to shift their priorities.
Ness, Paula, and Jeff set out to track down the power-mad Pokey and locate the remaining “Your Sanctuary” locations. Along the way, a strange magic cake will cause their journey to take an unexpected turn.
After completing Earthbound Episode 4, the Ridgways began mapping out what they wanted to do for the rest of the series. They decided to do three more episodes, and split up the rest of the game’s story accordingly. Episode 5 proved to be the hardest of these three episodesto write, mainly because the portion of the game covered in this episode is particularly aimless, as it allows the player to complete a number of tasks in any order. The Ridgway brothers eventually settled on a writing strategy of including as many memorable characters and boss fights from the game as possible, and building a story around that.
Principal photography for Episode 5 took place during the summer of 2010. Episode 5 was the Ridgways’ first episode to be shot in 1080p HD, at a 24p frame rate that imitated the look of actual film. This was also the first episode where the Ridgways migrated away from using 3D Game Studio’s modeling tool and began using Blender to create the CG imagery for the episode. Their first fully-rigged model ended up in the episode: the creepy-looking rabbit guard in Dalaam.
Because of the increased number of special effects shots and the overall longer running time for the episode, post-production on Episode 5 took much longer than previous episodes. The visuals were finally completed in the spring of 2011, and the episode’s final edit was completed in May of 2011.
One big production goof in this episode is the appearance of Ness’s plastic yellow bat in some of the Dalaam scenes, since he’s supposed to be without his bat during this part of the story. You can see his bat in some of the shots during the teleportation practice scene, as well as the Pink Cloud scene (although the bat was digitally edited out when Pink Cloud reappears in Episode 7).
Tensions mount as the Chosen Four descend deeper into darkness on their quest to stop Giygas. But after discovering a hidden underground base in an unlikely location, they learn that they may already be too late.
Filming for Episode 6 began in the summer of 2010, simultaneous with Episode 5. However, the episode was put on hold in favor of working on other projects for the rest of the summer. A year later, the Ridgways were unhappy with the footage that had been shot up to that point, and so most of it was reshot in July of 2011. The final green-screen scenes for Episode 6 were completed in June of 2012, prior to the beginning of principal photography for Episode 7. Because of all the starting and stopping, Episode 6 took the longest of any Earthbound episode to shoot.
Due to the heavy amount of post-production compositing that this episode would need (mainly the Stonehenge base scenes), it was recommended by Anton that the episode be split into two parts to make the overall project more manageable. The first half of the episode was released on January 31, 2014. The second half was released on September 27, 2015.
The credits list Anton as the director of the episode – this originated from an in-joke during filming of Episode 6 that Anton was actually directing the episode, which in turn originated from a failed attempt to cycle the directing duties around amongst the brothers.
One of the Fobby voices in the Lumine Hall cave is a sound clip of Phil from the year 2001 saying “Furby,” not “Fobby.”
The Lost Underworld scenes combine stills and footage from an actual road trip that the Ridgways took to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs in the summer of 2011 (documented in South by Southwest).
A large portion of the music in this episode consists of original improvisations by Elliott, based on melodies from Earthbound (a loose cover of Pink Floyd’s “Cluster One” also appears in the Lost Underworld scene). The new music also uses the original Earthbound soundfont to make it blend better with the game music.
In this final episode of the Earthbound series, Ness searches for the strength to fight back against Giygas; along the way, he’ll journey deep within the recesses of his own mind, back to where it all started, and finally to the edge of time itself.
Filming for the final episode of Earthbound began in July 2012 and took place over ten days (though some scenes were filmed much earlier, such as the Monotoli and Tony cameo scenes). Many locations and even specific camera angles shown in Episode 7 were explicitly re-used as callbacks to earlier episodes.
After completing the bulk of filming, the Ridgways would return to get a few more pickups in the intervening years: the final scene with Ness’s family was filmed in June 2014, and the Magicant scene featuring Robbie Benson’s cameo was filmed in San Jose, California in early 2015.
Post-production on Episode 7 did not begin until early 2016, after Episode 6 had officially been completed. Instead of relying on pure CGI for Magicant, we decided to build most of it using miniature dollhouse furniture and construction paper. Another technological advance for this episode was the use of motion capture technology for the Mani-Mani statue fight scene, courtesy of Wichita State University and Shocker Studios.
Several scenes were cut for the sake of pacing. Most notably, the grassy cliff/Phase Distorter pit stop scene is nowhere in the final episode, though the rough cut is present in the deleted scenes. We mainly cut this scene because it slowed down the episode’s momentum as it headed into the final Giygas fight, but the scene was also completely superfluous to the story, since Ness and his friends do not become robots as they do in the game.
The Flying Men of Magicant were briefly going to appear in the Magicant sequence via claymation, but this was never implemented.
One scene that never made it past the idea stage was to show Tessie and/or Dungeon Man fighting the Kraken in a kaiju-style fight, while the entire world was coming to an end at the hands of Giygas’s forces.
The first half of Episode 7 was released as part of the Year of Film anthology series on February 28, 2019. The remainder of Episode 7 was finally released on August 15, 2021 – thirteen years to the day after the completion of Episode 1.
This thrilling documentary chronicles the beginning of the story of four brothers who set out to film a beloved SNES game, as well as recreate their favorite YouTube saga.
Spanning the years 2007 to 2009, this film features in-depth interviews with the cast, as well as never-before-uploaded bloopers and raw footage from Episodes 1 through 3!
A special bonus “fan episode” in which the Ridgway brothers, overcome by fan pressure, decide to start over on their Earthbound series and film it exactly the way the fans want them to, humorously answering fan questions in pseudo-documentary form along the way.
After making PSI Documentary α! for the Earthbound Part One DVD, the Ridgways began planning a follow-up documentary for the Earthbound Part Two DVD in early 2011. The original idea was to answer fan questions in the follow-up documentary (which would have been entitled PSI Documentary ẞ!) but the project grew to include the idea to solicit suggestions from the fans for scenes that should be re-filmed (since the Earthbound fanbase had such strong opinions about the way things should or should not be adapted from the game).
The bulk of filming for this half-documentary / half-imaginary-Earthbound-episode, entitled From the Fans with Love, took place in the summer of 2012, concurrent with wrapping up Episode 6 and principal photography for Episode 7. Notably, Jeff Benson of UbseyMovies appears for an extended cameo.
From the Fans with Love was originally released as a DVD exclusive on the Part Two DVD, then released publicly on YouTube in the summer of 2013.
A few years later, Jeff Benson requested that the Ridgways recut From the Fans with Love into a ten-minute short to be included in the EB Film Fest event at Camp Fangamer 2015. Out of this request grew The Fans Film Earthbound, an alternate cut of From the Fans with Love that was modeled after the “Twitch Plays X” format that was popular for video game streams at the time.
This was originally a skit from Earthbound: From the Fans with Love (see above), clipped out and released as a standalone video to promote the “Earthbound Part Two” DVD.
This video was our April Fool’s joke for 2012. It went on to get an obscene number of views on YouTube (over 1 million at the time of writing) – not due to Earthbound, but due to the video sharing an oddly similar name with an unrelated Asian film.
