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Get over to NEXTGLOBALCRISIS.COM and you can get hold of the Season 2 opener!

Get this 27 minute video right now by signing up at: NGCdiscounts.tk

We are now getting close to re-launching the new website and with it the first episode of our second season. As many of you know we offered discounts and early releases to some customers throughout season one. We are now opening that offer to anyone who wants to join.

You will receive discounts of $5 on Episodes and $3 on Mini-Videos (like The Training Room series but a different format) and will be able to get all releases up to 3 days before general release.

What else? If you sign up now you can instantly download a free 27 minute video of alternative angles and deleted moments from Episodes 1-5 and Training Rooms 1-4 of Season One. We will periodically send new free videos as well and so you will receive hundreds of free minutes of footage as long as you remain with us.

There’s more… We are making our comic books available for free to people who join us now, again these will be available at zero cost to you for a period of days before general release. This is to keep you up to date with the story and we plan on building up the amount of comics we release considerably.

We will also be running a Create-A-Character section where you can decide the costume, powers, looks and attitude of a heroine or even a villain, and they will come to life in a standalone video. Details of what to do will be available on sign up.

Lastly, we respect inboxes, you will get an email each time a new product is released alongside any free content, this will not be more than twice a month. It costs me money to send these emails as well, so it’s simply not in my interests to bombard you.

To sign up now and make sure you qualify for Season Two, Episode One discounts sign up at:

http://ngcdiscounts.tk

(Ignore the ‘Email not valid’ message, it all works fine)

1) We will be releasing a new comic book in the next couple of days

2) We will be sending out something to our customers as a ‘thank you’ for their support hopefully quite soon

3) Once we have safely migrated to our new site we will launch Season 2 Episode 1

PS: Keep eyes peeled on YouTube and Twitter for a preview video for Season 2

In keeping with dangerous artistic evolution we decided that episode 4 should contain 4 characters, where 3 had 3, and 1 and 2 had only 2, now 4 would have 4. This is a dangerous trend and after certain difficulties we decided to perhaps leave it at this many for a bit.

Of course, when you are writing the thing you write what you want to see rather than concern yourself with how difficult it will be to make in one day. The casting was pretty seamless, we were very happy with who we saw, in fact it unearthed other talented people who would turn up as different characters later on, if only all castings were as productive.

I wanted a character that healed and was a bit less cocky and more good-natured than those we had seen before or who were later to come. The Athena character fitted the bill, but the trouble you often have with healing superheroes is that they are useless at combat. The inference being that they are really a pacifist and see no sense in violence but go along to clear up any mess. However it is difficult to make a character in our show who doesn’t fight. I think perhaps for episode 4 she was written a little too weak, she does have some fight but struggles throughout against Jade (who is meant to be badass) until Miss Freedom is seen for the first time. We can talk more about Miss Freedom in the future, it is really a cameo here. The Peacemaker was an interesting character too and one it would be nice to explore more heavily.

The script was very ambitious with hindsight so it was pretty important that nothing went wrong on shoot day…

The story of episode 3 was the beginning of an arc that for various reasons we couldn’t fully explore in live action. We tied it up fairly neatly in the comics but in reality we would probably have had a further 2-3 episodes involving these characters. A lot of dealing with Golden Hornets guilt, the Man in Black trying to find ways of bringing his sister back. The Suki v Golden Hornet fight in the comic was also likely to take place in live action, but alas not possible.

In episode 3 then we see Gemini being used by Red Mist to film Golden Hornet without her mask, a pretty simple task to fulfill. This is why the Man in Black took to bag snatching and leading the Hornet into that particular room. She finds the camera equipment but does not realise this is a set up of any kind so leaves it. Throughout the fight the two Gemini twins are looking to unmask her, but since they are goodies they come to the conclusion that it’s not the right course of action. The Woman in White is terminally ill and Red Mist have made promises to use their technology to save her. The Woman in White’s illness causes her to have a much more violent reaction to Golden Hornets stinger when tragedy strikes. The death of his sister throws the Man in Black into a rage that provides Red Mist with a clear shot of an unmasked Golden Hornet, but much better than that, they have also caught her committing murder on camera!

Of course Red Mist already knew who she was, but proof was required for public consumption. They now had an excellent tool for blackmail…

It was mid-late February 2010 and let me tell you IT WAS COLD. Not a bit chilly – F*&%$ING COLD. Unfortunately large loading bays aren’t easy to heat and the whole thing might as well have been shot outside. In the time since making this many people have asked me why ‘The Golden Hornet’ hasn’t been brought back, well I did ask one time and I think she would have genuinely done it if our schedules hadn’t clashed, which is an amazing testament to her character and professionalism because this shoot was brutal, and if I’d been in her shoes I’d have probably planned revenge of some kind.

Close observers will note that our use of stilettos declined after this episode, yes, they do look sexy, BUT on hard floors for the work we ask people to do they are not practical or good or fair. Ankles do not appreciate them and this was the straw that broke the camels back. So far my recollections are not good. Early in the day we spent 45 minutes driving into town to get the ‘woman in white’ something to wear under her see through white catsuit, something I should have probably tested, although it wasn’t my size. Luckily the location provided somewhere to go when not shooting that was warm, had that not been the case I don’t think we’d have finished it.

Good points – The fighting is dead slick. We’ve changed our style somewhat from this episode because it felt much more the kind you see in a martial arts film than a comic book one but it looked really good and was well rehearsed. I doubt we would take so many wide angle takes these days, all the takes plus the costume malfunction resulted in us slashing the script and the shot list rather went out of the window. There were at least two lengthy fight phrases we didn’t have time to shoot. All in all we were there for 12 hours and I spent most of that fretting.

I was delighted with the acting and the way the dialogue was performed. Kanira who played the Golden Hornet was a real trooper on what was likely a horrible shoot for her. The crew and myself are actually nice people, and I would like to think that our friendly approach brings out the best in performers, but everyone has a breaking point. She was still smiling as she left though, amazing.

The episode has been broadly well-received, but I must tell you, any accolades were hard fought this time.

CLICK HERE TO SEE IT

There will be lots of things popping up that you may not find elsewhere and we’ll be holding contests for people who love to draw and those who love to look at good drawings, so I really think it will be in your best interests to start ‘watching’ us there.

Initially instead of a toxic stinger she was to have toxic blood, a sample of which she would carry around with her, but should that supply dwindle a blood-letting would need to take place. I decided that might be a little gruesome compared to what we had done before so it became a stinger. However I made this a bit of a curse for the character and something that she struggled to control, hence the need for training with Elite Force.

Costume-wise we had a couple of designs before settling. Here are a couple:

As you can see, same design but colours swapped over. This was before she was Golden. I also imagined her a bit ‘thicker set’ at this point, although truly I would love to find an actress who looks like that, I’d give her a job any day. It surprised me how difficult it was to find candidates for the role. Having lived in or around London all my life and knowing the ethnic diversity of the place I expected dozens if not hundreds of applications for this role, as we have had for everything else. In reality I had to actively go looking myself to flesh out the audition, but we were very pleased with who we cast and in fact those we could get to come along. By that stage the mask had become an important story-line factor but we did not yet have the one that appears in the film, instead we had a much larger one that obscured people’s faces immensely. Everyone was far too polite to complain though.

For the brother/sister ‘Gemini’ combo we had a greater dilemma as we saw several really good actors for the roles, but again we found two people who really delivered the lines well and looked conceivably like they could be related, job done!

Before the shoot we went heavily into storyboarding and shot lists as we had felt that Episode 2 had taken us too long to film and been a bit disorganised. We have since shot for much longer and been equally disorganised and grown used to it. The shoot was set for a day in late February 2010 at the same facility where we shot Episode 2. The weather forecast suggested it might be cold… and they got that one right.

In general, I am not a huge fan of Good vs Evil. I don’t really like the idea that a character might be all good or all bad, grey areas are far more interesting. A classic goodie would be Miss Freedom, she is powerful, virtuous and someone people look up to BUT she is also complacent and arrogant at times. Even a character like Rain is not necessarily getting personal pleasure from his deeds, he is merely carrying them out to further the overall plan.

Episode 2 brings us to Angel… [POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]

Those of you who have seen the complete season will have formed your own opinions about the Russian starlet. But is she all bad? Or a victim in her own right? Angel was brought to Elite Force training by James Roman to be used as his mole among trainees and operatives. While Angel trusted James (perhaps something to do with his own powers of suggestion) she went into the training set out in Episode 2 broadly neutral about the Force. This scenario may just have been designed to be as harsh as possible to instill a feeling of hatred within Angel for the organisation she has pledged to help destroy. Angel hid her true powers from the Force at James’ request, yet instead of receive an easy ride she was put up against drones time after time that she could not manipulate and none more brutally than Episode 2. Is James really her ally? Well it’s an opinion at least. Angel makes choices throughout the series that lead to an ultimate betrayal and it is fair to say that at this starting point she is clearly quite vain, the question is… will she come to regret her decisions?