It's Felicia Day! Er...Felicia's Day! Felicia's Birthday!

An imaginary friend, in 2009

Someone asked me recently how I could imagine that people I met on the Internet were 'real' friends when we have never talked or even seen each other. They used Facebook to keep in touch with people they knew IRL, but couldn't imagine making new friends via the Internet, and likened them to imaginary friends. It was hard not to pity them.

When we first  moved to Canada, some of the first new friends I made were online. They were, and are, more than virtual friends. One of those friends is celebrating her birthday today. Not with fancy-schmancy LA glitz, but with a muscle car, Rock Jocks and home-style cooking. There might even be collard greens. And to start the day right - Twinkies:

Birthday breakfast: first cappuccino I've had in six months, croissant and breakfast Twinkie. Nomz. http://t.co/vcGiEzRQmf
— Felicia Day (@feliciaday) June 28, 2013

In 2010, she had a very different day. And in 2009, when filming The Guild Season 3, she had a wonderful party on set, with a pirate cake and everything. But that didn't stop her firing Emmy Award-Winning director Sean Becker one day after her birthday.

Happy Birthday, Felicia! You are one of my favourite imaginary friends :)

(Posts on this blog tagged with 'Felicia Day')

Blog Retro: Four years ago - Felicia Day Interview

Felicia Day four years ago, on my laptop.

Fugit! It's been Four Years!

It's hard to believe, but it's been four years since I stopped freaking out long enough to interview Felicia Day. Back then she had just managed to negotiate a ground-breaking deal with Xbox after sticking to her guns over ownership of her work, and Season 2 of The Guild was just airing. Who could have predicted that Season 6 of The Guild would be airing four years later?





Since that interview I've kept tabs on Felicia and watched her develop her career with aplomb. She has worked hard to make her future her own, and her successes have been many. I hope one day we meet up and have a nice cup of tea and a scone. That would do very nicely.

Cheers!

It's Triple Felicia Day...Day!

Felicia Day in S6, Ep 2 of The Guild

It's a red-letter Tuesday!

Not only is Episode 2 of The Guild Season 6 released today, but Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog is airing on TV tonight for the very first time on The CW at 9:00 PM. AND a new interview with Felicia is now out on The Hollywood Reporter.

It's been over four years since Dr Horrible first took the interwebs by storm, and Felicia puts this into perspective in terms of the advances webseries have made in that time:

..."It's a big victory as far as mainstream Hollywood acknowledgement of web series as a legitimate format," web series creator/producer/star Day tells The Hollywood Reporter. "I really hope that it's not just a singular thing anymore, that it becomes a trend. That's my biggest hope." And Day should know: she not only starred in the series but it was her work on The Guild that inspired Joss Whedon to explore opportunities that existed outside of the traditional Hollywood studio system, where creators could have complete control over their content from budget to casting and everything in between...

From http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/felicia-day-dr-horrible-joss-whedon-neil-patrick-harris-nathan-fillion-376972

Start your Felicia Day with a brand new episode of The Guild:


Who knows? Now Dr Horrible has been on TV, I might be able to write Part 3 of Future Entertainment!

The Guild Season 6 - Episode 1 out NOW!

The Guild Season 6 is going to blow our minds. Like this.

The writing, acting and delivery of The Guild has always been consistently good, and the team has done a great job of expanding and developing the universe each season.

But this season? That whole office warehouse is amazing. Watch the behind-the-scenes video and see all the people involved, the level of detail, the graphics, drawing, models...the fully-developed and immersive nature of the space. How many Codex-hours did it take? Just astounding.

And yes, the stage is set for another season of mayhem for our Guildies as everything changes for them once again. Enjoy:



Kim Evey opens the BTS of Ep 1 video talking about the reveal of the gaming company office:

..The epitome of what The Guild Always is...a lot of hard work, a lot of different people contributing...We always want our fans to say "How did they do that? I thought they were an indie webseries! That's impossible!"..

The steadycam work is beautifully done, and I recommend you watch it fullscreen for maximum impact. They have a freaking animatronic !!!! 

It seem unreal that it was four years since I first interviewed Felicia Day, just after the deal with Microsoft/Xbox had been announced for Season 2. Felicia made the decision to keep ownership of her show and has steered it, and her career, into uncharted waters and come out firmly on top of the world. And now Season 6 is exclusive to their own 'Geek & Sundry' channel on YouTube - part of a stable of quality programming.

So much has changed in that time, but one thing is certain.

Our little webseries is all grown up.

The Guild. Season 6. Trailer. NOW! Roll on Oct 2nd!

Gone for so long....and so has The Guild! But Felicia and crew have been hard at work on Season 6 and now it's only DAYS AWAY!

The trailer has just been released:


Season 6 is going to be EXCLUSIVE to the Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube and premieres on OCTOBER 2nd, so make sure you are subscribed to Geek and Sundry.

I'm not sure what I'm more excited about after watching the trailer - but I can't WAIT for the return of Bruiser! I can only hope that we see more of J Teddy Garces dancing - maybe Gangnam Style? Who knows....?

The Guild Season 5 DVD out tomorrow!

 The Guild Season 5 DVD

Will Felicia Day be in your stocking this Christmas?
The answer is  - with any luck! The Guild Season 5 DVD is out tomorrow, December 13th 2011, and you can order it from Amazon.com right now* It looks like it won't be available from Amazon.ca until March 13th 2012, so this will be the only way to get the DVD for now.

 Try Before You Buy
If you haven't seen Season 5 yet, then why not take a look? Then go and order the DVD and make sure you have a very Guildie Christmas!



*This link takes you to Amazon using a referral code. That means that if you order via this link I get a little something back from Amazon. Thank you!

Webseries updates: The Guild, Brains and Ackernon

Galiene in Action in 'Border Guardians of Ackernon'

Border Guardians of Ackernon - live Ustream Q and A today!
This week I announced the launch of a new consultancy that combines writing, video and social media and a new client. I've known Paul Best since we met at VCON last year, and I will be helping him to promote the brilliant new fantasy webseries, 'Border Guardians of Ackernon: The University'. Today there is a live Question and Answer with the cast on the Ackernon Ustream channel which will be lots of fun. Tune in at 2:30 PST and I'll see you in the chat room:


Webcam chat at Ustream

What a packed weekend!
It's hectic central here as we push to finish filming 'Mind My Brains, Darling!'. We had planned this weekend for our final shoots for some time, arranging for our two guest stars, Alan Douglas and Josephine Hoy to come up and making sure all the props were finished. We had a fantastic Saturday, are all set for today's scenes, and we're completely on schedule.

The Guild steals the limelight
On Friday I saw a tweet from Sean Becker to say that they were going to be finishing shooting this weekend, too. It's hard not to interpret this as a direct challenge to see who wraps first and WE ACCEPT THAT CHALLENGE! So, Sean, see you in the bar because we'll be finished first. Felicia Day also released a video of Behind The Scenes footage:

You might wonder why we haven't released any BTS videos fom the 'Mind My Brains, Darling!' set. There's a simple reason.

BTS of The Guild Season 5 - Felicia in the bathroom (SFW)

Picture is unrelated

I know, I know - that headline is horrible!
But I figure that since people already get to this blog using some truly eye-popping searches, this won't make things that much worse. We can hope. Anyway, there is actual footage of Behind The Scenes of The Guild Season 5 that includes Felicia in the bathroom along with Sean Becker and a host of people all working hard. Ms Day has her own YouTube channel and that''s the place to get see these vids (and here, obviously).

Felicia Day Glamour Shots!
I mean - using a bathroom as your control room IS glamorous, you have to admit. This video is pure Hollywood...



Felicia Goes Blonde!
We know that hair colour can be a...sensitive issue. Here Felicia is encouraging more speculation, but of a different kind. Why in the world is she wearing a Katy Perry cast-off wig??



No Words...
I don't know where to even start with this one...



At least we haven't seen this yet:
[redacted picture of Sean Becker]

Cameras roll on The Guild Season 5!

Sean Becker poised for "Action" on The Guild Season 5 (from @theguild Twitpic)

It's all happening!
After months of speculation and preparation the well-oiled machine that is The Guild is once more swinging into action. And once more we know we will be seeing things we have never seen before. Of course, no one knows any details about the plot for Season 5 outside the inner circle. Felicia Day is so (rightly) paranoid about spoilers getting out that she has mind-wiping ninjas on hand that preemptively strike anyone about to spill the tiniest detail. Apparently they can even work from a distance using a variety of top secret yet deadly methods.

Felicia herself is not above teasing us with tweets like the one above, but only she is allowed that privilege. So I'm not going to tell you that they are on location on Long Beach, or link to this picture taken from behind the scenes. And I'm certainly not going to tell you that...can you smell almonds....?

Season 5 of The Guild: Shooting starts next week!

Erstwhile Director Sean Becker - back on form?
Today on Twitter, Sean Becker, sometime director of The Guild and other webseries comedy gold like 'The Jeff Lewis Comedy 5 Minutes Hour of Happy Endings', broke the news we were all waiting for today. THE GUILD SEASON 5 STARTS SHOOTING NEXT WEEK!

However, the happy news was quickly under threat by the very same Mr Becker, who literally threatened Agent Ruiz and The Guild itself something almost-certainly unpleasant:

Considering Mr Becker's chequered history on and off the set of The Guild, this is a chilling threat indeed. No one who has been to his totally official personal website can be in any doubt that Sean is a troubled man.

Won't somebody think of the children?

Want More Guild Updates? Want to be an Extra in S5?? Try Facebook!

Get all the latest news from The Guild on Facebook

Season 5 of The Guild...
...if you're like me, you can't wait to see it! Pre-production is well under way and the opportunities are coming thick and fast for people wanting to be apart of it - but you have to be quick, and you have to know where to look. Twitter is a great place to start but to get the longer updates you need to be following The Guild on Facebook.

The Guild Facebook page has lots of updates and - details of how YOU can be an extra in Season 5. What are you waiting for? Get over there now!!

Felicia Day's Keynote Speech at SXSW 20011

Liz Shannon Miller talks to The Guild Creator, Felicia Day talking about The Guild, DragonAge: Redemption, webseries and New Media (Note: there was a 'share' button under the live feed during the session which I hope might turn into a permalink....we'll see! If the video is available after I will embed)

Some Screengrabs from Flikr:

The Guild Season 4 DVD - now in good shops everywhere!

Monday - YouTube. Tuesday - Your High Street!

To celebrate the fact that you can now go into your favourite store and buy The Guild Season 4 DVD, there's a new competition over on WatchTheGuild.com. All you need to enter is a picture of you holding a Season 4 DVD and you could win a picture of the cast signed by creator/star Felicia Day.

Get your pics in quick!
The competition ends at midnight PST, Feb 24th so get snapping!

Your Favourite Extra...?
Which extra on the DVD is your favourite? There are lots to choose from, so which one do you think is the best?

The Guild Season 4 on YouTube plus Amazon.ca DVDs are shipping!

It's Here!
After months of waiting, The Guild Season 4 finally hit YouTube today, so let the commenting, liking and sharing begin! Of course, many people have already watched the whole season on MSN and/or Xbox, but a surprising number of people don't watch there. They are in for a treat....! @theguild report that they will be releasing Season 4 episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which means we'll be through the whole season in four weeks. That's great news for fans, but makes me wonder why they have chosen to do this. I'm going to hopefully speculate it's because we'll have something new to see soon enough (like Dragonage: Redemption, for instance?). But that is pure speculation.

Amazon.ca now shipping The Guild S4 DVDs!
And more good news today, in the form of an email from Amazon.ca:

...it's another great week to be a Guildie :)

Felicia Day's #mysteryproject revealed - Dragon Age: Redemption, webseries!

Felicia Day as 'Tallis' from her new webseries Dragon Age: Redemption (picture from USA Today)

EDIT: as hoped, more information on Felicia Day and Dragon Age: Redemption - an extended profile in USA Today.

AND: Felicia has blogged, too!

Plus: Great interview in io9 with exclusive picture

Gamers and Guildies Rejoice!

After weeks (months!) of speculation the dragon is out of the bag. When Felicia Day had mentioned that her new webseries was very much an action series speculation abounded about what that mean. Last year she starred in the well-received Syfy movie "Red: Werewolf Hunter". That shoot involved lots of action, weapons and stunts, something that she had wanted to more of since her stint on Dollhouse. 

USA Today broke the news last night

After a day working hard on "Mind My Brains, Darling!" I got on to Twitter late to find a link to the USA Today article. After eagerly reading it I passed on my congratulation to Felicia and the team, not realising that the news was supposed to be officially announced today. Ah well. A quick detour to The Guild Chatroom revealed that other people had also seen the link. An early morning Google check shows a whole raft of articles about it, so let the speculation and celebrations begin!

Webseries take a big leap forward

Using much-loved games as a basis for a webseries is not new. Legend of Neil, from Sandeep Parikh and Tony Jenning, is based around Legend of Zelda, and finished its final, triumphant season last year. Whether Nintendo could be said to approve of the hilarious (and definitely NSFW) antics of Neil and his friends is open to debate. The Guild itself is based on a game that is similar-yet-legally-distinct from World of Warcraft (WOW). Although Blizzard, the makers of WOW, have been very friendly towards The Guild and have welcomed the cast to Blizzcon, there is no endorsement from them because of the legalities involved.

'Dragon Age: Redemption' is different. From the outset Bioware, the creators of Dragon Age, have been on board. From the USA Today article:

..That dedication is what convinced the developers at Dragon Age studio BioWare that Day was the right person for the project.
"We are really, really excited to work with people like her who have a passion and appreciation for the content and a really good history of quality," says BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk. "That's who we want to work with."..

There is no doubt about Felicia Day's love of the game, either, as this excited tweet from 2009 shows:

Also in production at the moment is Elfquest, a new webseries from veteran creators Stephanie Thorpe and Paula Rhodes. After a successful funding run on IndieGoGo they are now shooting and expectations are high for this new series. The creators of Elfquest, Wendy and Richard Pini, have given their blessing to the project.

More news to come!
There will be more announcements soon and hopefully a blog post from Felicia herself, so I'll keep updating.  What a great time to be a webseries fan :)

Keeping the Fans (and sponsors) Happy: The Guild Season 5 is GO!

And There Was Much Rejoicing!
News, hot off Twitter, is that The Guild has confirmed they are funded for Season 5! If you remember, Felicia Day held off and rejected many offers for the smash-hit webseries back in 2008, and eventually accepted funding by Microsoft from Xbox Live and Zune and from Sprint. Those funding offers had the magic ingredients for Felicia - she retains the rights to her series AND there is no editorial influence on the work she does. NewTeeVee has the details.

Congratulations and Speculations!
Felicia has been typically vague about what Season 5 might entail. The end of Season 4 was a cliff-hanger that left all sorts of possibilities open, but who knows where they might lead? It was the Knights of The Guild 2nd Anniversary last weekend Ustream celebration and although there were questions about it, no one expected Felicia to let anything go. you can see the whole, wonderful KOTG anniversary broadcast here (password: KOTG):




One more mystery...
Never one to take a break, Ms Day has also been working on other, non-Guild projects. She has been tweeting about shoots over the last few weeks, leading to lots of guesses about what she is up to. One thing she did say during the KOTG broadcast was that we would find out 'within two weeks' more about the #mysteryproject. And Wil Wheaton made a reference to it this week, saying:

"...Felicia is working on a Secret Project™ that I'm lucky enough to know about ... holy frakking shit balls on fire, you guys. When you know what it is, your mind will be blown right out of your skull so hard it will bounce off the wall and land on the ground next to your socks, which were also knocked right off your feet and through your shoes...."

Well then....!

Watch this space....for now here's the screengrabs I took of the whole crew during the KOTG broadcast:

Knights of The Guild 2nd Anniversary Party - we are all invited!

UPDATE: There is still time to send your questions in to the cast and crew ready for the party tomorrow - send them to Knightsoftheguild@gmail.com


Saturday February 5th at 6:00 PM PST - BE THERE!
How time flies! It only seems like a few weeks ago since the Kenny hosted the KOTG 1st Anniversary party at his new house. What a blast that was as Kenny and Jenni served up a delicious show full of fun, laughter and tons of special guests - live from the KOTG studio! Streaming it live via Ustream meant that everyone could take part and Guildies from all over the globe joined in the fun.

Celebrate this great podcast!
KOTG give Guild fans so much. They are the #1 resource for ALL the news on The Guild and a sure way to cope with Guild Deficiency Syndrome. With on-set interviews, the special guests they have on each show and reports from Cons, book signings and more, even the most obsessive fans will find out more about how The Guild is made and the people behind it by listening. So I hope you will be raising a glass to Kenny and Jenni tomorrow because they deserve it. WE LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

And don't forget that you can keep up with KOTG all over the 'Net:

The Podcast: http://knightsoftheguild.podbean.com/
The Blog: http://knightsoftheguildpodcast.blogspot.com/
The Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/knightsofguild
The Kenny: http://twitter.com/#!/geekyfanboy
The Jenni: http://twitter.com/#!/jennipowell
The Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68587228491&ref=ts
The WatchTheGuild.com: http://community.watchtheguild.com/group/knightsoftheguildpodcast
The Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/knights-of-the-guild (Password: KOTG)

Special Guests Galore
Kenny has posted all the details for the live streaming on WatchTheGuild.com forums. There will be whole host of cast and crew attending including Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh, Vince Caso, Teal Sherer and Sean Becker. And speaking of Sean Becker, looked what popped up in a search that I don't have set up:

Frontpage of the new seanbecker.com (not shown: a wiener) 

What is this all about?? I've requested further information from Sean but so far he has refused to answer, so we can only SPECULATE IN A SCIENTIFIC MANNER.

Urkel + 2(chicken sammich) + wiener + hollow boasting* =  THE BECKPOCALYPSE!

*Sean has put "Best. In Town" at the bottom of the page. And the page title is "Director and other stuff". So Sean is boasting that he is the best "Director and other stuff" in town. Do you think Felicia is going to take that kind of smack talking lying down? She's fired him once, what will she do to him this time? WE'LL FIND OUT TOMORROW LIVE ON USTREAM!!

Clicker, Indie Intertube and more: The Awards kick off

The Best of Clicker 2010 Awards announced...
...and there were some familiar names among the winners. The Guild took 'Best Web Comedy (Serial)' and The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour took 'Best Web Comedy (Episodic)'. This is the second year of the Awards and over 200, 000 people voted. I interviewed Patrick Sullivan from Clicker about the awards last week in PinkRaygun. One of the thing that was most pleasing about the Clicker Awards was the number of categories for web content and the range of shows nominated. This bodes well for the future.

The Indie-Intertube Awards 2010
This week also saw the announcement of the nominations for the Indie Intertube Awards. With a huge raft of categories and shows this will likely be the most comprehensive listing this year. The weekly Indie Intertube podcast is always the place to start if you want to know what is happening this week in the the webseries world, and so it's no surprise that many of the nominated shows are new to me. That is one of the joys of Indie Intertube (apart from Destini and Shadhavar, of course!) - the fact that they have introduced me to so many shows I had never heard of before.

You can also vote for the Audience Choice Award on the Indie Intertube website. The Guild, The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour and  many others are among the nominees, so you will be spoilt for choice. It's a good job you can vote every 30 minutes!

The Shorty Awards
...are also underway, and apart from loving the fact that @TheBloggess is again rocking the 'government' vote, there are some interesting nominations and categories. For a start, there are multiple nominations for Felicia Day but under different title, so she does not show up on the 'Actress' leader board as yet. Top of the Actress board is Stana Katic, which is great for us Castle fans. Nathan Fillion is also doing well in both the 'Actor' and 'Green' categories. I'm hoping that Browncoats: Redemption will do well in the charity category - they are 4th so far.

More Awards Coming Up
The Streamys and the new IAWTV Awards will be coming up later in the year, which will be well worth following closely. After all the discussion, changes and community growth over the last 12 months, people will be waiting to see what happens.

Felicia Day and Kim Evey have long been hinting about new projects they are doing and Felicia teased some more this morning:

Maybe next year there will be even more nominations heading her way....

What other Awards are you looking forward to?

Update: The Guild S4 DVD for Christmas?

Update on The Guild Season 4 DVD availability
Last week The Guild was available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca with a February 2011 release date and I ordered mine then. For people in the US and anyone else who can order from there you now have another option - there is now a DVD-R option you can order here that is available to pre-order and it will be released on the 21st of December.

Dreaming of a Guildie Christmas?
The DVD-R release is exactly the same as the DVD release in terms of content, except that it will be produced on demand (see Amazon's information about DVD-Rs). That means we can gets our hands on Codex and co that bit quicker - who wouldn't want Codex in their stockings on Christmas Day [insert more puerile attempts at humour here]?


More Guildness...
In an update yesterday on WatchTheGuild.com, there was also more information about the trade paperback edition of the original three-part comic from The Guild. This new edition has all three comics bound together along with extras such as sketches and words of wisdom from The Guild's esteemed director, Sean Becker.

If you ever dreamed about having a part in a webseries - read on!
We are running a competition over at MindMyBrains.com where you could win a part in this new webseries - and you can take part no matter where in the world (or beyond) you live. The only thing you need to have is access to some basic sound recording equipment. We've released both the teasers on YouTube now, so if you haven't seen them yet, enjoy!

Updates and observations: OH HAI INTERNET

Caution: Hubby at work!
So then, what's been going on with you? Seems like a long time since I wrote anything here but even I was shocked to see it was nearly 2 weeks! I'll be out of the Blogger's Loose Association with No Set Agenda at this rate. So - what have I been doing, I hear you ask? The answer is Pretty Cool Stuff. And because it is traditional for me to mark periods of not blogging with a megalistpost, here's a quick rundown:

• Building Sets & Polishing Scripts for 'Mind My Brains, Darling!': new posts up on HigletFilms.com about our progress. And don't forget that you still have 23 days left to help us raise the last $239 we need to reach our goal on Indiegogo.com. A huge thank you to all the generous people who have donated so far - you rock!
• Follow ups from VCON: We made some great new contacts at VCON and we're hoping to be able to share some more of this in the coming weeks. And I'll be publishing an interview with Alyssa Ciccarelli from Riese the Series on PinkRaygun soon. Riese is a Steampunk webseries that was launched in 2009. It has been picked up by Syfy.com and will be airing every Tuesday and Thursday on http://www.syfy.com/riese/
• Fighting GDS with Legend of Neil and Jeff Lewis 5 Min Comedy Hour: Guild Deficiency Syndrome can be temporarily relieved by ingesting quantities of these two shows, although 'ingesting' might not be the word to use given the last 'Jeff Lewis...' ep. And next week is the LAST EVER episode of Legend of Neil, which is a whole other type of syndrome waiting to happen. Will our suffering never end? Yes, because 'Knights of The Guild' podcast is still running with new shows and competitions! Guaranteed to cheer up the most down-in-the-mouth Guildie :)
•  IAWTV opens its doors to....everyone!: After months of debates, it seems the IAWTV has decided to allow anyone with an interest in webseries to register as a member. You might have missed this because it is not on the public IAWTV website or Twitter stream because there are issues in updating these sites. But Jack Ferry has done an admirable job of spreading the word, and it was this article by him that really got the ball rolling. Liz Shannon Miller wrote about the change on NewTeeVee.com and Tubefilter also reported on the changes. I think the challenges for the IAWTV are large but not insurmountable, and it will be interesting to see what happens. I think this a massive step in the right direction.
• Castle - must-watch TV!: Ah, there are only 2 things I'm watching on TV atm and Castle is one of them. Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic and all deliver a dependable dollop of pure enjoyment.
• Caprica - also must-watch TV!: From the ridiculous to the sublime? Possibly. All I know is that I love this show immensely and hope it is renewed for another season or five.