Editing progress

The image at the start shows you how much of the cutting has been done yet.
As for the shooting, we only need three more scenes to be shot, with two of them taking place in Orgrimmar with huge crowds (we'll do that on Illidan-EU on a Sunday afternoon), just before shooting the last one at the Kor'kron Vanguard, my guild (In Memory) being the only required actors.

There's actually 450 video gigs on my computer for this episode. This utterly huge, and when it's out the video will last approximately 40 minutes, credits included.
The script has 13 scenes, among which 9 are already fully edited, and what's left of the work mainly consists in putting sounds and FX on the remaining scenes.
Special efftects make up for the most stressful part of the project, because sometimes they turn out to be much more complex to do than I had imagined at the beginning. That's why I learned how to use the software called After Effects very quickly, thanks to Goldskin (another skilful French director).

Structure of the projet
As I mentioned in the text that comes with the trailer, we started from scratch. We needed a hype producing idea to draw all attention on us and to convince people to follow our project.
Roughly, this is how the project made its way from the initial idea to the present day.
Firstly, I caught up on the game again after a very long pause, and the game expansion made me want to do some moviemaking again. Unfortunately, after what had happened with my previous project (Dark Tales), I knew I was going to face the judgmental people I had worked with and I hadn't given full satisfaction on their work. The first guy I had to convince was Kirochi, Dark Tales' script writer.
The dude knew me enough, and he trusted me as well, so as I was going to take my place back on the French scene, he accepted to follow me.
He thus wrote this one resurrection of Necka scene in the project's teaser. It was made to convince people, and it worked. Millenium let me start anew, and I got of lot of people's attention drawn on me (while others called me a shirker).

From then on, me and Kirochi knew we had done something crazy : the teaser only showed bollocks on the movie, because only 5% of what was in it were to be in the movie. Anyway the buzz worked, and now we may use it.
Then started the script writing, and I'm usually very picky on this ; I really don't know much about Warcraft's lore so I can't criticize Kirochi's screenplays, but I know what audiences like, as well as what I actually can do on a machinima. Kirochi usually writes a script three times before I can accept it and launch a project.

But this time, he really convinced me on the first try because his screenplay was completely balanced. It interweaved roleplay, action, PVE, PVP, new developments, suspense and key pictures. Everything was in there to make a really high-level movie.
Nevertheless we had to put some details right, and once they were done he made some documents detailing exactly what had to be done for every single characters (voice, personality, looking, etc). Then we prospected approximately 30 English-speaking voice actors to dub 23 characters, with 1 to 20 lines each to record.
Approximately 15 of them answered, and we selected eight of them to participate in the project.
Meanwhile I gathered my guildmates (from In Memory) and the supporting guild DIV Gaming as well as some Alliance players to shoot a scene overnight on Illidan-EU (rounding up 150 characters on the scene) from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Then I joined a few 10-man Naxxramas raids to shoot PVE and the 3 RP sequences for the scene inside this instance.
I started all the video & sound editing after recording approximately 450 gigs of video.
We exchange a lot every day with our voice actors (e-mails, sound files, corrections, precisions, etc). But all the lines eventually get done and they're all damn professional.
I started with the Naxxramas part, because I held it dearly ever since Blow's episode 2 to use again music from this time to give it max power with the FX and editing skills I've acquired since, and it looks like I handled it well.
Then I began to do the special effects on the most complex scenes, and I faced a sizeable problem: how to show in a scene ten mages attacking magically the Dark Portal?

After several hours spent with Goldskin, I managed to master the principles, and shortly after, I could do everything on my own over time when doing special effects. He helps me whenever it's really too hard.
Sadly nothing's ever that simple, and there's sometimes a noticeable gap between what's written in the script and what will show up.
How may I render 2D and 3D FX on a moving 2D environment?
That was impossible, even image by image; the result would have been terrible. There was no "simple" solution.
I dreaded having to shoot all those sequences again with a steady cam and boring images.
But once again Goldskin helped me with a new 3D tracking technique I hadn't heard of, but which I had to master quickly if I wanted to release the movie on time.