randomencounters

REport: One Last Gift From 2023

HeyJ, crew. Not quite the update I wanted to make, or even expected to be making. This year has absolutely demolished morale at points, but it’s also hopefully the gateway by which next year goes really, really well (or at least significantly better!)

Thank you for encouraging us through the ups and downs, and apologies that we’ll be missing yet another monthly musical after all this prep and planning. 😓 I’ll look up the photo from the start of the year so we can all appreciate the comparison of 2023’s Expectation vs Reality. 🥴  A REwind video is still planned for January, and hopefully a FNAF teaser as well.

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Bunny Besties ❤️

⚠️ MINOR SPOILERS! ⚠️

HeyJ, team. Sorry for the slow updates! We have a ton to report, but let’s start small: with a couple familiar faces, chilling together on the set of FNAF: Dark Remains. 😎

We didn’t discuss much plot in this REport, but I still marked this as a spoiler in case you didn’t want to know who shares scenes with who.

We’re planning to pop in with another update specific to our Christmas song in the next 24 hours or so. Thank you so much for your support and we hope all of you are enjoying the holiday season!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Balloon Boy’s Got MOVES!

⚠️⚠️ MINOR SPOILERS! ⚠️⚠️

HeyJ, team! I know this seems wild, but we discovered a nifty trick or two that we never knew Balloon Boy was capable of while filming recently! How we’ve had him for over five years and never figured him out entirely is pretty insane! 😂

We’ve been VERY busy on new scenes and will have a couple more REports to share as we start importing footage. We still don’t know how much info is *too* much, but there are 100% spoilers forthcoming, and we’ll be sure to use a custom thumbnail on those for anyone afraid to see what’s coming. 😇

Thank you for your support. We hope all the work we’ve been doing gives our community everything they wanted from Dark Remains. Your patience and encouragement is appreciated beyond words. 🙏 News about our upcoming holiday musical will be forthcoming shortly!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: That’s a Wrap on 🪣

HeyJ, team! We’ve been shooting a ton and have possibly our busiest week of the entire year coming up (probably one of the busiest in RE history, to be honest!) Shooting has been mostly fine, though yesterday’s filming was rife with struggles. 💀 Not every day on set goes smoothly, especially where FNAF is involved!

We owe you an update about our holiday song for December, so stick around and we’ll explain it on a near-future REport!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Not the Twist You Were Expecting...

HeyJ, everyone! Today's REport is an important one, and I want to stress how much problem-solving went into this situation. While this update was not one we had intended to ever make, every member of the RE team continues to feel completely confident that it was the correct choice. I hope once you get to see some of the footage in action, you agree with us as well!

We've now filmed about a third of the script, by my estimation. That doesn't seem like so much, but it feels like massive progress here! We're picking up the pace once Thanksgiving ends, but my hopes of finishing ALL filming this year have evaporated -- at least a few small scenes will need our attention in early 2024, leading to the obvious last announcement: Dark Remains won't be out this year. But we feel safe anticipating a Spring/early Summer release, alongside a normal musical schedule again. Encounterers should be eating good in 2024!

Thanks so much for supporting RE and especially this mammoth of a project! We'll have plenty more updates for you from on set, and some news about next month's holiday musical soon, too!

Beard Salute!
~AJ 

REport: Happy Birthday, Nate! 🥴

HeyJ, squad! I swear, we’re giving Nate a real birthday party after this! 😅 He’s been working hard all day (we all have!) adding new sets and preparing for another shoot on Monday… one with a song!

We have tons more to do, especially with a holiday approaching and a few days off, but rest assured, we’ll share bits and clips with you here on Patreon all along the way. 😎 Thanks so much for your support!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: The Art Avalanche!

HeyJ, pals! Finally, a REport with no FNAF spoilers… unless maybe you go digging for them… 😏 We’ve collected a massive stockpile of incredible fan-made art to hang on set, and have even set up a production schedule finally for virtually every scene left to shoot (and a little time for a Christmas song and a January musical!)

The next REport will be a little bit weird… Brace yourselves and trust us! 🥴 The Impossible Project never gives any quarter, but Random Encounters is up to the challenge. 😎 Thank you for supporting us in this massive musical, the last of our FNAF series!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Something’s Different About You… 👀

HeyJ, team! ⚠️⚠️ Light spoilers again! ⚠️⚠️ No plot details discussed or filming shown, but we can’t update you on some of these shoots and avoid a whiff of what’s to come entirely. 😅

There’s been a fair share of extra challenges cropping up this month, but we’re doing our best to find fast, effective solutions! 😤 We had to reschedule a major scene or two last week, and have a big decision to work through this week (which you may find out about...) Hopefully with enough patience and determination, we’ll start chewing through a ton of the script and be a solid 50% completed by month’s end.

If you’re waiting for non-FNAF updates… sorry, there ain’t much! 😂 We’d like to have a holiday song out next month (per tradition), and then our annual REwind, but nothing’s planned to launch here in November, unfortunately. If we stay buckled down, though, we’ll be ready to return to monthly (non-FNAF) musicals for 2024. Thank you so much for your patience and support!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Injury on the Field!

⚠️⚠️MINOR SPOILERS FOR DARK REMAINS IN THIS REPORT!⚠️⚠️

(Sorry, I got in big trouble over spoilers online a week ago. 🥴 Better safe than sorry, I guess!)

HeyJ, team! I tried posting this a day ago and wondered why nobody ever watched it… Turns out, something went wrong and it never went live! 😱 We’ve filmed several more scenes since, so there will be more fresh updates shortly (assuming Patreon doesn’t keep wating them… 😒)

Just to clarify about spoilers: going forward, it will be tricky to show much production without giving away some locations and characters, but we’ll do our best to keep as much of the plot under wraps as possible (especially since we have a few big twists we think will hit much harder without any warning! 😙) I’ll still mark REports showing FNAF production as having spoilers just so you can decide to avoid them in case you want to remain completely neutral for the eventual premiere. 😎

Thanks for your support and apologies for an unintentionally “quiet” week!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

Patreon-exclusive Discord Chat at 12:30 Pacific

HeyJ, everyone! Wow, it's been a long time since our last Patreon-exclusive Discord call, but at 12:30PM Pacific (half an hour after our Minecraft music video premieres!), I'll be hopping on with my headset to chat for a bit!

Our primary discussion topic will be the new musical, but I expect there will also be a little talk of FNAF, moving to a new house, and a group question that will probably be sleep-related! ;)

I'll stick around about an hour, so feel free to drop by late or check out early as needed. There's a lot left to do this month, though, so I won't be on past then. Sorry!

Hope to see some of you online! Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Shaming the Peestain 💩

HeyJ, pals. A little out of order, but as promised, here’s a little update video we filmed after Mr. Meowse moved to the new house and, uh, promptly caused a nightmarish poo-pocalypse. 😑

He’s doing a hundred times better now, btw. Thanks for thinking of him. It’s safe to say no one at RE (or even among the fan community) will miss our last house more than Mr. Meowse will. 😿💔 But I promise, he’s warming up to the new one a little more every day and will soon be strutting around it like the little movie star bosscat he dreams of being. 😎

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: A Late Night at the Office 🌛

HeyJ, crew! It’s been a hot minute, but it is my great pleasure to welcome you back to a familiar office some of you have been itching to return to… 😏 Believe me, the feeling is mutual! We can’t wait to get some cameras rolling and begin teasing scenes, but unfortunately, a lot of our schedule is dictated by the humans of Freddy Fazbear’s (the puppets have much more flexible schedules!)

There’s a bit more music to share shortly, and we’ll be busy constructing more props and sets, so if you’ve been waiting for more Five Nights at Freddy’s… these next couple months are our way of saying thank you for your patience! 😉

(And thank you to the rest of you for allowing and even supporting us finishing out this vision for FNAF fans! You’ve been super champs and we hope you’ll feel just as rewarded by them, either by the ending of our FNAF musical series, or the start of what comes after!)

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Welcome Home! 🏠

HeyJ, Encounterers! You’ve joined us moving from LA to Lancaster, and then Lancaster to Palmdale, and today, we’re pleased to have you move again with us to Apple Valley, California! 🍎

This location offers a ton of space (which we’ll show you more of!), as well as more direct connections to Las Vegas, San Diego, and Orange County. The trade-off is that Hollywood is a bit extra of a drive, but we’ve found many of our collaborators have moved further out from LA’s center, making this a generally useful move for many of them as well.

Thank you for making this move possible and we  hope our new studio space and location sets the stage for some of your favorite Random Encounters musicals of all time. 🥰

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: The Wild… West? 🌵

HeyJ, team! Here’s one more surprise guest for our final vacation REport, and this one’s finally filmed in France! 🇫🇷 Not that it LOOKS much like France… 😂

This one’s just for fun. No real project updates or work to share — just RE having fun! Our next REport will be back in America, and it’ll have some cool new production updates finally. 🙂

Thanks for making both our jobs and our silly vacations possible!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: A Perfectly Normal Recording 😏

HeyJ, team! I think this one is better posted without comment. 😏 Thanks for your loyal support and patience, and stick around — more cool updates will be coming!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

Patreon just sent us this…

*insert Slowpoke meme here*

Just had to laugh when this arrived today in our inbox. 🤣 Happy ONE YEAR, everybody! 🥳

REport: Alternate Universe Misedor 👑

HeyJ, crew! We’re out of country right now, but this exquisitely dresses fellow dropped in on us right before we left and agreed to do a REport together! I think he’s royalty of some kind, and he talked a lot about money… 😅 This wasn’t a business visit, btw — just a chance to see a friend for a minute, and dress up in a cool costume. 😉

We had another friend visit right before departing for France, and that one WAS here on business, so we’ll upload that REport shortly. Thank you for supporting the channel (including gooding around with friends!) And yes, we’ll bring Devon back for another musical, too — it’d be harder to keep him out of another, really! 😜

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: It’s a Lewk (Not a good one)

HeyJ, team. Welcome to one of the last “normal” REports you’ll see, because we’re TEARING THIS PLACE APART FOR MOVING! We’re also collabing with CG5 on a secret music video next month (keep it hush!) and this will be part of my costume. 🧐 Thanks for your support and keep an eye out for updates. You should see some familiar sets returning soon!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: New Props and Old Actors 😏

HeyJ, crew! A bit of a beefy update coming your way, but mostly all good stuff! 🤫 It’s becoming a HYPER PACKED end of the year, but that means more updates for you (and hopefully more progress for us!) I promise to pop back on camera with some friends next time. 😉

Beard Salute!
~AJ 

REport: Moving Challenge Video

HeyJ, everyone! Nothing ground breaking here -- in fact, we're moving toward there being, well, NOTHING AT ALL here! Some of the house has been boxed up, though before we got too far, we wanted to do a fun little challenge/tribute to this house that we've filmed... (*counts on fingers*) ...a butt ton of videos in! We'll take some time to edit it, but it'll be fun to see how many projects we completely missed from the past six years!

We haven't gotten any progress, unfortunately, in procuring back our cast for FNAF: Dark Remains. We'll get you a full, honest update about how we're planning to handle it soon (and yes, unfortunately, we ARE at the stage of planning to "handle it.")

If you stick around, you might get a REport at the end of the week with a familiar face or two... 😉 Thank you for supporting Random Encounters and we're excited to get back to monthly musicals, one way or another!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: Shopping Trip!

EDIT: Ahhhh! You guys are so flippin' nice to send your sweet comments! 😭 Seriously, thank you for reminding me that, no matter how niche RE may be, it's not stupid -- at least, not to everyone. 🤣 And I'm glad even dumb little errands like this are interesting enough to include in a REport. We'll try to focus on more updates like this!

HeyJ, crew! We’re out on a shopping trip this time — but (spoilers) not a very successful one… 🥴

I’ve (re)contacted some of our cast, but it’s been all radio silence so far. 😬 But this is Random Encounters, and we THRIVE ON CONTINGENCY PLANS!!! 💪 Not that we’ve been outright turned down by any of our actors, either, but it’s good to begin assessing schedule or script changes all the same.

We’re hopefully only a few weeks away from the next musical (FINALLY!!!), but I’d better check in with our animators to be certain. If anything should happen that thwarts FNAF from moving forward, we’ll jump right into a new musical instead (and YIKES, have I missed making them this year!)

PS: I know some of you are excited to know more about the new RE studio, but not nearly as excited as we are to show you! 😉

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: It’s Official 🏠

HeyJ, team! Thanks for bearing with us during another slow spell on RE. I’m happy to finally share an update about what’s been happening here behind the scenes, as well as your first taste of new songs being written for FNAF: The Musical. I could talk for HOURS about what we’re planning, but I’ll wait and tease out more info as we get closer to more filming.

Thanks for your support! Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: TRASHING THE HOUSE!

HeyJ, team! Thought we’d check in while doing a little cleaning out… It always breaks my heart throwing out notable props (if only we could open an RE museum instead!), but we need to clear as much space as possible for puppets, evil bunnies, and stunts Gwen still hasn’t entirely signed off on… 😇 I’ll do my best to share a clip on here from our next script read. Down to 92 pages now, and about 6 of those are already filmed!

Thanks for your continued support during these down months. It really means a lot!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: ALL the Songs!

HeyJ, crew! Got a couple neat things to show you today And I KNOW you’ve been waiting on updates! Thanks for both your patience and support!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: FNAF is Taking Over Our Home (Again)

HeyJ, crew. Sorry for the silence since our last update. I filmed this days ago but forgot to get it uploaded! 💀 Should have fresh news for you on several fronts shortly!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: The FNAF Movie They Didn't Announce

HeyJ, crew! I apologize for the lack of updates lately. We've been struggling to know how much to reveal about the future of FNAF: The Musical, which has really made discussing it with you complicated... Imagining some of you seeing 'Dark Remains' for the first time on YouTube with little warning about its content or runtime was a very tempting incentive for keeping so many secrets, but the truth is, you're part of the team, and you deserve to be filled in a bit further on why things have moved so slowly. Hopefully this update solidifies your trust that RE hasn't been dragging their feet to do this, but rather, has been super excited to build this into the ultimate FNAF: The Musical conclusion fans deserve.

As usual, Patreon secrets are yours to share or keep. We appreciate your support through a most unusual year of RE, knowing that once FNAF is done -- again -- we'll REturn to a more predictable schedule of new video game musicals every month. As it stands, though, you may need to wait until September or even October for the next one. We'll do our best to make the wait worth your while!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

Andrew Baldwin Memorial Page

For anyone who has not yet heard through our discord, we are sorry to say that Andrew Baldwin, a member of our patreon community passed away earlier this week. He had been an active and bright part of our community, and everyone here at RE was saddened to hear this news. I'm leaving a link to a tribute wall created by his friends and family below, and I hope that if you have good memories to share, you'll consider writing something to help celebrate his life.

Link: https://www.higginsandbonner.com/obituary/Andrew-Baldwin

Andrew will be greatly missed.

-Gwen

OUR FIRST TRADING CARD BOSS IS HERE!

HeyJ, team! Allow me to introduce you to our first RE Trading Card Game boss, MAFIA GUY!

We've tinkered and toyed with him long enough, and now it's time to hand this fella over to you all for testing-- er, I mean, enjoyment! 😅 

Rather than posting the files here and making future Patreon Encounterers dig through endless posts and REports, we've decided to keep a Google Drive folder available for access with all the bosses as we finish them: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1m0wRrUCD3hcDIg0WWOoKYhn1-efCk32r?usp=drive_link

We've included two versions of Mafia Guy: an Online Version, and an alternative Printer Version designed for folding in half to set on a table.

In addition, there are two rules pages titled "The Basics" and "The Fine Print."

THE BASICS is a super simple guide to get started as fast as possible. It explains the general gameplay through ten easy rules. If you want to get straight to the action, The Basics may be all you need!

THE FINE PRINT is a set of ten additional rules, which are a bit more specific. They largely exist to clarify things mentioned in THE BASICS. You still won't find anything terribly complicated -- after all, this game is pretty ridiculous and requires some creative interpretation -- but we thought a few more details might take the edge off your biggest questions and complications.

This game "requires" 16+ cards to play, by the way, though you're welcome to attempt it with fewer.

We'd love to hear about your initial experiences fighting Mafia Guy -- what cards worked, what didn't, which rules you didn't understand or couldn't follow, which format (printer or online) you preferred -- and, of course, whether you won or lost! Based on feedback from this debut, we may adjust Mafia Guy and future bosses. Our goal is to keep each battle fun and challenging!

We have SEVERAL more bosses in the pipeline, so once we've got your feedback and locked our templates, we hope to release new ones every few months. Thanks for your patience and especially your participation!

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: World’s Worst Lyric Challenge 😖

HeyJ, pals! Just touching base a moment about some of RE’s work this week. We’ll be traveling several days, but should have more news afterword to share. 🙂

Beard Salute!
~AJ

REport: The Real Reason We Went to Kansas City

HeyJ, everyone! We made it back from Missouri... or was that Kansas...? Turns out, both were true! We had an incredibly busy weekend out of town, but I'm so excited to say we came back with the TRULY FIRST SHOTS of FNAF the Musical: Dark Remains, and they're *SUPER* cool!

We unfortunately only managed to grab a minute with some of the cast and crew between shots (not during any), so this won't likely give you much insight into the adventures Freddy and friends will be up to, but even just seeing them out of that STUPID BOX feels pretty good, doesn't it? And we even got a few more pages of the script finished on the flight home, drawing us within striking distance of a finished first draft of the entire thing!

Wait... why were we filming without a completed script, you ask? Well, much like the first FNAF musical, we expect some scenes to adjust as our actors come or go from the project, and the safest material to be filming still is generally any scene involving the puppets! (I should also come clean and admit we haven't written the music needed still, though I have tune and lyrics started and a pretty strong idea for what will take place during the singing).

For anyone hoping to see some non-FNAF musicals in progress, stick around. We've got plenty to make, but simply not enough time to do it all at once. ^~^; Thank you for backing RE, even during slow months -- you make not only possible to travel cool places for filming, but to feed and even pay the amazing people supporting new musicals with their time and talent.

Beard Salute!
~AJ