bad bad bad people

I will try and keep this blog on topic most of the time, however there will be extenuating circumstances from time to time. This is partly due to my personal goal with this production is to bring more media coverage to the scenario side of paintball and help legitimize what we do into being recognized as a *real* sport. The athleticism, teamwork, sportsmanship, and strategy this game requires will beat most any other “legitimate” team sport out there, and I think its high time some of our greats are recognized as such. One of these greats is a player known within the community as “BennyT.” He has started a new phenomenon within paintball called “Train. Harder.” which is basically the concept of building an athletic body and maintaining it for paintball duty. Benny started a youtube channel called SPbTV a few months ago to assist in getting his ideas known through the community: http://www.youtube.com/spbtv

Last Sunday some morons in PA struck a deep blow against everything that Benny (and the rest of us) stand for within this sport. They ended a high school kid’s future sports career with 10 seconds of brutal stupidity. I believe Benny has summed up all our thoughts best, and his video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_QU6ya6ySc

The morning after!

I can’t stop thinking about Danny Glover and the Lethal Weapon series … “I’m getting too old for this sh*t.” I’m moving (allbeit a lot slower than usual) and made my long trek into the city for my regular job this morning, but I put off getting out of bed for an hour and my drive took twice as long due to traffic. Luckily I’m a computer geek, and only have to type during my usual day because I still have no voice. Now, on to stuff people care about:

We watched a few clips of film yesterday afternoon with MSG DuBois around 1700 just before we rolled the RV out of the camping area. We have amazing footage. Thank you all for *trying* not to shoot the cameras too much, the cameramen certainly did get a work out, though. By mid-day mayhem on Saturday I believe every one of them had asked me on the side when the next the game the Loaded Crows were going to so they could put down their cameras and pick up some markers to play with instead. Ideas are already floating around everyones’ heads in respect to filming a scenario like this even better.

For those of you who missed the introduction, our goal with this project is to go to network broadcast. This may happen as a one-off type special, however if my dreams come true it will be sold as a pilot for a reality / documentary type series. We will have DVDs printed and available for sale within about 8-12 months. There may be an “early release” copy for sale in limited quantities a little earlier, to be honest its still a little early to tell too much.

Jay will begin thoroughly watching in the range of 80-120 hours of raw footage in a couple of days and hopefully we’ll have our first teaser clip put together within about a week. We all need a couple of days to recuperate.

I have so many people to thank, I really don’t have the time or space to list them out, that will be in a later post. For now: The US Army and USMA cadets, all of the collected scenario teams on both the Axis and Allied side. You guys did amazing, you all fought hard, and most importantly you all fought with honor. Thank you!

1 day and a wake up …

last day before shooting commences. Stress levels are high, but the Producers have been working together long enough to keep everything in check. We’re both running around like chickens with our heads cut-off today completing our final preparations. Jay is picking up cameras, cards, and other assorted goodies. Aaron is is carrying a huge pile ‘o stuff up stairs to stage and be ready to pack first thing tomorrow morning. As I look at the massive pile of gear forming near the front door of my house, I’m seriously beginning to question if it will all even fit in my little Jeep Cherokee. My shopping errands will start later today, I’m still at my *real job* for now.

planning, more planning

So, for the last few weeks at least my life has revolved around one weekend: 3-5 April. Today is no different. For those who don’t know me well, I’m actually responsible for 3 very different roles for the Combat Classic: Co-Captain and logistics for team Loaded Crows, Axis XO (second in command, and of co-Producer of this insanely awesome project. Before 10am I had already done the following:
Producer work
re-confirmed the RV rental
updated the crew “character” sheet and emailed final version
worried about cash on hand & credit remaining
researched even more storage space, might still have to buy more with the next day or two
verified next shipment of supplies (crew radios) is on time
working on this blog (much later than10)
Captain duties
re-organized Friday’s dinner
spoke to two team members about (food) arrangements
XO duties
made myself available for final pre-weekend strategy/command conference call

And of course, I do still have my day job as a network engineer to complete. I was here in the data center in NYC by my usual 6:45am today.