I don’t recall the exact moment when we made the decision to create a full-length production. I think if we had thought of it in those terms I would have rejected it immediately, saying, “It’s not possible!” I do remember it beginning with Michelle uttering, as if speaking her thoughts outloud, “We should do something for Christmas …” She’s like that … into themes and seasonal things, and I remember shrugging and saying, “You mean, like a Christmas music video?”
So, we began throwing ideas back and forth … what song to choose, what sets to build, and so on. Before we knew it, we were discussing possibilities of creating a rendition of Charles Dickens, and both of us had agreed,”A Christmas Carol” was a shared favourite.
Now we were looking at the difficult task of what would be involved in creating a Sims2 Machinima version of the classic tale. There were so many things to consider, and the first and most important was figuring out how to handle the voice-overs. Michelle began the tedious task of searching for possible voice-over candidates. We became a bit discouraged when we realised how close to impossible it would be to gather a cast of such magnitude and coordinate it all. We were still researching the copywright on the story, looking for a contact, when Michelle happened across the audio release of the Colonial Radio Theatre’s production of, “A Christmas Carol.”
The CRT’s production was absolutely amazing, and we both knew we had found what we wanted, but also, we both knew that gaining permission to use it was a long-shot. So, we held our breaths and braced ourselves for the rejection. I couldn’t believe it when we received a most supportive and kind response, granting us permission as long as a few small details could be agreed upon by both sides.
Without the contribution of CRT, this production just wouldn’t be possible, and its success is greatly effected by the brilliant talent of the actors. It has been an exciting project, being able to collaborate with this fine group of professionals, and it becomes a first in the makings of Sims2 Machinima! Our greatest concern soon became the doubt of our abilities to do the CRT production justice. Certain items of custom content would have to be acquired in order to make the sets authentic to Dickens’ time period. Certain costumes were needed, and we had to hope that our most favourite costume designer had the time to undertake the major project we would dump into her hands. Besen did not disappoint us, and we can never thank her enough for her time, talent, and hard work.
So, while we waited anxiously for the costumes, we began the task of creating the sets. First, there was the research needed in familiarising ourselves with the architecture of 19th century England. Once we got a grasp of that, Michelle went to work locating the special items we needed, while I took to the task of attempting to create a street scene to mimic the image of an old fashioned Christmas card.
Adhering to a time line in a progressive order was completely impossible. We soon began to understand just how much time this was going to take, and there were moments when we worried that we wouldn’t be able to finish it before Christmas arrives. We began shooting the scenes as availability of the costumes allowed. Infact, part 2 was finished long before part 1 had even gotten itself off the ground. We crossed our fingers that it would all fall into place. But I’ve jumped the gun a bit …

Before we could even begin to think in terms of camera angles and cutting scenes, we had to develop the audio track. That in itself was a project that took us a week. Time and file size is the most difficult obstacle of which we must always plan around. It’s an intricate process taking a story that is told originally in a couple hour’s time and cramming it into 20 minutes, and that includes the title and credit screens. So, we listened carefully to every word of the original broadcast and waded through the painful process of cutting and deciding what limited bits to keep that would keep the story intact. CRT created a wonderful audio rendition mixed with rich sound effects and music, and it was important to us not to disturb the original sound quality as best we could.

We edited the final copy with ACIDpro,and then we then had to determine where it needed to be split and re-edit it to reduce meg size without compromising quality. We used MusicMatch10 to render the finished edit in 64 ProMP3 format. From there it was imported into Vegas6 and the video clips added to compliment the audio track.
Keeping to the authencity of the time period, the rooms in our sets were kept to proper scale, making the interior spaces realistically small and cramped, and making for very difficult video capture.In order to achieve the realism of the characters, first each sim was duplicated with different expressions, and hacked items and cheats were implimented. Unfortunately, all these hacks, cheats, and highpoly costumes brought our PC performance to at times a stop. One minute of video capture was taking us up to three hours.

The difficulties continued on the editing side, where Michelle often struggled with locked up systems, program crashes, and lost files that sometimes couldn’t be recovered. She spent hours on creating the snow alone, and since we are separated by thousands of miles, we each had to create identical sets on our own systems to keep the consistency of the sets and story line. Just as we thought we were nearing the end of the project, Michelle’s game crashed permanently, most likely to us burning out the graphics card So, I had to try to capture the rest of the footage and transfer all the files across the wires, and pray to whatever powers that be that I got the right shots for her.

But, despite the agonies and headaches, I think we will most likely attempt another project of this grandeur. It has been a learning process and a memorable experience, and it is proudly our gift to all of you …. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the best to you all in the new coming year!

The CRT Players can be heard nationwide on channel 163 on XM Satellite
Radio . All the CRT titles can be purchased here. All the CRT titles can
be purchased at http://www.spokennetwork.com/index.asp

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