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Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 03 Jan 2013, 23:22
by Maud
A message from the team captain:

Hi Knightmare fans,

In view of the staggeringly unabated fascination with Knightmare, we've been musing about having a get-together to review our quest with you. Have any burning questions you'd like us to answer face-to-face? Any what-ifs?

If you're up for this, send an email with your rough location and approximate party size to maud.lane@secretary.net and we'll take it from there ...

With very best wishes for 2013,
Brett

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 04 Jan 2013, 16:43
by shadow6162
This is amazing! :D

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 04 Jan 2013, 17:18
by Canadanne
Sounds great! (Ever thought of recording episode commentaries for your quest?)

I'm curious as to why you weren't seen waving farewell after leaving the antechamber. Giles hinted there was a story behind that when he posted on the forum years ago, but never got round to sharing it.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 04 Jan 2013, 19:37
by JamesA
Count me in.... Will drop you an e-mail this weekend.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 05 Jan 2013, 23:13
by Giles
Episode commentaries is a great idea! I think that'd be a must. There was a very good reason why we weren't shown leaving, there's somethings you're not allowed to show on Children's TV. >:-]

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 07 Jan 2013, 18:55
by Maud
Here's an update from Brett:

Location - This depends on interest. If it's to be a small gathering, we could make it in a pub in the area of the New Forest where the actor who played Treguard once lived. For larger numbers, we'll obviously have to consider one or more bigger venues.

Filming the reunion and recording a commentary on our quest - Both sound like great ideas. As for the location, we'll gauge interest then confer to make sure everyone in the team's up for it. I imagine they will be.

Waving goodbye - Giles' reason notwithstanding, I think they might have been able to blur or cut out any offensive gestures they noticed during post-production. We recorded more than one ending; the Floor Manager explained this was due to selling Knightmare to other countries - including the USA and Spain - where it would not necessarily be Christmas when the series ended. Perhaps the director felt the sunny background didn't really suit Treguard's "winter is closing in" rhetoric?

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 10 Jan 2013, 12:02
by Drassil
A warm welcome to the forum, Brett, and welcome back to Giles. Although Series 4 is not the most popular Knightmare series, your quest has always been seen very positively by fans, and your enthusiasm is a definite part of that. You'd be hard pressed to find any posts on here expressing the opinion that your quest ended fairly. I hope you were told how your adventure could or would have panned out if you'd been able to continue.

Robin was {interviewed by a member of the forum} some years ago, but the interview never saw the light of day as far as I know, so I look forward to any further interviews, commentaries etc that may emerge. As I {remarked to Giles} on one of his earlier visits here, your surname is an anagram of Merlin, so maybe Knightmare was your destiny. ;)

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 10 Jan 2013, 12:35
by HobGoblin
Anthony from Series 4, Team 7 is a mate of mine. Did your paths cross at all during filming?

Whenever I mention KM to him, he'll go into a little rant about how they were sent into the Block and Tackle at a very awkward angle!

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 10 Jan 2013, 21:54
by Maud
Brett writes:

Thanks for your kind words Drassil. We didn't meet Anthony, perhaps as team 7 returned on the previous Thursday to the Monday when we started filming.

We don't know what the rest of our quest would have entailed; I'd love to know what the TINY spell was for! The producer said he thought there were four scenes left, and that he'd have to check.

I've been amazed at the sense of injustice voiced on the forum regarding our quest ending. I was glad we were spared the indignity of losing and we had lots of fun. As far as I know, that was the sentiment we all shared. We never moaned that we were nearly there and we certainly never complained to the production team.

It's perhaps debatable but I think the Block and Tackle was unfairly hard, like the path-under-the-swinging-axe sequence, which even the production team agreed was impossible when they put us through it (at the beginning of Level 3?). Certainly such challenges are harder to actually face in the studio for the first time than to review at home! The Dungoneer Manual instructed us to opt for the right-hand path whenever the way ahead was unclear, but there was no time to observe any kind of pattern and then make a rational plan. It just seemed like the game environment was collapsing around Giles and we did what we could!

Somewhere on the forum someone has suggested that the blocks moved at random; in fact I think during the whole of series 4 the animations were pre-rendered and were strictly serial (with the exception of the Amiga-imposed graphics). Whether variations were prepared I don't know; I suspect not.

We did actually fail the Block and Tackle first time round ... what you saw is the second take. So I have sympathy for Anthony's team, but I thought they failed in the previous scene; hence the Block and Tackle. Whether any team - including the winning team - correctly solved the Block and Tackle on the first take, I don't know. As someone has said, the manner of entry could affect the outcome.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 10 Jan 2013, 23:20
by Canadanne
Maud wrote:It's perhaps debatable but I think the Block and Tackle was unfairly hard, like the path-under-the-swinging-axe sequence, which even the production team agreed was impossible when they put us through it (at the beginning of Level 3?).
Wow, that's interesting to hear - I wasn't aware that the axe room had ever been tested on a team.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 11 Jan 2013, 17:58
by HobGoblin
I've never seen it but I think the axe room was used in the French version?

I actually quite liked the fact that we caught a glimpse of a room which wasn't used in any of the quests. It gave the dungeon a greater air of mystique, as if we were only ever privy to a small part of it and there were countless tricks, traps and nasty dark places which remained unseen.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 12 Jan 2013, 15:13
by Pooka
HobGoblin wrote:I've never seen it but I think the axe room was used in the French version?
That wouldn't surprise me, as Chevalier seems to rely almost entirely on floor puzzles from what I've seen.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 12 Jan 2013, 16:19
by Maud
Brett writes:

We didn't know it was called 'Block and Tackle' either when we did it! It was only through watching earlier Series 4 episodes that we learnt of that name. To us it was just the room where blocks flew across seemingly at random (though I think there was a pattern somewhere) and the floor fell away with very little notice or seeming logic - especially when you were faced with it live for the first time. Ideally there'd be practise sessions before a quest started with the same kinds of challenges; that would make it fairer in my opinion.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 12 Jan 2013, 16:56
by Mystara
I seem to recall that some blocks move once, and others move in a predictable fashion.

It gives the overall impression that the room is harder than it appears. Though of course, if you don't realise the significance of the fact that some blocks move only once, you might be tempted to think they're entirely random and simply bolt through the room without paying attention to the repetitive blocks that are avoidable if you take it more slowly.

Re: Series 4 Team 8 Reunion - Meet the Team

Posted: 13 Jan 2013, 19:21
by Maud
Mystara wrote:I seem to recall that some blocks move once, and others move in a predictable fashion.

It gives the overall impression that the room is harder than it appears. Though of course, if you don't realise the significance of the fact that some blocks move only once, you might be tempted to think they're entirely random and simply bolt through the room without paying attention to the repetitive blocks that are avoidable if you take it more slowly.
What would give a team the chance to realise that significance? Maybe if the dungeoneer entered slowly on the right-hand side, facing the back wall? But on both takes the floor manager oriented Giles diagonally and instructed him to take four large steps, which placed him right where the floor started to collapse.