chinnyhill10 wrote:
chinnyhill10 wrote:
If you are wondering why Treguards chamber is also on the blue screen set, it's actually a different studio but they didn't have time (and probably money) to build a proper set so they CG'd it instead.
Wired article about it
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... -geek-weekQuote:
In depth: 90s gameshow Knightmare reborn for YouTube, may spawn new TV series
It's the stuff that 90s kids' dreams are made of: popular children's TV show Knightmare is being resurrected for online audiences in a one-off special episode for YouTube's Geek Week.
Geek Week will be a weeklong celebration of geek culture from 4-11 August, in which Knightmare will feature alongside a Doctor Who celebration, anime and attempts by YouTube gamers to break Guinness World Records. Knightmare was a popular medieval game show that used blue screen chroma key to enable virtual reality interactive gameplay. It ran for seven years, finishing in 1994, and achieved cult status among its fans.
Justin Gayner, creative director of ChannelFlip, which is executive producing Geek Week, spoke to Wired.co.uk about how the resurrection of Knightmare came about. "I believe it was inspired by an article that appeared in the Guardian about Knightmare about six months ago that some of the YouTube marketing team saw. They remembered what a fantastic cult classic it was and had a brilliant idea of bringing it back for a one-off special."
Having settled on the idea, the next step was to secure the help and support of the show's original creator, Tim Child, who has been out of television production now for ten years and has been fully retired for eighteen months. When he first heard that YouTube wanted to make a new episode of Knightmare, he thought it was all a ruse, he says.
After thinking for four days about whether it would be such a total disaster that we couldn't even do justice to a reprise, I decided to go ahead and give it a blast
Tim Child, creator of Knightmare
"I thought it was a joke. I thought I was being scammed," Child told Wired.co.uk. "After thinking for four days about whether it would be such a total disaster that we couldn't even do justice to a reprise, I decided to go ahead and give it a blast. I'm directing and producing it, because I couldn't inflict that role on anyone else at such short notice.
"We've got four of the original cast back with us. They're all older and fatter and none of the costumes fit, but luckily they all still know what they're doing and they're all very funny."
As well as the four original cast members, including dungeon master Treguard, the show will feature Peep Show's Isy Suttie and Harry Potter's Jessie Cave, with four top UK YouTubers as contestants. Wired.co.uk spoke to contestant, Knightmare fan and YouTube sensation Stuart Ashen. (Note: he did give away some of what happens in the episode, so bear that in mind if you want it all to be a surprise.)
"They got in touch with me because I do a lot of very geeky things on YouTube to do with technology and gadgetry and they knew I was quite a fan of the television show back in the day when it was broadcast," Ashen tells Wired.co.uk. "I was about ten or eleven when it came out and it was the coolest thing ever."
Would he have wanted to be a contestant back then? "I think I would have been far too scared," he admits. "It's taken me twenty years to pluck up the courage. Very few people ever won it -- something like I think eight out of the hundreds of shows that were filmed.
"I get to be the dungeoneer, which is the one you actually see on screen with the giant helmet on. He can't see anything [and] has to be entirely led by his team of advisers. Because you have zero vision, it's quite intense, shall we say. We haven't properly started filming yet but we've had little bits with the helmet on. It's remarkably limiting -- you can really only see the area directly below you so you don't trip over."
As such, Ashen will be relying heavily on his teammates, but he has reservations. "I don't know if I'd trust them with my pet dog or something... But on the plus side I think they desperately want to win and they don't want to see me crushed by some horrifying medieval device."
The episode will be aesthetically similar to the old Knightmare, says Child. "People didn't want us to show them what a new Knightmare would look like, they wanted us to show them what the old Knightmare looked like with lots of old Knightmare people in it, which we've done.
"The reason why we're back here and making Knightmare again is really because of the Knightmare fans -- the 11-, 12- and 15-year-olds of 1987 through to 1994 who've never let the bloody thing go. Really they've just built up this huge internet presence and cult presence and they go on and on, and they're still angry that it was taken away from them in the first place."
Ongoing fan support means Knightmare continues to live on on the internet, and will even appear as a live show at this summer's Edinburgh Festival, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. If this new episode is popular, it could be the start of something new for Knightmare, Child says.
"The reason that's come about is again because of demand by the Knighties, by these absolutely undefeatable fans who just keep on at it. Because they've done that, that's why the Edinburgh show is happening, that's probably why other shows will happen and it's probably why if there is a successor, why that will happen.
"This is either the last Knightmare, or this is the first of an incarnation of new Knightmares. I really couldn't even begin to tell you which it's going to be, but certainly we have opened the box again and some sort of monster is getting out, and the next six months will probably tell us."
If there is a new incarnation of the show, Child suspects it will find a home on conventional broadcast TV rather than on the internet -- an idea reiterated by Gayner, who added that he wouldn't be at all surprised to see Knightmare hit TV screens in a year or so. Child thinks that due to the public appetite for content of similar genre, the timing might be perfect for a Knightmare revival.
"Fantasy interest has never been stronger, and we don't mind riding waves. People have said to me, 'what would a new Knightmare be like?' and I say, 'well, it'll be commedia dell'arte meets Game of Thrones, only with less sex and more jokes'."
And would Childs consider coming out of retirement to oversee a new era of Knightmare? "Absolutely not," he says. "I may be a bit doolally, but I'm not that stupid. I'm very very very keen if it does go forward in the future to hand over to younger, more creative, more energetic people, and there's plenty of them out there. It doesn't rely on me to have a life, as it's been shown. I've almost deserted it for the last 19 years."
Thanks to YouTube clips, Knightmare now has fans around the world. It was originally licensed in France and Spain, but didn't quite make it to Germany and the US because production companies were reluctant to adapt to the complex technology involved in creating the show. "That reason no longer applies," Child says, "so the world is our lobster, as they say."
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