This is the homeland of all Blackmoor fans, if you aren't here, where else would you go?
And as such it seems appropriate to announce the general release of the film VOD for Secrets of Blackmoor on this forum.
It also seems fitting that the first truly game oriented documentary about role playing should be the movie that features the Twin Cities Gamers and their stories.
There are certainly other films out there, but no one has really done a deep historical piece like Secrets of Blackmoor. At the same time, we want to see more D&D films and look forward to some others getting finished.
Yet, it's really a surprise to us to be first out the door.
We have copies of all of the Dragons in the Basement footage, which began around 1999/2000, or so. Sadly we do not have licensing to use it, or we would have. We're hoping John can produce an edit of his footage as it really needs to be seen.
D&D the Documentary foundered.
The Great Kingdom also foundered.
We have heard rumors those will be back in post production, so that should be interesting. I hope those succeed.
Then there is Pat Kilbane's film, The Dreams in Gary's Basement. We are hoping to see that reach completion in the coming year.
Not specifically about the games - If you have not seen Eye of the Beholder, you should go watch their trailer. We think it's worth checking out.
Secrets of Blackmoor is an oddity. We started after many of these films were already done with shooting interviews. We were under funded. If you look at all the Kick Starter projects for D&D films, ours was least backed. Strangely enough, others got more support, yet the films are not done yet. Yes, we are confused by this. We made a ton of mistakes along the way too. Although we are film makers, we're not industry folk. We used a lot of rented gear, much to our detriment, and had a tiny crew. Yet we just had faith in the project and in each other, Chris Graves and myself, as film makers. And the Blackmoor Bunch had faith in us as well. When I mentioned we would try to find someone famous to do the narration Bob Meyer insisted I do it, as did others. To my surprise, I am the voice in the film - I am not a trained voice actor.
We tried our best to listen to what the people in the film wanted. There was a lot of adjustment based on quizzing people who saw drafts. We thought we did a good job. At the premier in the Twin Cities, Stephen Rocheford stood up and shouted: You guys nailed it!
Who else can qualify whether we did it correctly, or not, than the High Priest of the Temple of the Frogs?
We were also buoyed by the people who helped us get started and the people who supported us on our social media sites. Thank you. I will keep saying thank you. I can't say it enough.
Most of all, we were driven by a sense of duty to the people who are in the film. We couldn't let them down and have their stories remain untold.
So much is unexpected and surprising. Dave's friends are our friends now, and we keep in touch. I have to talk about how special the core group of Dave Arneson's friends are - The Blackmoor Bunch. The Twin Cities gamers are true gamers. Once we sat down at a miniatures battle, or played some Blackmoor, we got taken into the fold by them - Truly wonderful people of high caliber ethics.
We feel everyone did what they could and everyone was helping out in making this film for Dave.
So there it is -- Somehow, The First Fantasy Campaign is first once again!
As a film our budget is tiny, yet we feel the movie content is epic. Please drop links on forums and talk about it with friends.
https://www.secretsofblackmoor.com/Now it's time to single out Havard and put him in the hot seat!
Havard is in the credits. He was inside on the film project from the beginning and was an endless resource for us. Maybe the meeting took place in a FaceBook chat, but he was at the first meeting. Also, he will deny that he was of much use, but he helped us get in contact with people and pointed us to interesting story aspects only a die hard Blackmoor player could know about.
Thank you Havard for all you have done to help tell the story of the Blackmoor Bunch.
Thank you everyone, Griff and Chris
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