I finally got back after my trip to Iowa (a place that I would highly advise you to avoid). I have some pretty awesome news. I may be working on another movie here soon. It (if it will come together as planned) will have a story line. If we get the actors that we need, it should take only a fraction of the time that the montage already has. When compounded by the fact that I now have enough time to work on movies, I hope to get it done much faster. I am seriously considering giving up the montage. I'm finding out how little material I really have that is of any value. Most montages are made entirely of no scope scenes, and that is one of my weakest areas in Halo. I am descent at sticking people. My main strength is with the BR, but BR combat rarely makes a good montage. I have several funny scenes that I may incorporate into a short video, but I don't plan on finishing the montage at this rate.

I know I keep saying that the website update is almost done, but it's not. I have decided to make an attempt at coding it in PHP instead of HTML. That will allow for a more involved website. It will also allow me to control user access to the website in general, not just the forum. There are quite a few other features that I'm looking forward to. The HTML template is essentially done. All that is left is the PHP part of it. That is part of the reason for the delay.

I know it's been a long time since I've made a news update. However, there hasn't been much to update you on until now. Christmas break is coming up, so I should have considerably more time on my hands. I hope to be setting up the new site before Christmas break starts. That should leave me more time to work on the montage. The new website will be uploaded without the Spartan 3 Design pages. I just don't have the time with which to get both of them going. I may get the Spartan 3 Design going during Christmas break. I am also looking into some paid web hosting that would allow me to use PHP. I would love to start using some PHP scripts on this site that would make it much more functional. If this does happen, you can expect to see some major changes. Anyway, that's all that I have at this point.

I have made little progress on either the montage or the new website lately. I'm having some trouble with school work. I have two major papers due this week, and will not have the time for too much else. I will probably hold off work on the montage until one of the holiday vacations that are coming up. That should allow me the time to make some serious progress.

I have managed to get some work done on the website. It is in the final stages of development. Soon, I hope to start filling it with content. I will be including several more features. Right now we are perfecting the banners and side borders. It should be quite interesting to see how people like the new look to the site. I just hope I don't have the same problems that I had last time I updated the site.

Other than that, I don't have much to report. I will warn those who have been waiting for the next movie that I won't be putting out many during the school year. Unfortunately, this website was started just a few weeks before school started, and I didn't have much time to get many movies out. I hope that summer and Christmas breaks will allow me to put out some more movies.

Making a montage is a lot more difficult than I thought. I'm STILL sifting through hours of video looking for the cool stuff. More and more, I am coming to the realization of how bad I am at Halo. I haven't done any more filming for it for a while, because I still have hours of remaining film piled up. Unfortunately, I'm simply not finding the cool scenes that make montages worth making. I have some great sniping footage, but It's not enough. All of the times when I pulled of something really cool, I'm not filming. It's truly quite pathetic. I expect the montage to be rather short. At the end, I will throw in some of the funny things that happened during my filming. Some of it is surprisingly funny.

I've given up hope for the war movie. The would-be director and script writer has not contacted me for quite a while. I'll just assume he has lost interest. We are still having formatting issues with the logo. Nothing on my computer will edit or even convert .mov formats (quicktime). It's really getting to be a pain.

The basic-page format for the next site is nearly complete. All that I have to do is add side borders, and it will be done. Once all of the graphics and formatting is done, all that is left is to get my content on it. That shouldn't take long. It's taking longer than usual for a few reasons. One of the most major is that this is a collaboration between me and the guy who is heading up Spartan 3 Design (the official name has yet to be revealed). Since both of us have very limited time, it serves to greatly lengthen the process.