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A typical day on the set at Tabletop

This is from my Tumblr Thingy. I thought it would be relevant to some of your interests.

QUESTION: Hello, I have a question about Tabletop (don’t worry, it’s not “when will you make more 😋). When you would film an episode, when would the interstitial commentary from the players be filmed? Because it seems like they should be like, during breaks in the game, so that people can give their thoughts as they come up, but during extended episodes I can’t see where that would cut and film them and rejoin, so maybe it was after? I can no longer sleep at night, this question haunts me. Ok bye now 😊

ANSWER: Good question, and you have it mostly correct.

What we’d do on a given day went like this:

  • I arrive and we run through the day’s schedule.
  • I shoot the introductions for the two episodes we are filming that day.
  • The players for the first game arrive, go to makeup and wardrobe, then spend about an hour with the game publisher’s rep and Ivan Van Norman, our games expert, to make sure they understand the game and its basic strategy.
  • While they do that, I shoot the rules explanation for each game.
  • Players are seated at the table with me, and we begin. Each game has a rough halfway point, usually determined by the points scored, and we’ll break at that halfway point. For a narrative episode like an RPG, we’d break around the end of the second act.
  • The players and I are interviewed about what we did in the first half of the game. We call these OTF interviews. I believe that’s a documentary term of art which means “On the fly.”
  • We play the second half of the game, until there is a winner.
  • We shoot the loser’s couch segment.
  • We shoot the trophy segment.
  • Now we shoot the OTF interviews for the second half of the game.
  • The players are finished, and we break for lunch. They can stay and eat lunch with us if they want, but most players choose to get on with their day.
  • The players for game 2 show up right as lunch ends. They’re always welcome to come before lunch, if they want to eat with us. I’d say about half of the players did that.
  • We sit down, and play the first half of the second game.
  • We break and shoot OTF.
  • We finish the game.
  • We shoot the loser’s couch.
  • We shoot the winner’s wall.
  • We shoot my OTF for the second half of the second game, so I can be finished and sent home as soon as possible. My union rules guarantee me 12 hours between when I leave set and when I come back, so we always try to get me wrapped (finished) early, so we don’t have to start later the following day.
  • We shoot the remaining OTFs.
  • Everyone goes home! That’s a wrap.

I’m glad you asked this question, because I got to revisit some of the joy that I felt when we were making Tabletop, Geek & Sundry was the greatest place in the world to be making awesome content, and I got to play games for my job.

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drive the car around the world

Nothing is more important to me in my life than to be the father I never had.

Since we came into each other’s lives, I’ve worked so hard to love, nurture, guide, and cherish my boys. It’s so important to me that I never make them feel humiliated, small, unworthy, unloved, or any of the ways my father made me feel every day of my life.

I feel like I may have succeeded, because we are incredibly close, the three of us. We play games together, we hang out together, they seek my advice and my counsel, and I love it when they come to my house to spend time with their mom and me.

This quarantine has been tough for everyone, but it was especially hard to not have my family together. Ryan is an essential worker (on a medical leave right now. He’s fine, don’t worry. Thank you for your concern) so we couldn’t be in the same room as him until just about a week ago, which was two weeks after he took his leave from work.

Now that the four (five, counting my daughter in law) of us have been isolated for so long, we feel like it’s safe for us to do family activities again, like take long walks or get together for family meals.

Ryan came over a little bit ago, just because he wanted to be around his family. As I write this, my boys are playing Frisbee in the street, right outside my open window. They are laughing together, supporting each other, and enjoying the experience of being together, sharing some time together.

It makes me so happy when I see my boys love each other, and care about each other. It makes me feel like I did a good job raising them with core values of empathy, compassion, and respect for each other.

I keep seeing these stories of people who are going nuts because they’re forced into tight quarters for an extended period of time with their families. I have massive empathy for that. I especially empathize with single parents, and parents of smaller kids (and the hormonal teens) who are really struggling to adapt to our current circumstances. But I’m also intensely grateful that I don’t feel that way about my wife and kids. I’m intensely grateful that we all love and respect each other, that we’ve found ways to support each other, give each other space, and never stop loving each other through all of this.

Oh! The boys are coming into the house. Maybe I can convince them to do something with me.

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IFC Midnight Acquires Retro Thriller ‘Rent-A-Pal’

I am so excited to share this with all of you.

About a year ago (or ten years ago, what even is time amirite) I worked on a FANTASTIC movie called Rent-A-Pal. It’s a retro thriller, and I am intensely proud of the project as a whole, and my work in it.

The thing about movies is, making the thing is just a small part of the whole process. The real barrier is distribution, so people can actually see the thing you worked so hard to make. It’s not uncommon for a film to be made and finished, yet never get a chance to find its audience, because it can’t find a distributor.

So it’s extra exciting for me to learn that Rent-A-Pal has been picked up by IFC Midnight! You can see this fantastic little movie I’m in, from the safety and convenience of your own home!

Here’s a little bit from the press release:

“Inspired by the real-life VHS tape, Rent-A-Friend: The Original Companion, Rent-A-Pal is set in 1990 and follows a lonely bachelor named David (Brian Landis Folkins). In a pre-Tinder media era, David is looking to find an escape from the day-to-day drudgery of caring for his aging mother (Kathleen Brady). While seeking a partner through a video dating service, he discovers a strange VHS tape called ​Rent-A-Pal bosted by a charismatic gentleman named Andy (Wil Wheaton). The tape offers him much-needed company, compassion, and friendship but Andy’s friendship comes at a cost — and David is desperate to pay that price. Amy Rutledge also stars.”

You can read the whole release at Deadline.

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Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don’t be one of them.

A gentle reminder: when we are out in the world, it’s incredibly important to maintain a six foot distance from each other. This virus doesn’t go away and stop being dangerous, because we walked into a building.

Most of us who are able to quarantine have been doing that, and it’s working to flatten the infection curve, to give our doctors and researchers time to find a vaccine and a treatment to reduce the mortality rate of this virus. Most of us aren’t sick, and we aren’t carriers. That doesn’t mean we should act like it when we are in public.

When we’re in public, it’s our responsibility to behave as if we are infected and we don’t want to spread Covid-19 to anyone else.

This means that we keep our distance from each other, even though it feels weird. This means we wear a cloth mask in public, even if it’s uncomfortable or whatever bullshit reason selfish people are using right now to justify their choice to ignore a simple and effective way to keep us safe. It means we respect one-way aisles in grocery stores, and we wait in those aisles, six feet apart, instead of pushing past our fellow humans who are shopping.

If the worst thing we have to deal with in a given day is the inconvenience of actively maintaining six feet from our fellow humans, to protect them and ourselves, there’s just no real excuse to ignore that, other than laziness and selfishness.
Let’s remember that we are in this together, and let’s make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together.

I know you aren’t lazy or selfish, but I know there are people in our lives who need a gentle reminder.

This is for them.

This whole thing we are living through is a lot, and it’s really understandable to want to get back to normal. The thing is, science and virology don’t care about your timetable, and until science and virology have a vaccine for Covid19, this is our reality. Wishing it would go away, and acting accordingly, is only going to make this worse. Refusing to follow medical guidelines, because you’re pissed off and frustrated is only going to make this worse. Ignoring medical advice because you’re bored and want to go to the beach is only going to make this worse.

Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don’t be one of them.

Please, please, please be mindful and self-aware. I get that you’re stressed and frustrated and low-key scared all the time, and not just about getting sick. So am I. You’re worried about our terrible leadership, you’re worried about our cratering economy that our terrible leadership is making worse. So am I. You’re worried about this pandemic that we can’t control at all. Me too. You just want to get in and out of the store or wherever, the faster, the better.

So do I. So do all of us. But let’s remember that we are in this together, and let’s make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together. We can choose to be patient and make the best of a terrible situation, or we can selfishly make it worse for everyone, including ourselves.

Please choose to be kind. Please choose to be patient. Please do not be selfish.

Thanks for listening.