I last wrote one of these in late May and called it the ‘Spring Newsletter’. There wasn’t a Summer one for the simple reason that we didn’t do anything! It was the hottest summer in the UK for 50 years and hot shoots SUCK. I made the decision not to film for 2 months plus and it is the best decision I’ve made, those 2 months would have been appalling. While it no doubt looks cool when the heroine is melting, I do actually want the actresses to come back.
It looks like we are becoming a spring and autumn production now, which is fine provided we cram everything in. We are about a month into the autumn shoots and have maybe 6-7 weeks left. On the actress front, which is all most of you care about (I understand this), I don’t think anyone has left us this year, and we have a new addition very soon. I love working with the cast we have, but will be looking at additions between now and when we start filming again next spring, because in my experience it is a bad idea to rest on your laurels.
From the beginning of July some of you noticed a change to opening titles. It badly needed an update, the previous being 9 years old and ignoring every heroine that had joined in the second half of our existence. The new titles show important heroines through our timeline, dedicated to the story mostly. Some are missing, I made one with more, but it was just a mess, so I settled for what we have.
We’ve been getting to grips with new equipment and filming methods. I decided we had headed too far down the route of relentless fighting. What brought me to this conclusion was actually doing the YouTube retrospective (which I’m now releasing weekly on X and Meta to far more interest than YouTube ever gave it) and watching the old videos and how different they were. My plan over time is to just turn down the wick on absolutely wall-to-wall fighting, unless for a specific plot, and give actors more to do, be more expressive, and more ‘comic book superheroines’ as opposed to the martial arts films I felt we were making. To me, it is perfectly natural to evaluate your work and make changes.
Additionally, many of you will have seen, and I hope enjoyed, the videos that we do for the hybrid sets for Photo Set Tuesday. We are going to gradually be adding something a bit like that from the set day, video modelling, that will be part of the main video, not a Member Gift or additional purchase. Nothing is being taken away, we are paying for more time and working longer to give something more, and I’m excited to see how that will evolve.
There has been brief discussion on here about AI. My feelings about it are that I am happy to use it to create additional material, such as a video of an explosion, or a picture that illustrates something of value that helps with the storytelling. I do not plan to use it as of now to replace people, no one in the production is missing out due to how we use AI, the things I use it for would simply not exist without it. As for the longer term implications; I know people have strong feelings, I don’t really. It has come on leaps and bounds in the last year or so BUT to produce a 15 minute video where I was happy with everything the characters did, and looked like, without glaring issues would take very significant hours and probably cost significantly more than actually shooting it in credits and subscriptions where 8 out of 10 renders are unusable.
If it gets to a place where I can type in a prompt and get that video delivered bespoke then maybe I’d consider it, but then, all of you could do that as well. Learning how to make a high quality AI video would take time and money and at the other side of that learning would be a situation where anyone can create anything. Making the effort redundant. I think that is where we will be in 2 to 3 years.
So, the unanswerable question is: Will there be a place for live action videos that people pay $20-30 for by then? Time will tell. My job is to make something that I think people will want to buy until I can’t do it any longer and the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. I will add that when a video release tanks, I never get annoyed that people didn’t support it, I understand that I made something they weren’t all that interested in, so it is incumbent on me to do that less.
Alex says:
Will supreme sentinel be sticking around and can we get a video with her vs lady nemesis?
ngcrisis says:
I hope so, no decisions made on opponents so I can’t promise anything.
ceej says:
I always appreciate the peek behind the curtains. The new intro is a nice change of pace, and that final shot with Echo/Sentinel really makes it work. I’d welcome the idea of more “comic book superheroines” as you phrased it, while I do enjoy and appreciate what goes into the combat, it’s often the parts before/in between/after the fighting that resonate most with me.
And to offer some insight into the unanswerable question, if on a random Friday 3 years from now there’s a link to buy a live action video of, say, Echo battling Killscape, for $25, then yes, I will be buying it.
ngcrisis says:
You should enjoy the slight tweaks we are making then. If enough people feel like you do, we’ll still be here.
guido84 says:
I also love the sound of this. While I REALLY love all the action, and the performers are amazing at it, they’ve also shown that they can really act, and I love it when they get given something to really get their teeth into actingwise, and show what they can do
Bugsy44 says:
I love the idea of adding more to just fighting!! I have always wanted to see the ladies do more!!! Super excited!!!
ngcrisis says:
You should like it then!
Dr G says:
1) Another drawback of AI is that all of the characters have the same facial look which real actors/actresses do not. Other real actors/actresses video producers have mentioned the same thing about how expensive/time consuming/fighting with the AI it is to create AI films so that they use it for hard to create scenes like you mentioned, 2) If there is no Winter Newsletter, what are you/NGC doing ? 🙂 Thanks for always communicating with us and keep up the great work ! 🙂
ngcrisis says:
Yes, at the moment you need to be very patient to get what you want. Even when it gets it badly wrong they still charge you, which is quite a wheeze! It is improving rapidly though, so we will just have to wait and see. A winter newsletter may also be unlikely as we don’t film then for the opposite reason. Winter is also very dark here. There is quite a narrow temperature range where filming NGC is comfortable.
Bob Daniel says:
Will the bella photo sets ever come back for sale?
ngcrisis says:
Yes eventually.
Bleh says:
Thank you.
sj says:
Good work!
Alex says:
I also really love those endings where the heroine struggles to get up and faints back down I would love to keep seeing those type of endings occasionally
guido84 says:
Re: the future of fully AI action videos. For me, no matter how good AI gets (or CGI for that matter) nothing beats the visceral feeling of knowing that a stunt was performed for real by an actual person. That’s why a lot of modern CGI blockbusters leave me cold,
For instance, the dogshit scene in “Die Another Day” when a shitty CGI Bond para-glides down a shitty CGI melting icecap, in a moment that is surely the nadir of all the Bond franchise.
Compare that to Indiana Jones climbing down the front of a jeep, all the way underneath and back up the other side… a REAL person actually did that, and it makes it all the cooler. And even now, all these years later I eagerly await that moment whenever I watch the film. Today, that would all be done on the computer, and while it would probably look good, it would be forgotten about a few minutes later. It would lose the human element.
I’ve lost track of the number of times your cast have performed a stunt that has left me with my jaw on the floor, wondering how they did it.
C13 says:
+1 to this. The cast at NGC has always been one of the biggest appeals to me, going back over a decade. It’s so much more fun seeing characters come to life and grow as the actors get comfortable and shine in different ways. And as the cast is around longer, it makes seeing the actors in different scenarios more exciting and engaging. IMO, Lady X isn’t just awesome because she’s a hot character in a costume – she’s awesome because, holy crap someone can kick *that* high, do fight stunts *that* well, and beliavably sell being a superheroine? That’s worth my money, that’s a character I want to follow and invest in. I just have no interest in following an artificially generated prompt.
I’ve always thought it could be cute to get little bits of cast commentary on videos, but also I recognize that’s probably a load of extra production work for minimal extra payoff.
Anyways, year has been full of great vids, cast is great, story is awesome, hoping the rest of the shooting season is successful!
ddd says:
ive yet to see a $30-$40 ai SHIP film or a $10 ai generate comic strip that was actually worth the money since using privatized models become popular. youre seeing once legendary producers like RYE produce dogwater ai videos and its really sad to see.
ngcrisis says:
Well the proof would be in the pudding. To make a good quality NGC video entirely of AI would be very expensive at this point, so it would need to pull in at least as many sales as a live action video does. I’m really projecting 3-5 years ahead rather than right now. My projection for then is that it would be significantly cheaper to produce one of those than live action by that point, and the quality would be another giant leap ahead BUT that just tells me anyone could make one. As long as live action is viable/worth the effort AND I still enjoy it, I’ll keep doing it, but my point was that we’re headed to an all-encompassing entertainment sector which will be broadly bespoke at quite low cost.
rayman says:
Great update! I am very happy hearing your views on AI and I certainly understand and agree. I truly hope that in a few years time you will still be able to produce live action content with real actresses and if AI has become such a mega tool that can create a movie scene in just a few promts then I would be thrilled haing a real actress filmed by your good self and then added into an AI epic, I guess a natural progression of you using AI for images and explosive effects etc. I am also thrilled that the current cast remains in place and with Wonderstrike returning will there be some new Karly/Captain content coming? Thank you for what you do and have a brilliant shooting season and thank you to the wonderful cast and crew too.
Mitch says:
I am much MUCH more of a peril guy as opposed to a fighting guy, so I’ll be optimistically intrigued to see what new directions you guys go with your films!
ngcrisis says:
Well, I don’t want to oversell it, there will still be lot’s of fighting, but less relentless machine-gun style and more in line with the genre and give the actors more chances to be expressive.