Thank You! Plus: Some DVD Extras Revealed!

January 17, 2010 | David

Thank you for supporting the GOLD Season 1 DVD.

Happy New year, everyone. And Happy GOLD DVD Club inaugural year!

As you know by now, we did it: we met (exceeded) our goal, the DVD is being made, the DVD Club is closed, and its exclusive membership are the coolest people on earth.*

We’re busy getting our schedule together and, while we probably won’t announce a hard release date for a few weeks at least (many years working day jobs in software development has taught me not to do that until you are 100% certain), we’re confident that everyone who pledged at least $25 will have amazing, exclusive DVD Club Edition DVDs in your grubby, grasping hands sometime in the 1st quarter of 2010. For anyone who missed the deadline but still wants a DVD when they are released, you’ll be able to buy it through Goldtheseries.com, and maybe other places, shortly thereafter. I can hardly wait.

Now, some discussion of DVD Extras:

DVD SPECIAL FEATURES!

We’re gonna cram as many special features into the DVD as we can manage and, while we will have at least English subtitles, I do not count that as a Special Feature (I hate when DVDs list “subtitles” as a special feature - that’s not a special feature, it’s just common decency). Some of them will be pretty typical - a gallery of behind-the-scenes photos (some never seen before!), a hilarious commentary track or two, etc., but some will be special indeed. I wanna talk about two of them here:

• Never-before-seen Scene with the American Gamers
  
  A lot of DVDs feature deleted scenes. The fact is, for GOLD, our schedules and budgets were so tight that we really didn’t shoot anything we didn’t use. Sure, a line or two was trimmed here or there, but we really worked so lean there’s nothing notable in the way of footage which was left on the cutting room floor.
  
  However, a lot of cutting happened in the writing phase of GOLD. After I originally outlined the plot of the first GOLD story, I broke it down into episode arcs and realized I’d need 20-25 ten-minute episodes to tell the whole story. I knew I couldn’t afford to do more than six or seven episodes in Season 1, and I didn’t want to stretch the story over three seasons (I knew it’d be hard to fund a second season, and I didn’t even want to speculate on a season 3). So I collapsed what would have been the first two seasons of story into one season, and a lot of plotlines (and characters) were removed or greatly shrunk. (A side note: the Dangerous Gamers from Episode 4 were originally much more important in the world of professional Goblins and Gold, and were the American team’s main rivals in the semi-finals.)
  
  However, I’d already written a lot of stuff that would become seasons 1 and 2 of GOLD. Some of the stuff I was cutting was even good (no one is ever more surprised than me when my stuff is good). So, I found a little self-contained scene that I think is funny, and we’re gonna produce it as a DVD exclusive mini-episode. The scene features Tim, Sam & Charles, and takes place between the Prologue and Episode 1, about a month before the Semi-Final tournament where Jonathan is injured. You’ll get to see Charles again while he’s just the Equipment Manager, Sam back in his original chainmail gauntlet, and get a glimpse of the inside of Tim’s house. Exciting stuff indeed.


• An Interview with the GOLD Cast & Crew
  
  Another cool feature, we think, will be a sort of series-regular cast (and some crew if we can convince them) reunion-style interview, conducted by geek culture reporter Cricket Lee (FanGirl’s Guide, GirlGamer.com, GeekWeek.com). We’re gonna sit around and chat with Cricket and do our level best to be fascinating. There’s a solid chance that one or more of us will break down in tears, and a near-certainty that Rick (Richard Wright) will pick a fight with someone and end up being punched in the face. Now you really want that DVD, doncha?

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We’ve a few more cool extras planned, but I’ll hold onto those details for another time. Thanks again for supporting the GOLD Season 1 DVD Club. I’ll write again soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, you can post them here, or shoot me an email at . Make certain to mention you’re a DVD club member so I can give you priority treatment.

Later, David
Creator, GOLD

*apart from Lenny Kravitz. That dude is just too cool to be challenged.