THE EVE OF RELEASE

Hello, you lot. Right! Sorry for the silence this month, but we've been working very very hard on Digi Level 2.

Ep 1: almost done. Will be with you early tonight or tomorrow. Or you can wait until Sunday to revel in the whole premiere thing.

I just posted the below for backers, but thought you'd like to see it too:

So here we are. Ep 1 of Digi Level 2 will be out within the next couple of days for backers. It’s very close to being done. There’s one tiny thing left to film on greenscreen that I want to do this afternoon, that nobody but me will care about, and then it's locked in.

The Ep 2 assembly cut is done – now it just needs all the bells and whistles – and Sanja is continuing work on Ep 3.

We’re going to release the eps every other week or so, I think, to give them time to find their audience, and not feel quite so throwaway. Seemingly, YouTube has moved away from the unspoken ‘rule’ that you need a video weekly, and I’d rather each of these eps feel like an event.

The first one goes out publicly for everyone else this Sunday evening. So, if you want to join in with the ‘world premiere’, hold off watching until then. We’re thinking about doing something straight afterwards – a sort of Q&A stream thing – for the top-level backers and Patrons. But we’ll let you know.

It’s strange, because now that Ep 1 is done, it’s clear that this isn’t really Digitiser The Show series 2. It has evolved into its own thing – and I’m only seeing how different now that it’s in one chunk. I mean, it’s maaaaad. Yes, everything we do is mad. But this seems especially mental.

God help anyone coming to this expecting a nice little video game show, without any prior experience of Digi.

SUCCESS OR…?

In some respects, it’s the series I wanted Digitiser The Show to be – much more of a spiritual successor to the original Digitiser, and the randomness, the pixel visuals and the production design that really tie the whole jamboree together.

Digitiser The Show was halfway to being a sort of ‘shiny floor show’, whereas this is (deliberately) scrappier and cosier – at least, aesthetically - much more akin to 90s post-pub Channel 4. I mean, Digi The Show was scrappy, but it had ideas above its station. This knows what it is and achieves it far more successfully, I think.

It’s not perfect, mind – I wish we’d been able to film in 4k, I wish we’d not used so much bloody smoke on set, I wish we hadn’t lost some of the footage due to it being out-of-focus (and re-filmed it twice!!), and I wish we’d had a tiny bit more space in the studio.

Once I had done my first pass on the edit, it was clear we still needed to add something sort of indefinable to it. It’s a problem only we would have; an edit that is just too slick and professional. It was way more focused and coherent than the previous series, and I had to go in and undo that, sort of. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t feeling quite Digi enough.

Consequently, I spent the last week making it feel less slick, if you can believe that. It needed an extra element of chaos, basically. Our Marmite love-it-or-hate-it factor.

Yeah. I know.

Only we would want to make a show that’s deliberately polarising.

I’m stupidly pleased with how it has ended up. Digi Level 2 is the sort of series Digi would’ve been if it had made the jump to live action back in the 90s, basically.

I do miss some of the scale of the previous show, and – having taken the decision to make Drong’s Challenge its own standalone (but connected) thing – the eps do lack a big end-of-show game.

Stick with us, though; those are coming with Drong’s Challenge once these six eps are out. And this set, along with the graphics, just looks better, by leagues.

CH-CH-CHANGES

Change is hard for all of us I guess, and retrogaming, especially, is about the comfort of the familiar. Nothing wrong with that, but I like to keep moving forwards. Hopefully you’ll come with us, and appreciate the differences between the two series. And the similiarities.

There’ll be plenty who don’t like the different feel. I know some people will miss the previous hosts (though Larry is in at least three eps, and Octav1us does make an appearance later in the series - would've been more, but we lost her Show & Tell somehow).

I’m fully expecting to get comments and stick about having gotten older and put on weight (I basically starved myself before Digi The Show, and was 7 years younger, prior to a whole lot of life stress…). And we’re already getting the odd comment about it taking so long to finish.

Oh, and I’m sure we’ll have a ton of comments – because we’re already getting them – about there not being enough Eli Silverman, because for some people everything I do is seen as a Cheapshow spin-off.

But I’m braced for all of that... plus being told our facts are wrong, that we'd be better if we were more 'normal', that we're not funny, blah blah blah.

I admit we didn’t quite have any happy accidents on the level of the prawn juice incident or Rampage for Real. I mean, it’s funny when I set fire to my hair or set off an outdoor firework indoors, but also… none of that was intentional, and we were lucky it didn’t end in disaster!

Plus, you can’t manufacture that stuff without it feeling contrived. It happens or it doesn’t. There is still some retching, though… We’ve not grown up that much in the intervening years.

I’m proud of Digitiser The Show – and as the years wear on, the memory of its trickier production aspects fade. I’m becoming more fond of it over time.

Nevertheless, I guess there was something a bit impersonal about the production from our point of view. I think we were all somewhat lost in that massive studio. The cameras and crew were a long way away. I felt out of my depth and alone in other ways too.

This series captures something that feels much warmer, and has been a lot more fun to film, as long as it has taken. You get to the end of ep 1, and despite all the cutaways and nonsense, it feels like a big hug somehow.

NERVES?

I dunno. I’ve been working on this for more than two years now, and the first episode is about to go out into the world, so I guess I have a little frisson of… not nerves as such, but I am braced for how it’ll be received.

Mainly, I don't want any of you to feel disappointed, but I suspect Digi Level 2 will garner a different sort of attention to the videos we have been making on our main channel these past few years. We’ve built a lovely community over there, and mostly disappear under the radar.

Though it’s on the new channel, this stands to attract fresh eyes on us who perhaps aren’t familiar with our nonsense, and are here for the games alone. It’s the difference between playing to a home crowd, and playing away.

So, I’m simultaneously eager for you to see it, and apprehensive about you seeing it. I don’t really get nervous about anything, but I really really hope those of you who have been waiting two years feel the wait has been worth it (though just a reminder that you did get four mini eps last year… ahem).

Anyhow. Got another five eps to finish, then we can have a brief rest before your bonus ep, Drong's Challenge, and fulfilling all the rewards...

Biffo