I began working on the project Sunwell at the start of May when I learnt about the opportunity I was given to show my videos at Blizzard's WWI 2008 in Paris, on the Intel & HP booth. I wanted to show an exclusive video for the event, the first part of Sunwell, with the downbringing of the first three bosses in the instance, World of Warcraft's toughest one as of today. As usual, I did the shooting with the Empire guild.

Then I had a hard time... Or actually the guild did, failing to complete the dungeon. The raid leader left the guild two months after Blizzard's WWI, which led many to do the same. It is nowadays inactive.

Anyway, no reason to give everything up because some French guilds had said they would have accepted to shoot with me for the second part, but for me it symbolized my last video with Empire... That's why I decided to call upon one of the best guilds in the world, who collects world records and won Blizzcon 2008's tournament. Hence, Nihilum did the rest!

The shooting was done by the end of September, and I was lucky enough to be able to show it at the Video Game Festival 2008 edition in Paris. It was a success, and feedback was quite encouraging. It's always great to meet with the public.

For Sunwell I scheduled a 15-minute video, just like Naxxramas and the BWL trilogy. What's hot about it: a powerful intro, a good rhythm within the content, chaining fights, and... I remembered to display the bosses' names!




The video could be divided into 3 parts: the intro, the first three bosses with Empire, the last three with Nihilum and the ending credits.

The introduction starts with flashbacks from old dungeons, and a motivating speech directed at the raiding party in the Sunwell. It ends with WoW Model Viewer-rendered scenes (where the characters are animated on green backgrounds and are then inserted in other premade backgrounds).

The 'Empire' part also uses those kind of sequences. It helped me bring some change to my videos, even though I've always tried to show attractive fights without the use of this technique (which I'd rather leave to other moviemakers who make better use of it for RP purposes, or other).

I expect different opinion feedbacks on this matter. When I showed Sunwell's first part at Blizzard's WWI, a couple came to tell me that their children would surely enjoy the movie, but that they wouldn't as much as my previous ones because of some fantasy-ish sequences. There were a few more people who shared this opinion, but fortunately most people liked it.

I wanted to satisfy as many watchers as possible and forgot about putting more of those in the second part of the video. It also features a Horde guild (which is new in my movies), and what's more they're so famous everybody knows them.

I left a compulsory tribute to Empire before the ending sequence, as I wanted it to be more 'human'. You will see then a few photos and videos we've taken on several events. That way everyone will be able to associate a face with a famous name or a member of the community.

To put the lid on it, I would like to thank the Empire guild for all our experiences one last time. Thanks to Nihilum for their trust and their warm welcome to dead weight like me! Thanks to the Millenium staff who supports me and allowed me to go on further, and also to our sponsors for the two events in Paris.

And thanks to those who came to discover, for once or again, my videos during those happenings. Having a talk with you people is much more pleasant than exchanging comments on the Internet (even with those who don't like my work!).

Anyway let me know if you'd like to criticize what I'm doing, and to spread it around if you like it.

Enjoy !

Jack
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