Year of 8-Bit: a new series from Seamus McFly
posted by Seamus McFly on January 31, 2013 @ 4:59pm
All 2013...
Old games.
No emulators.
Videos every Thursday.
A Very Fond Farewell to Andrew Steele
posted by Seamus McFly on July 4, 2012 @ 6:08pm
The world has lost one of the most individually talented people it will ever know. Andrew Steele, better known here as his character Prince Ireland Steele, has passed away at age 24 after a battle with cancer.
I've known Andrew Steele for over a decade, since he moved to Ohio from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Even then, at the beginning of our friendship in the seventh grade, it was clear that he was so fiercely funny and truly brilliant that he would someday change the world. Throughout high school, the riotous and manic nature of our natural conversation drew crowds just to watch us debate our top ten movie villains or hear a recitation of the latest poetry that had just spilled from our brains. A fateful chemistry class was where the aimless one-liners and celebrity voices began to take shape, as we transformed a pedestrian powerpoint project into Sean Connery's Adventures in Chemistry, a hastily written and poorly photoshopped tale of Christopher Lee and Sean Connery engaging in an epic game of basketball. The end result was a classroom of students on the floor and a chemistry teacher who hastily left the room just to scrape herself back together from hysterical laughter. This madness continued and intensified throughout high school, but after our parting of ways for college, I don't think either of us was ready for the collaboration to end.
While my other high school friendships fell by the wayside, I joined forces with Steele again to form Steele/McFly Productions and this show, which we poured our heart and soul into despite a meager fan base. As important as maintaining the friendship was providing some way for Steele's undefinably unique comic voice to be heard and appreciated. As our jokes and musings about epic stories gave way to epic stories of our own, I knew deep down that he was capable of something far more incredible than I was able to create for him. Andrew Steele was fated to create something important and groundbreaking. Saying it's unfair that he will never have the chance to do that and that we'll never have the opportunity to see it is a gross understatement. My mind keeps circling back to this thought, and I don't think the eternally optimistic Ireland Steele would be pleased to know that he caused such despair.
After I learned about Steele's passing, the initial shock and grief eventually loosened its grip, and I decided the first thing I would do is to watch the Lord of the Rings films. It felt like a fitting tribute and after four days of battles and ancient evils and wizards and sweeping New Zealand landscapes, I finally reached the ending of Return of the King. In the final moments of the film, I found a message Steele left for me. Frodo had finished writing his story and left the world and his friends, never to be seen again. His final words are to Samwise, who played a vital support role during Frodo's quest:
“My dear Sam, you cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on.”
Steele's part in the story may be over, but as his creative collaborator and friend, it's up to me to write the rest. And not only me, but everyone he knew and inspired through the 24 years we were lucky enough to have him. I look forward to spending the rest of my days striving to be someone who deserved to call Andrew Steele a friend.
Steele/McFly 2012
posted by Chefgon on December 31, 2011 @ 6:35pm
2011 was a pretty quiet year from Steele/McFly Productions. Sure, there was a spinoff blog and a video game tournament, but we didn't really produce anything in the strictest sense. My New Year's resolution is to release something of consequence in 2012.
I can't tell you if there's going to be a season 3 or new episodes of any kind, but as a red blooded American producer I can promise you that I will reuse and recycle old ideas in arguably interesting new ways.
For starters, we've been sitting on a "movie cut" of the World Tour for over a year now, which has a few minor changes to the original releases and has the added benefit of being just short enough to fit onto a single CD-R. To go along with that, we've got some art for each episode in season 2 that have previously only been seen as background for the YouTube re-releases that appeared earlier this year. I'll get both of those packaged up and released to the world shortly.
But releasing unused material isn't really the same thing as actually producing something, so I have another project up my sleeve that's sure to please both of our long-time fans. It isn't quite ready to be announced yet, but I think I can get away with leaving you this teaser image. Happy New Year, Steele/McFly fans!
McFly at Season's Beatings Velocity
posted by Seamus McFly on October 14, 2011 @ 11:45am
Steele/McFly Productions is proud to be sponsoring a player for the major fighting game tournament Season's Beatings Velocity being held this weekend in Columbus, Ohio. Truth be told, that player is our very own Seamus McFly and the executive at Steele/McFly Productions that is covering his expenses also happens to be Seamus McFly. A sponsorship is a sponsorship though, and we here (or, more accurately, me here) are excited to see what McFly has to offer this weekend in Street Fighter III Third Strike and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition. Perhaps failure and crying or, if things go very well, a small moment of victory followed by failure and crying. Either way, there is much shameless Podcast promotion to be had.
And, if some article of clothing I was wearing led you to this website, allow me to explain that Steele/McFly is an audio comedy show about the world of overblown Hollywood epics. If you'd like to check it out, I recommend starting with the introduction page, which features a handy, time-saving recap of our sketchy early episodes and a convenient listing of our good later episodes for your listening pleasure. It's good. I think you'll like it.
A Sampling of the Works of Lucas Townsend
posted by Seamus McFly on May 2, 2011 @ 8:29pm
Believe it or not, Lucas Townsend, or Seamus McFly as he is known to the world, has been responsible for making more than the show found on this site. (You should listen to the show found on this site anyway because it's pretty good, especially Season 2, when he figured out what he was doing.) In fact, he has a fancy degree in Audio Post-Production and, occasionally, some free time on his hands. The result of these things is that he's made a whole bunch of interesting things for you to look at. And look at you shall!
In late 2008, the creators of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog held a contest for three-minute applications of fake super villains to the equally fake Evil League of Evil. I wrote the screenplay based on a story idea by Tim Schuerger, which we co-directed and co-starred in. I edited the project and, through much agony, whittled it down to three minutes.
In summer of 2010, the combination of a music video production course and a big empty house I was subletting led to the creation of a music video for "The Housesitter" by Austin-based musician Mo Shaw. Ziphorah Kim was the producer that secured us our song and actor, Johnny Darwish was our DP and Ben Guenther was our wonderful actor. I sat in the director's chair, which was the same as my regular chair, but I wrote director on it with magic marker. It is now the headlining video on the artist's webpage.
Later the same summer, I was part of a team that produced a short concert video for Athens band Zapaño.
When faced with rebuilding the sound for a movie scene from scratch for a sound design course, I naturally jumped on a scene from Robert Rodriguez's no-budget action classic, El Mariachi.
More audio projects, including an eight-minute This American Life style documentary, an additional fake movie trailer and several local radio ads I produced, can be found at en.audiofarm.org/marsbitrona.