Life and Level » Life and Level News

zomg an update!

Bryan — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 19:01:50 +0000

So, obviously it’s been pretty quiet around here. It seems to be a reoccurring theme for us! Anyway, we’ve been a bit busy, and we have a huge announcement coming next week, but until then, here’s a run down of what’s going on:

Life and Level is going to SGC 2010!
That’s right, Josh and Johnny were invited to the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention this year in Dallas, Texas. The guys and the crew will be filming a roadtrip video as they travel almost 1500 miles from Toronto to Dallas over three days. While at the convention, they’ll have an exclusive live-commentary of a few episodes, followed by the performance and taping of an actual episode!

So, if you’re in the area, come out and say hi. It’s going to be an awesome time, and you’ll get to meet faces such as Keith Apicary, AVGN, and brentalfloss! And with Josh and Johnny there, you can be assured there will be pain. You can get more information at http://sgconvention.com/.

You can check out a quick video promo we made here.

T-Shirts Are Coming Soon!
Exclusive Life and Level tshirts will be coming to the website in a week or so! ‘Nuff said. Here are the designs:

DVDs Are Only A Few Weeks Away
That’s right, that forbidden word that no one likes to talk about. Trust us, guys.. we haven’t forgotten about you. We know how bad it makes us look by taking pre-orders so long ago, and only now getting them out. It’s been a hell-ish ride trying to get them released, as we’ve gone through many changes in production. People who said they would do things were no longer willing to. Anything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. But alas, here we are.. mere weeks away from their release. They’re in production now, and it won’t be long. Thanks again for your patience, it means the world to us.

So that’s all for now. A huge announcement is coming up next week, so stay tuned!

Homes away from home

Bryan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:57:25 +0000

With our much anticipated return well under way, spirits are high at the LnL residence. As we move into the holiday seasons, the binds that school tie have come undone, as we prepare to begin our filming binge before the new year sees us returning to RL. With EP14 finally released, here’s what’s been occurring.

We’ve recently made ScrewAttack our second home. With their new direction attempting to become the YouTube of gaming, we’ve embedded ourselves into the community. The reception has been incredibly flattering, and we look forward to our stay. This endeavor has started to hint at something huge coming up, but we’re keeping our lips sealed until things are a bit more certain. Until then, drop in and give us some love (and your 11, you g1’s!)

We’ve also made the jump into Facebook. Join our group, and you’ll get exclusive updates about episodes, Josh’s bowel movements, and have access to exclusive (well, not really) pictures of Josh, Johnny, and the crew on and off the set of Life and Level. And don’t forget, both Josh and Johnny have Twitter. Join up and listen to Josh’s love life fall apart, one tweet at a time.

As for the next episode, we’re planning for a December 28th release, but don’t quote me on that! The episode is the most ambitious one yet, and if done correctly, will be the best one EVER. Unfortunately, it’s so ambitious that’s it causing some problems in terms of planning and execution. But, here’s hoping!

Episode Delays and other woes

Bryan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:42:01 +0000

If you haven’t already noticed, the fourteenth episode of the series has yet to be released. Almost a week behind schedule, the vocal chords of the community have been in full force, reminding us constantly of this delay. In order to clear up a few things, and give you a better understanding to the delay, and as well as update you as to what’s been going on in our rather silent community, we’ve made this post to hopefully give you peace of mind and reassurance.

Specifically, the delay is result of the actual content of the episode. It’s incredibly explicit, and as a result, we’re trying to find a workaround that will not get us banned from YouTube, while still being funny. Unfortunately, the problems within run a bit deeper than that.

In early September, Josh started his first year of college. Enrolled in a demanding Fire Protection program at a college in Toronto, Josh moved out of the Life and Level residence in Hamilton, Ontario to a city more than 60km away. With Josh’s primary focus centering on being successful in college, this seclusion has affected the amount of time and money he can commit to the show. Believe it or not, the show is incredibly expensive to produce.. everything from props, to tools, and countless other unmentionables have put a damper on how effectively episodes can be created. With Josh being able to commit less and less time to the show, the quality and motivation to complete things has gone down.

Life and Level is created through the generosity of 8 or so talented individuals. Stretching from university students to full time professionals, the talent that each crew member brings is unique and essential to the creation process. As a result, we’ve formed a close knit group, in which, when one member is affected by change, we all suffer. As comes apparent by this episode’s lack of release. Episodes are produced through one of two editors, each who live in different cities. Getting the raw tapes between the two becomes a challenge, which has been manageable until recent. It’s hard to lay blame on any specific reason, but the episode’s delay stems the change of priorities that all of us are forced to adapt to. RL sucks.

As a result, starting after the release of Episode 14 (shortly), Life and Level will drop the two week episode schedule and move onto more flexible release dates. This allows us to compensate our lack of time to commit to producing quality episodes. It could be a few weeks between episodes, or it could be a few months. One thing that is promised, however, is that the quality and hilarity episodes will increase dramatically. With more time for fresh ideas that are better executed, we can remove the stress that comes with a tight deadline. In addition, in a few weeks, we’ll be opening a merch store where you can purchase one of four sexy Life and Level t-shirts that will make women (and men) want to have sex with you. And for those of you who pre-ordered the DVD: fear not. It’s well under production, despite setbacks. To thank you for your patience, we’re including a small gift with the arrival of your DVD.

So, it’s not all bad news. The quality will increase, and so will the laughs. Josh and Johnny are eternally grateful for your support. You alone are what have made this series worth the blood, sweat, and tears. We hope you follow us into the future, because if there’s one thing we can promise: it’s gonna be diamonds.

-Bryan (Producer, cameraman, editor, gaffer, stand-in, and hat-whiner.)

Fan Expo 2009! DVD delay :(

Josh — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:58:06 +0000

We had an amazing time at Fan Expo! It was fun meeting you guys, and being able to film there. I’ll give you a run down on how it went for us. For the first two days (Friday and Saturday) we sold enough t-shirts and pre-orders to pay for our tickets and booth, which is awesome because none of could really afford any of that stuff! We met some awesome people there as well. Hopefully we made some more fans there. We got to watch a wicked CS tourney, and see some Muay Thai kickboxers. Johnny spent some time trying to get them to punch him in the face for the episode we were planning on filming. Overall, awesome time. We even got to meet and talk to Jarret Cale from Pure Pwnage who is moving on to making a Showcase production just in case you haven’t already heard! Also our booth neighbors from tazti.com were very tolerant of us obnoxiously using space and making a mess of the place. They make speech recognition software that allows you to control your character in a game by talking to them! It also allows you to use your computer using your voice for commands. They are accepting beta testers right now!

Ok, Sunday was our big day because it was when we planned on filming EP13. Let me tell you, it turned out way better than we expected. Our plan was to play games around the booths that had consoles set up. The winner of 1 round of that game got to punch the loser in the face. This was awesome, because as soon as the Rogers announcer saw what we were doing, he put us on stage to compete and narrated our fight to a growing audience. It’s no secret of how the competition ended. Johnny got knocked out after an uppercut. We dragged him out and gave him some rest for the N00B wheel. I’ll try to keep the N00B wheel at least a secret, but I’ll give you this: Johnny caused enough of a ruckus to get dragged out kicking and screaming and “evicted” from the con. Overall, I’d say that this is a good start of our new season!

You’ll probably find some pictures and video around of how it went. I see one video already put up by Goombazoid who visited our booth for t-shirts and a special deal offered from Johnny.

The things we do for our show, aagghh.

Now for some sad news, unfortunately the DVD is delayed due a major technical difficulty. Sorry guys! ARgghhh. This pisses everyone at LnL off as much as it does you guys who pre-ordered. You guys are our biggest fans and it pains us to delay it. This is our first time actually doing a project like this, forgive these crazy little problems we seem to have!

Now for a forum quote:

From Skyhook

Well… we all make mistakes… and we all poop, and we dont like our poop (unless your Josh), and we all dont like mistakes.

So lets shit for mistakes sake!

Words of wisdom.

Some HISSSSSterical updates and Johnny’s tweeting away!

Johnny — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:50:20 +0000

So a couple months back we added a donation button and thanks to all you loving supporters we were able to wrangle us a snake handler!The bad news was that the handler decided that it was in his professional interest to not associate himself with us. However, lucky us! We were able to contact an old friend who had dealt with snakes for years and last week we were able to pick ourselves up a “Nicaraguan Boa”, we’re currently calling it “Muffy”. Muffy is not alone either, later this week we will be purchasing a second snake. So thanks again to everyone who donated and pre-ordered!

On a less painful note I have finally fallen and joined the ranks of twitter. I’ll do my best to update, So come check me out on Twitter: LnLJohnny

Sorry one more thing! Pictures of “muffy” will be up later this week, hopefully you’ll all get to see the second snake aswell this week which is currently going to be named “princess”.

Thanks for the support and don’t forget to pre-order!

Life and Level DVD

Josh — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:28:14 +0000

Hey guys!

We’re working on the DVD right now, and it should roll out September 1st. It’s now available in our brand new merch shop for pre-order! If you pre-order, we’ll throw in some nifty buttons when we send you the DVD. We’ll also throw in our signatures for good measure!

The DVD will include:

Episodes 1 – 12 in as high quality as we can fit
Full commentary tracks for every episode
Tons of extra footage
Deleted scenes
A behind the scenes look at the production of the show
The Brentalfloss music video in high quality
A photo gallery of items ranging from close ups of injuries on set to injured cacti and other objects.
And most likely anything else we can think of fitting on there!

And don’t forget that we’ll throw in some nifty buttons if you pre-order now!

All of the proceeds we make from this will be going towards future episodes and our equipment. So with every purchase, you are actually helping our show live longer!

The DVD will be $20.00, that’s like buying two lunches. For the price of two lunches you can get yourself an awesome little gift! Screw eating when you can better spend your time watching Johnny and I duke it out on your TV.

We will make it available for our worldwide customers to purchase, but I’m afraid our DVDs are NOT in PAL format. We only really have enough money to duplicate one format at a time, so down the road you can definitely expect PAL DVDs. Until then our overseas friends, we’re sorry!

For those of you who like the cover of the DVD, I made a wallpaper for it as well!

You can bet I had a “hand” in this, hardy har har!

We also have 4 T-Shirt designs that will be available soon!

Also don’t forget that we’ll be making an appearance at FanExpo this year selling both our DVDs and all of our T-Shirts!

Here’s a quote from the forum boards:

Posted by ily

that fucker needs to stuff his pee-hole with a junior mint.

Holy crap, remind me not to get on ily’s bad side!

Update and Forum News

Josh — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:34:24 +0000

Ok, we’re still trying to set up a good way we can regularly post on here. Maybe I’ll just post whatever is going on around our house every day. Though, I do have the Twitter Feed for that sort of stuff. I want to do things that will incourage our LnL community to be more of a community. We’re thinking of having contests among a few of our ideas. I want everyone to know that we appreciate your involvment on our boards and I plan on including the user names of our more active members on a little thank you in the DVD we’re creating.

We have recieved $10 in total so far by two generous people. It wasn’t enough for the snake wrangler, not that he was too happy to associate himself with us anyway, so we’re going with something a little cheaper for now. Also, we’re booking an ice arena, and that will be costing our pretty penny. Any donations you give will go towards that until July 10th.

EP09 is due to be released this coming Sunday. And welcome everyone from BlameTruth! BlameTruth is a crazy good CoD player who plugged us recently! Thanks BlameTruth! For those who don’t know of him, give him a visit back.

I’m reposting the music since it’s starting to be requested again. I think we should deffinitely have an FAQ up so people don’t have to dig around for stuff like that.

The current intro music
The one we didn’t end up using

Every time I make a post on here I’m going to quote someone’s funny comment from the forums. Here’s today’s:

i once tried masturbating with GermX and it made my dick unusable for a week
and left a thick coating of hard dead skin (its better now)

i was screaming like a bitch though

-Liar805

wat

Tough Times and News

Josh — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:45:54 +0000

As each episode comes along, we come up with more and more ideas. Unfortunately, most of our awesome ideas can’t be done due to financial problems. This show is completely done by volunteer work by otherwise very busy and broke college/university students. I had won $10,000 from stapling crap to myself for 102.1 The Edge radio station in Toronto. That money has made it possible for me to continue in the project, but it seems to be running out faster than I expected (I just made a tuition payment, and those payments hit hard when you’re the only one supporting yourself). We are planning on diving headfirst into some of our ideas despite not having the money for it.

We have a snake wrangler planned to come in for EP11, and he’s a pretty penny. Any donation given until June 26 will go towards this episode. The more money we can get for this, the more crazy we are able to put into it. We are going to do the episode even if we recieve nothing, but it’s getting tougher and tougher.

Our donation button can be found on the top right corner of our page, and it leads to this link.

Also I want to thank all of you guys for the support! We’ll be making an update about the DVD soon. It’s going to have all of our episodes as high quality as we can get, commentary, extra footage, and a sort of “behind the scenes” look at our show. We plan on making a new volume DVD every 12 episodes.

We also have a booth set up at FanExpo in Toronto. If you live nearby, be sure to say stop by our booth and say hi!

That’s why I like Life and level!

Johnny — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:58:47 +0000

The man behind the magic

So earlier today, if you haven’t already checked it out. A little promotional video was made for us by the infamous “videogame maestro” of youtube’s Brentalfloss. With an amazingly catchy tune and witty lyrics we were able to rope another 1000+ Subscribers! So a million thanks to Brentalfloss for one hell of a plug! On a less awesome note I’d like to point out that our third episode (resident evil 5 and Laxatives) has been promptly removed from Youtube! But don’t fret LnL fans it will not be lost in the sea of flaggers! We will be finding alternate sites to post our videos so just sit tight and relax! Plenty more episodes to come!

Episode 6 released!

Josh — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:14:21 +0000

Sorry about how long this update took, but our new episode has been released on youtube!.

Also, we just need to catch up website wise, don’t worry about the episode not showing up here yet. It will show up soon enough *nudge nudge*

For those that want the opening song, we had actually made two. You can download them from our server! Both are created specifically for the show by our talented friend Sheldon Alexander.

The current intro music
The one we didn’t end up using