Redgrave

"I guess falling is my specialty today."

- Thomas J. Redgrave

Redgrave is a Mind Series created by Major Shade. Set in the Half-Life mod, Brave Brain, the series has the viewer experience the Black Mesa incident through the eyes of Thomas J. Redgrave, a 23-year-old Biochemical Engineer. The series was teased on January 5th, 2020 after Major Shade had been working on the first episode since September of 2019. The series' first episode finally aired on January 12th, 2020, and was met with very positive reception.

Cast

 * Major Shade as Thomas J. Redgrave (All episodes)
 * ZombieGrass as Quincy (Episode 3)
 * PepperThePepperlicious as Declan (Episode 3)
 * Shivnxd as End Radio (Episode 3)

Background
Thomas Jerald Redgrave was born on January 26th, 1980, hailing from Bridgewater, New Jersey. Thomas, an overachiever who found school to be a hurdle to what he really wanted to do to play basketball. His parents, who once told him to reach for the stars, would later wish for him to come crashing back down as they valued his education more than his dream to become a basketball player. As a ploy to further Thomas’s education, they forced him to take college courses in order to play basketball for his high school, as his parents wished for him to follow in their footsteps as either a Chemist like his mother or a Biologist like his father. Thomas decided to try and intertwine them and obtain his degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering much to their approval.

While trying to appease his parents and his dreams, he enrolled at Princeton University, shortly after graduating high school to try and make it as a walk-on to their basketball team The Princeton Tigers. While at Princeton, he decided to listen to his parent's wishes and continued his courses in Chemical and Biological Engineering. Whilst working towards becoming a starter for the Princeton Tigers, he found it difficult to juggle studies and training to a point where it caused his playing time to be restricted. Devastated by this news, he decided to forget about basketball and focus his attention on his studies. After four and a half years he graduated with his PH.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Due to his parent’s connections (and overall pushy behavior) finding a job wasn’t too difficult, and he was hired by Black Mesa, shortly after graduating.

Appearance
Thomas originally was supposed to be seen, but due to indecision and the lack of artistic talent, Thomas is up to interpretation by the viewer. Details about the original design of Thomas J. Redgrave is featured in the ID Card to the side. A detail not included in the ID is his Shaggy hair inspired by the grunge, emo, and punk scene of the '90s.

Production
The Production of an Episode of Redgrave begins with playing through a section of Half-Life: Brave Brain repeatedly to plan out events, dialogue, and a good stopping point. This part of the production can take a few days.

The recording of the route is first done through Goldsrc's demo recording feature along with recording through OBS as a backup for audio as demos commonly have audio issues. Once the demo recording is finished it is put through a program called HLAE which stands for Half-Life Advanced Effects, it allows me to split up the demo into two recordings, one that is my POV without a weapon and another that is my POV with my weapon green-screened which allows for unholstering and holster animations. It also allows me to control what framerate I want my demo recorded at which is 60 FPS, and it allows for motion blur to be applied to my demo. The recording process is done frame by frame, which can take anywhere from 30 minutes and about 42 GBS of space to 4 hours and around 500GBS. Once the recording process is complete, the frames are imported to Sony Vegas using Open Sequence, which allows the frames to imported as one image/media on the timeline. After that, they are rendered with the x264vfw codec, so they retain the best quality and are a smaller file size. They are then mixed with the audio.

The dialogue for Redgrave is written while planning out the route, and the process of writing can take a few days as rewrites occur. The recording of the dialogue is usually completed in one to three days as lines are taken out if they cannot fit the sequences. The dialogue for episodes 1 to 3 were recorded with a Blue Yeti, episodes after that are recorded with a Newer King Bee, attached to a ProFX12V2 Mixer. The audio enhancements to the dialogue are done in Audacity and sometimes a small volume boost in Sony Vegas.

The editing process is done solely in Sony Vegas, and the first step is adding the dialogue. Once that is completed, sound effects and music are added. The greenscreen is chroma keyed, and added when needed along with my Greenscreen holster and unholster effect, and sometimes the effect needs to be color corrected to match with the scene. Then visual effects are added if the episode calls for it. After this, a bloom is applied, and a sharpening effect. Once this is completed, it is rendered one last time in x264vfw and watched for errors.