Category: Boomer’s Day Off

  • “Boomer’s Day Off” now listed on IMDb

    In 2008 Michelle Osorio and I wrote what would become the first two episodes in a four-part series called “Boomer’s Day Off”, a Left 4 Dead parody webseries that looked at the lives of the Special Infected from the game. It started off as a silly joke between the two of us – What if the Boomer had to call in sick? – and before I’d fully realized what was happening we were sat in a Mexican fast food restaurant with her Macbook working on a script.

    The first episode went up in January of 2009, with the last going up in March of the same year. Since then the first episode has been viewed nearly 1.9 million times, the entire series has been shown at several conventions across the US, and now Boomer’s Day Off is listed on the IMDb.

    It gets surprisingly plot-heavy for what is ostensibly a series of funny web videos. I’m not sure if that happened on purpose, but we ran with the idea for the last episode. The ending in particular is especially important – it was never about Oscar and Sheila’s relationship. They didn’t have one. Oscar was infatuated with Sheila, and Sheila used that to her advantage, but there was never any chance of the two of them becoming an item, and as we began writing episodes three and four it dawned on us that the true core of the story was Oscar and Todd’s friendship.

    It’s probably the most successful thing I’ve ever worked on, and it’s something I’m incredibly proud of. Since Boomer’s Michelle and I have talked about working on other projects but it just hasn’t happened yet. Maybe in 2012, if we’re lucky.

     

  • San Diego Comic-Con 2009

    I’ll be at the SoulGeek booth, which is booth #2517. We’re right by the Bongo booth (responsible for Simpsons Comics and Futurama Comics) and the Dark Horse booth (responsible for… well, tons of cool stuff).

    I’ll be sharing not just with SoulGeek founder and voice actor Dino Andrade (who webcomic aficionados will know as the voice of Skull the Troll in PVP: The Series). Joining us at the SoulGeek booth will be none other than star of not one but two Battlestar Galacticas –Richard Hatch! He’ll be right there sat next to me. Which will be weird.

    We may also end up being joined by Crispin Freeman, a voice actor who has made use of his talents in HellsingGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and Naruto. Which is pretty damned awesome.

    Michelle will also be wandering around at Comic-Con this year, so you’e got an opportunity to meet both of the writers of Boomer’s Day Off! What more could you ask for?

  • Ben’s Boomer’s Day Off FAQ

    I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about Boomer’s Day Off lately. Has there been a resurgance in its popularity? I’ve no idea. Anyway, I tend to get asked the same questions over and over, and I’m going to go ahead and answer them here as best I can before I climb into bed.

    Will there be any more episodes?

    Honestly, I don’t know. Michelle seems to want to do another one, and I’d love to do one if we can come up with an idea that actually furthers the story of these characters. There’s a lot standing in the way of us doing another episode, though – it all depends on whether the cast want to do it. It’s a huge ordeal getting everybody together, getting the make-up ready and so forth.

    What would the fifth episode be about?

    We have’t yet hammered out a concrete idea. Michelle had some rough ideas. She reads the comments on YouTube and the feedback we get through Steam, and where possible she tries to give little nods to stuff the fans want. One of the things people really wanted to see was Frank the Tank, and she spent some time last month looking into how we could do that. I’m perhaps a little bit more skeptical as to whether or not we could pull off a Tank on our limited budget, but anything is possible.

    Can you give me Tim’s/Michelle’s/Ben Dunn’s contact details? He/she is so awesome.

    No. Sorry. Michelle and I made our Steam handles available on the videos, and our email addresses are both publicly available, but that’s about it. I’m not going to give you Ben Dunn’s address or Tim’s phone number. (Yes, people have asked. Creepy, creepy people.)

    Are you going to boycott Left 4 Dead 2?

    No bloody way. You know how utterly ridiculous the entire boycott is? People are complaining about how the game hasn’t had any serious content added to it, but you know what? We got an entirely new gameplay mode and a map to play it on. For free. We’ve had hundreds of hours of entertainment from a game that cost us $50. Compare that to some games, which offer only six or seven hours of gameplay for $40-60. Some people claim that the development of a sequel shows that Valve had no faith in the original, but they started development of L4D2 almost immediately after they finished development of L4D. You don’t jump straight into developing the sequel if you think the game isn’t going to sell in the first place.

    Left 4 Dead continues to be an utterly fantastic experience and in all honesty I don’t expect the sequel to be any less.

    Are Tim and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Tim a couple?

    Nope! I just let him jump on me sometimes.

    What else are you working on?

    Kill9 have a few projects in store for later in the year, and I’m not going to be involved in writing any of those. Kill9 will be doing a musical, and I’m considering auditioning for that, but I’m not sure my voice is quite up to par. We’ll see.

    As for me, I continue to roll on with Jump Leads (we’ll be at Comic-Con this year, more details to come shortly) and But, Sir…, and today I launched a new podcast called Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse wherein I interview people I want to talk to just for the Hell of it. PodWarp 1999 is more or less done but we may be doing a reunion special in the near future. And I’ve started drawing again, so there’s a chance I may launch a second webcomic – one I’ll be drawing myself.

    I think that pretty much covers every question I’ve been asked so far. I’ll update this list as time goes by, assuming anyone asks me anything that isn’t “wen r u doin part 5????”

  • Concerning Endings

    There have been a few endings in the past couple of weeks. The big one, the one people likely care about, is the end of the SciFi Channel’s flagship series, Battlestar Galactica. I caught the ending on Saturday night via Amazon Unbox* and I absolutely loved it. Without wanting to ruin it for anyone, it didn’t tie up all of the loose ends. And, y’know, I actually prefer series finales like that – real life doesn’t let you tie up all the loose ends. Real life doesn’t answer the questions. Real life won’t explain to you why your son asks you for nothing but a red ball for his birthday every year. So frankly, I’m glad there are still some elements of BSG that remain mysterious. If Ronald D. Moore and his team of wacky sidekicks had chosen to give us all the answers then, well, we’d have nothing to talk about.

    The other ending that came recently was, of course, our own Boomer’s Day Off, which concluded back on the 19th. You may have already watched the ending but if you haven’t, here it is. The response to the finale has been somewhat mixed, but one of my big annoyances so far has been the number of people who were pissed off that Frank the Tank never made an appearance but, honestly, what did you expect? It should’ve been clear from Part One that we were hardly blessed with an overabundance of money, and squeezing the Tank in – be it a costume, or CG, or whichever – is very clearly not within our budget.

    There have been other concerns raised, which I’m sure Michelle and I will be addressing in a future video update of some sort.
     


    * As an aside, Amazon Unbox’s download client is infuriatingly slow, and the online streamer likes to stop and buffer the video eery eight-to-twelve seconds. I’d shifted from iTunes to Unbox because I wanted my videos in a format I could watch on my Xbox 360, but the next time I decide to buy a show online I may have to defect back to Apple’s crappy software. It may obfuscatory and unreliable, but at least it downloads videos at a halfway decent speed.

  • Boomer’s Day Off Part 4

    The finale to Boomer’s Day Off is up. Please share and enjoy.