I’ve often found that I enjoy things more when I’m not expecting to. Like, a bunch of my favorite movies are ones that somebody had to twist my arm to get me to watch in the first place, which then turned out to be surprisingly amazing. On the other hand, a lot of movies that I was really excited about, I walked away from thinking, “Yeah, that was fine, but not as fabulous as I anticipated.” The Harry Potter movies come to mind, but that’s a discussion for another day.
There have been exceptions, of course, and probably the most glaring one was Poe Party. My expectations could not have been any higher, and I was still completely, utterly, entirely blown away in every possible manner. I had never experienced that to such a degree before, and hence I became more obsessed with that series than I ever had been with anything before.
But the story doesn’t end there. Because the following year, that same group of producers who had shattered what I thought were unrealistically astronomical expectations with Poe Party made The Case of the Gilded Lily. Once I found out that these mind-blowingly talented storytellers were making something Old Hollywood-related I was beyond hyped. I thought that surely this time I was letting my expectations get too high, and once again they made something better than I had even begun to imagine.
I know I’ve said most of this before, but the reason I’m bringing it up again now is because Personal Space was just released on Amazon. And, yes, I know it wasn’t made by Shipwrecked Comedy, but pretty much the only reason I backed it on Kickstarter was because Sean Persaud was going to be in it. After seeing his phenomenal portrayals of Edgar Allan Poe and Ford Phillips, I was excited for another fantastic performance…and yet I was still unprepared. Sean is so beyond incredible in this show, and it’s so different from anything I’d seen him do before. Don’t get me wrong, Personal Space is a good show in and of itself – it’s an intriguing premise that’s executed well, and all the other performances are great – but even if that weren’t true, it would be worth watching for Sean Persaud’s performance alone. I was anticipating that that would be my favorite thing about it, but I could not have conceived the degree to which that would be true. In the space of a year and a half, Sean Persaud has managed to completely smash my supposedly unrealistically high expectations, something that hardly anyone ever does, in THREE. DIFFERENT. PROJECTS.
TL;DR I would love for Sean Persaud to be in everything from now on, and everyone should check out Personal Space
We export our rough cuts in black & white because the footage isn’t color-corrected yet, and slight lighting differences from day to day would distract the eye with all the jump cuts we have. The final show will be color-corrected so every shot matches, but until then, we’re enjoying the classic look!
The final version will also have a small amount of fake interlacing / video artifacts, to reflect the fact that it’s being transmitted from a tenth of a lightyear away. (But not as many video artifacts as Science Marches Han!)
We’ve started to see the first rough cuts come in! And they look great. Backers will hear from us soon about Kickstarter rewards.
Woo! Also, first look at a new-and-improved Overture model:
Looks pretty much like the previous one, though with a snazzier two-tone color scheme, with the “gantry” (or whatever it is; that’s what I’ve been calling it) in black. Also, the antenna is significantly skinnier.
Well, this screenshot doesn’t have the texture applied. It’s basically just a wireframe. The colors and lighting are going to look very different in the final version, but this wireframe shows off a couple of architectural changes.
Neat! I’ll hold off on trying to read too much into the appearance of this model, then. It’s hard for me not to try to figure out what the “couple of architectural changes” are, though.
The curve-y thing that I’ve been calling the antenna is definitely narrower in this version than in the previous one. Other than that I haven’t been able to find anything so far that looks obviously different. But I’ll keep looking. 🙂
We’ve started to see the first rough cuts come in! And they look great. Backers will hear from us soon about Kickstarter rewards.
Woo! Also, first look at a new-and-improved Overture model:
Looks pretty much like the previous one, though with a snazzier two-tone color scheme, with the “gantry” (or whatever it is; that’s what I’ve been calling it) in black. Also, the antenna is significantly skinnier.
I’ll save the marketing-speak for other social platforms… We had 30 seconds where four of our actors were in the studio, and no one needed to be doing something. Our wonderful AC hopped forward with her camera and snagged this portrait of them each in character. Then the 30 second window passed, and whatever she got was all we were going to get.
To me, the shot she took in those 30 seconds looks incredible. It looks like a show I’d want to see. I can’t believe it’s the one I’m making.
Personal Space wraps shooting tomorrow.
-trp
Go tiny little ginormous imaginary rotating nuclear-explosion-powered spaceship! I’m so excited this is going to be a thing that exists.
If I understand correctly, PS World is our world with the lone exception of spaceflight (which started a few decades earlier due to the pre-WWII defection to the U.S. of Werner von Braun) and a few associated technologies and societal developments (e.g., Reagan’s third term and colonies on the moon and Mars).
So ignoring narrative-conceit-hostile butterfly effects, things like Pokémon Go should exist in-world. (Except that the script was completed prior to the PGo singularity, so any incorporation of the game into the show would depend on last-minute rewrites/improv. But setting that aside.)
What would it be like for the newly revived Second Shift crew on Overture, seeing accounts from Earth of the latest craze? They wouldn’t have the hardware to run it, and wouldn’t have Pokestops or gyms if they did. Not being able to participate in the game would likely emphasize their feelings of separation, driving home the divergence of their stuck-in-1991 technological reality from that of Earth.
Things would only get worse for subsequent shifts, but Second Shift might be the one where the distance between their own memories and the increasingly alien (and multiple-light-years-distant) culture of Earth reaches the point where the crew has to confront the full extent of their isolation. FOMO is hard enough for Earthlings, but how would it feel to be committed to never experiencing the kind of connection afforded by augmented reality and a globally interconnected game, for people on a ginormous-but-tiny spaceship who decided at a young age to commit themselves to living out much of their lives in the company of exactly 3 other people?
I wonder: would they try to make some kind of simplified Pokémon game to play on the ship? Would they feel even sadder if they did? Seems like the kind of thing they might want to talk about to the therapy computer.
The Second Shift has some advantages over, say, the Twentieth. Their relatives are, largely, still alive, and the world at least resembles the one they grew up in. National borders are basically in the same places. The dominant cultures have only undergone one generation of shifting and churning. The biggest difference is the end of the Cold War. And with a ~1 month time lag one-way, regular communication is practical.
But to an extent, the similarity is a cold comfort. Things are still so different, and they are still separated by such time lag, that Earth may seem like an uncanny valley version of itself. Later shifts may actually have an easier time adjusting to a completely new world than the Second Shift has to one where everyone they loved is now old enough to be their parents.
They can’t play Pokemon Go – and probably wouldn’t even understand what it was – but they could console themselves by playing some Donkey Kong.
Thanks for the correction about the communication lag only being a month or so one-way. I’d somehow misremembered Overture’s cruising speed as 10% of the speed of light, meaning they’d be roughly 2.5 light-years away after 25 years. But since they actually travel at 1% of the speed of light they’d only be a tenth that distance. They’re not actually a quarter of a light-year from Earth, though, since they didn’t activate the Orion drive until they passed the orbit of Jupiter, which didn’t happen until well into the First Shift. So: they’re a light-month away.
Googling some of this information led me to this thread on Reddit. Can’t throw a rock around here without hitting someone wanting to fly an Orion-drive ship to a nearby exoplanet.
If I understand correctly, PS World is our world with the lone exception of space flight (which started a few decades earlier due to the pre-WWII defection to the US of Werner von Braun) and a few associated technologies and societal developments (e.g., Reagan’s third term and colonies on the moon and Mars).
So ignoring narrative-conceit-hostile butterfly effects, things like Pokemon Go should exist in-world. (Except that the script was completed prior to the PGo singularity, so any incorporation of the game into the show would depend on last-minute rewrites/improv. But setting that aside.)
What would it be like for the newly revived Second Shift crew on Overture, seeing accounts from Earth of the latest craze? They wouldn’t have the hardware to run it, and wouldn’t have Pokestops or gyms if they did. A silly thing like not being able to participate in the game would likely emphasize their feelings of separation, driving home the divergence of their stuck-in-1991 technological reality from that of Earth.
Things would only get worse for subsequent shifts, but Second Shift might be the one where the distance between their own memories and the increasingly alien (and multiple-light-years-distant) culture of Earth reaches the point where the crew has to confront the full extent of their isolation. FOMO is hard enough for Earthlings, but how would it feel to be committed to never experiencing the kind of connection afforded by augmented reality and a globally interconnected game, for people on a ginormous-but-tiny spaceship who decided at a young age to commit themselves to living out much of their lives in the company of exactly 3 other people?
I wonder: would they try to make a paper-based Pokémon game to play on the ship? Would they feel even sadder if they did? Seems like the kind of thing they might want to talk to the therapy program about. At least they have that source of comfort…
On the one hand, I’m 100% down with obsessing about making everything about Overture as perfect as possible. On the other hand, seeing Tom so committed to having projected stars rather than just using green screen to do it in post makes me a little worried that it could become a white whale that takes him down, Ahab-like, when there are umpteen other problems in greater need of harpooning.
On the third hand, it _would_ be awfully cool for the actors to have the correct star field realistically rotating outside the window to help them inhabit their roles. On the fourth hand, it’s not like the need for problem-solving like this is unusual; it’s just that they’re giving more real-time visibility into it than I’d normally see with a non-crowdfunded production.
On the fifth hand, the few glimpses I’ve had are starting to look really cool. On the sixth hand, how fun is it to imagine aliens with six hands?
