AREA 5 is finally in a full-team huddle after traveling and dividing-and-conquering these last few months for Outerlands. That means it’s time for us to update all of you! The team has been watching and logging footage every free moment since we began shooting in March. While there are software programs which are supposed to streamline this process, we’ve never found anything that’s equal to the task of simply watching and then renaming every file by hand. Most of this task has fallen on Ryan’s shoulders. That guy is a machine.

Outerlands adds up so far to about 8,500 files and 3.5TB of data. I have no idea how many hours of footage that would be stretched end-to-end. Thankfully we’re in the digital age! I’m pretty sure we’d need an entire other office just to store film reels. Double those numbers, add in a few hundred more GB for good measure (not everything one shoots is worth logging) and the “storage problem” begins to add up. That’s where Cesar came in. For the past month in-between shoots, he took on the task of building a Network Access Storage (NAS) device. Our five year old Mac Pro honorably sacrificed its life for this greater good:

While it ain’t pretty, this system holds 22TB of usable hard drive space in a RAID 5 configuration. That may not mean much to many of you, but the short of it is that it gives us redundancy should several of the drives in the NAS fail. The dead drives can be rebuilt from algorithmic backups stored on the other drives.

So what’s on that sexy monstrosity? Our latest shoots are from sending Ryan and Cesar to EVO 2014—the largest, greatest fighting game tournament anywhere—and Jason and myself to GaymerX—a videogame convention for everyone regardless of gender or sexuality (which also began as a Kickstarter!). There's lots of little interviews and shoots we've gathered up as well, but the other big event was our NYC->Rochester->Buffalo->Candada->New Hampshire->Boston road trip. Here's a gallery of that epic quest:

Opening of Assalamualaikum Babycastles, an Islamic games exhibit. Babycastes is a videogame gallery in New York City. Inspired by the Hajj pilgrimage, where pilgrims walk seven times counter-clockwise around the Kaaba.

Field-1 , a game designed and built by NYU Game Center students has found a permanent location at the Brooklyn Brewery. It always has a line.

The Buffalo, NY skyline, on the way to Canada. The crew stopped here to film with Michael Thomasson, owner of the Guiness World's Record videogame collection.

Matt looks out from atop a viewpoint structure built into the bay in Buffalo, NY.

Jason finds a good angle for a shot on the roof of Babycastles, NYC.

Cesar prepares the SteadiCam for the rest of the day's shoot at NYU Game Center.

Artwork on the walls of Death by Audio, an event space and videogame gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Frank Cifaldi and Cesar look over a few of the over 400,000 toy and videogame artifacts at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

Matt and Frank Cifaldi enjoy a bite at the Old Toad in Rochester, NY.

Wall art at the Game Innovation Lab at NYU.

Preserved, original Humpty Dumpty pinball machine in the Boardwalk exhibit at the Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, NY.

Barcade in New York City. "Barcade" has also become a term for establishments that feature alcohol and videogames as adult leisure spots.

Sage advice from some wall art at Barcade, NYC.

Interview setup at the NYU Game Innovation Lab.

Death By Audio, an event space and art gallery that commissions one-of-a-kind games and arcade cabinets that then go on display elsewhere in New York City.

Cesar wearing a SteadiCam vest on the roof of Babycastles, NYC.

Jason finds a Game Boy. Strong Museum of Play, Rochester, NY.

The National Museum of Play in Rochester NY has a recreation of the iconic Sesame St. set-piece. Jason is waiting for Big Bird.

The team takes a detour at Niagra Falls just before leaving Canada.

Gratitude from an official sign on a random street corner in Manchester New Hampshire.

At a pit stop in Canada, the team is thwarted by Canadian Pac-Man.

Jason holds a replica of the original tape-set instructions given to the PDP-1 to run Space War , the world's first videogame.

Jason and Cesar realize they're being watched in the tunnels beneath MIT.

Matt interviews Ralph Baer, creator of the first home videogame console, the "Brown Box," just outside his basement lab where he still creates electronic toys at the age of 93.

It's inadvisable to stop in Boston without doing this.

Jason at Niagra Falls just before re-entering the United States.

Matt enjoys a bit of nostalgia at The Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Canada.

Interview setup in the tunnels beneath MIT where Space War, the world's first videogame, was created.

Matt chats with Ralph Baer, 93, creator of the first home videogame console in his Kitchen.

Jason and Ryan get the setup just right at the NYU Game Innovation Lab.

Egg chairs provide the perfect interview setup in one of the archival rooms at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

Syd Bolton's original 4-player controller design for classic Pac-Man on the Commodore 64.

What's next? We're settling back for a few months to dive into editing on this beast. We want to hone in on the layout for the episodes and then target our next locations and shoots on filling out their themes with the best stories. We're heading to Argentina and Chile near the end of September and beginning of October. Austin, Toronto, LA, Washington DC, Seattle, and Virginia are all in the cards at the moment. And, of course, we'll be constantly shooting all around the San Francisco Bay Area; our next local shoot will be at the Computer History Museum in San José which will help us round out our story on the PDP-1 which we began at MIT in Boston.

And there's another AREA 5 Kickstarter! Well, it's not so much ours as it is something we have a stake in. Should it get funded, we could have a hand in a 3D concert film/documentary on Infected Mushroom! It's been in the works for over a year and AREA 5 put a ton of work into the pre-production and the Kickstarter video from Spring through Fall of 2013. The project is being run and managed by our good friends over at Golden Gate 3D, but if you take a close look at the Kickstarter video, you'll see the AREA 5 stamp all over the shooting and editing. If it's something you'd like to see made, tell your friends!

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