Web Series Wednesdays

Happy Halloween from DIP-tv!

Web Series Wednesdays

by Andrew Finch

REVIEW:

This week’s web series is Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, and like my review from last week, it is a www.machinima.com release. Reportedly with a 10 million dollar budget, this series is a very expensive promotion for an upcoming game.  The director, Steward Hendler is well known in the web series universe for directing the well-received series H+: The Digital Series, which you might see in a future review.  

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, web series

Before I dive into this review I need to preface it with the fact that I hate promotional series. I find them often soul less, and not created for the right reasons. Hendler seems to know how to spend a lot of money while working for big companies, but unlike H+, this Halo series is receiving a ton of views. The first episode has reached over 7 million views in under a month. When looking at quality the story and visuals are well done and supported by good acting. 

The 1st episode premiered on October 5, 2012

If this wasn’t just a big ad for the Halo series, I would say this is one of the best series I have seen. Unfortunately the fact that it is so expensive, and that it is just an advertisement for a more expensive product, leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. As soon as I acknowledge it as a commercial, it hurts the overall product and its story’s value. 

The web series was given a $10 million budget

Had this series came out six months from now, after Halo 4 was released, as a standalone series, I think I would have appreciated it more.  Since it wasn’t created for the love of the story I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone other than diehard Halo fans. Watch out if you do view, because it will leave you feeling like you just watched a 20 min ad with a Super Bowl commercial budget. 

THIS WEEK AT DIP:

www.dip-tv.com

Deadlines suck, especially when you are dealing with tech problems that you didn’t expect. The last two weeks we have been having problems the night of our export. For MegaBitch EP2 we had problems exporting, and only just yesterday got out the final version, with a previous version being posted to the web last Tuesday. Then for MB EP3 we were struggling to move between premiere on a Mac and on a PC all week, and as I write this we are just getting to the export step, and it is 2:13 am here.  

On the top of Andrew's Burn in Hell List

You might find out by following this blog that I hate Mac products, and tonight is another perfect example of them failing. Why macs have their own format for external drives I will never understand, and more than that, they often don’t work with NTFS drives that SHOULD work on both pc and macs.

I wanted to apologize to anyone that was looking for it last night, or the Tuesday before. Please bear with us, and believe me when I say we try to release every Tuesday night.  By the time you see this, it should be up. 

Don’t foget to check out our links. On the social networking side, our DIP-tv YouTube channel has a bunch of videos on it. 

MegaBitch, web series episode 3 "Digging for Gold"

Make sure you watch MegaBitch episode 1, 2 and now 3. Then check out the MegaBitch Facebook page for updates and posters designed by yours truly. 

Dylan Rourke, Karl Kwiatkowski & Jake Davis
in Rex Destiny: Monster Hunter

Then follow it up with Rex Destiny episode 1-3 and get ready for Episode 4 sometime this upcoming week!