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"Maybe keeping this op under wraps was a bad idea."
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"Electrified toxic what?" Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details about Kane's Mind. |
Kane's Mind is a Quake 4 machinima series created by Chris "Chunkboi" Rosenbaum that follows the thoughts of Corporal Matthew Kane.
Character Personality
Matthew Kane, one certified badass
The Show info refers to Kane as "a 26 year old Marine with....Issues." Which may be very accurate, evidence is shown by the following : Kane seems very calm about the fact that there is death all around him, While still concerned for his fellow soldiers, and even feels sorry for the death of fellow marines, he does not react as much as others do. Another trait of this would be that he names some of his guns, much like Chell does. He also calls the Harvester "The Hentai Spider". However, despite his "Issues" Kane proves to be an impressive soldier, going on his own in combat, taking missions more seriously, and being known as a war hero, or as he calls it, "being a certified badass." Kane doesn't develop an ego about his reputation, sometimes wondering, "how do I get certified as a badass, anyway?" He was an academic hopeful, joining the military due to the Strogg invasion, thinking that if humanity doesn't fight, there won't be a university to go to.
After Stroggifaction
After Kane is Stroggified, he appears to go through a depression, hating what they did to him, but he works to remain a soldier, saying "I'm still me." This is to say that while the neurocyte has enhanced his linguistic abilities, allowing him to understand and read some Strogg language, he is not one of them. As he described his role on Armstrong, he was "just doing his job," which as a soldier, meant to him he has to defend who he can, assist who fights with him, and strike hard against the enemy.
Cast
- Chris Rosenbaum as Matthew Kane
- Jared O'Brien as Tech Sasaki (2 episodes)
- Ian Riley (archive footage from Harrison's Mind: Episode 2) as Corporal Andrew "Frosty" Harrison (1 episode)
- Simon James (archive footage from Parker's Mind: Guard Torture Special) as Parker (1 episode)
Episodes
Specials
Show History
Kane's Mind was a creative idea by a bored medical student while waiting for his next clerkship to start. Originally, Chris Rosenbaum (Known online by his moniker "Chunkboi") wanted to do a mind series for Dead Space, but found it done by another a long time ago. He thought..."I could do it better," but did some research and found that online, much like abridged series, there were a lot of bad ones for a few good ones. He would have to put his money where his mouth was. So, he looked for, and found, some unconquered territory in Quake 4.
"Kane is a Marine, and Marines are not idiots... not the ones that survive, anyway," he said. "I've met Marines face to face. While trained to be tough-as-nails and effective in combat, the ones I met in civilian life are good people, and damn intelligent to boot."
The first episodes were rough, using freeware like trial versions of Wavepad Master's Edition and Windows Media Player. On the advice of Jared O'Brien (creator of Freeman's (-ish) Mind 2 and the co-creator of the more popular Out Of Our Minds amateur media critic series), he upgraded to the Sony Vegas suite.
Kane's Mind is at present intermittently released as it is mostly a hobby, but it has a small, consistent following.
Production Method
- Chunkboi first plays through the game several times, usually once at each difficulty level, to get the total feel for the title. This coincides with research about the world and the character.
- Play each map of the game once more to map out the trigger points for particular things like dialogue.
- Do a dry run on the map to rough out and mentally improvise the dialogue on the fly. Chunkboi does a lot of improv, but does not do a "first run" improvisation. The idea here is to pace and choreograph the movements of the player character. This step may be repeated to find a better pacing.
- Once the pacing is established, do the active filming. This may end up being repeated from checkpoints and quicksaves...with Quake 4, the saves hold a lot of accurate information down to the frame, including the position and trajectory of projectiles and the exact point of the music at the time the save occurred. Sometimes there are artifacts like frame drops, but these are glossed over for the sake of the show when they cannot be avoided.
- The footage is cleaned and assembled. Scripting notes are made.
- Voice work is done line by line and event by event in order to give the impression of someone being "in the world." Sometimes script notes are altered or discarded entirely in flavor of something that fits the flow better. Lines are re-done if the sound quality is too poor and cannot be corrected by software.
- The sound is mixed to prevent clipping. Final touches are made.
- Release.
This process relies heavily on some on-the-fly comedy and improvisation, which so far has worked (CyhAnide improvised the whole dialogue for the first episode of Chell's mind). However, Chunkboi advises caution...this does not work for everyone.
Connections
- In Episode 18, Kane notes that the scientist who developed the hyperdrives that made interstellar travel possible had previously worked at a facility with "a huge pit dedicated to nothing but smashing boxes", a reference to a similar observation made in Freeman's Mind by Gordon Freeman about a room in Black Mesa Research Facility with nothing in it but boxes suspended from the ceiling and a seemingly bottomless pit.
- During the teleporter sequence of Episode 40, Kane hears the voices of Parker (Parker's Mind) and Andrew Harrison (Harrison's Mind), and briefly finds himself wearing the trousers of Adrian Shephard (Shephard's Mind).
Trivia
- Kane, Felix, and Shephard all slightly sound similar. This is likely due to the voice actors of all three characters coming from Canada.
- Kane not only sounds like Shephard, but they are both also Marines.
- Kane's HUD technology differs from what is outlined in the XBox version, as Chunkboi was operating off of the content in the PC game. While the XBox version says that Kane has a cybernetic eye, Chunkboi, operating on the fact that both of Kane's eyes appear exactly alike, states that SMC soldiers undergo discreet cybernetic implants as part of their induction. One implant is a "medchip" inserted thorascopically, which contains the soldier's identification and serves as a vital signs monitor for medics. The other is a cranial "HUD implant" inserted at the back of the skull, which gives an ocular heads-up display. The software for this display was a last-minute cannibalization of software from video games and GPS navigation devices. It worked well, and some of the bugs stuck, including notifications for quicksave.
- While Kane was sworn to secrecy about Armstrong Station, a lot of Marines on the Hannibal seem to know a lot about it.
- The "minds" Kane frequently cracks jokes in combat...this is an ego defense against the stress of the situation.
- It is possible (though Id software has not released any explicit hints) that Matthew Kane is the grandson of John Kane, the hero of Doom 3. Matthew is ignorant of his family's military history, probably because John had literally seen hell. However, the name, at least, is somewhat canon, as evidenced by novels in the Doom 3 universe sanctioned by ID software.
- Sometimes Kane takes incoming fire and only barely grunts... and sometimes he expresses pain. Chunkboi chalks it up to combat scars and nerve damage, but Kane still feels "new kinds of pain." Electrical disturbances still hit his nervous system as a taser would, and he screamed like anyone would when his legs were being sawed off.
- In the minds series, Kane was a newbie to the Stroggos frontlines, so he'd never known that the term "squib" was an epithet for Strogg until he'd had enough clues on the front lines.
- Kane in the Minds series had a well-rounded education. While he leaned more towards chemistry and physics, he also had an interest in popular arts history. References to old TV shows, movies, and video games pop up in the game as they were part of the development of video games in Kane's time, much like Pong, Pac-Man, the 7th Guest, Wolfenstein 3D, and similar titles were milestones in game development to the present. He makes a reference to "Starcraft 12" while on the Hannibal and "Master Chief" from the Halo franchise while in the trenches.
- Kane's learning comes back to haunt him in a way as he nicknames weapons and enemies. A "can of whoopass" becomes literal to him with the grenade launcher, for example. The nailgun is named "Bob Vila" for the host of the mid-80's public television show "This Old House."
- The Harvester was originally called "the unholy offspring of Shelob and Cthulhu." The latter Lovecraftian reference was a tip of the hat to Ross Scott ("It's a Cthulhu dog!" for the bullsquid in Half-Life) and the original Quake which delved deep into the original Lovecraft mythos. The term "hentai arachnid" was an alternative name that was used when Kane had to face one in a hovertank.
- The "Robozombie Apocalypse" originated as a reference to a webcomic called "Complex Actions," of which Chunkboi is a fan. He used the reference as it had social overtones and humorous implications, as well as a foreshadowing reference to his encounter with the botched transfers.
- In the series, Kane calls the hovertank a "Holbrook." This is another homage and a pun on military armament. The main battle tank today is called the Abrams. Chunkboi used a phonetic pun to refer to Pete Abrahms, the artist of "Sluggy Freelance," and drew a reference to another webcomic artist, Bill Holbrook of "Kevin and Kell" and "On the Fasttrack" to nickname the hovertank. The idea is that the Abrams MBT is still used in service, but has yet to see the Stroggos frontlines because 1) its armor makes it extremely heavy so it can't be deployed on a conventional dropship or used with hovertreads and 2) the SMC hasn't established a firm base yet from which to maintain main battle tanks.
- Chunkboi is a medical doctor, but not yet a licensed physician. He is a graduate of St. George's University School of Medicine.
- Chunkboi often uses references to other machinima producers he admires and respects... not stealing jokes as his own, but referencing people in homage. Examples include: "Electrified Toxic Waste" from Robin Darnell, "I fell in the puke" from Ian Riley, the "Box Smashing" from Ross Scott, and "who blew snot everywhere" from Jared O'Brien.
- Kane is a real soldier, not an action hero... early on in the series, he has trouble coming up with good one-liners when he wants to.
- Kane often thinks Strauss underestimates himself as a Marine. In the game, when there is combat, Strauss is a more than competent soldier.
- In the Kane's Mind universe, Mythbusters continued as an ongoing series as something not only educational, but fun. Kane makes the reference to Rhodes as he's the team EOD specialist.
- In Episode 24 and for several episodes afterwards, a character voiced by text-to-speech is introduced as an irritating foil to Kane, explained as the Strogg attempting to re-assert control over him. Another series, Matt's Mind, would introduce a text-to-speech character, Mike, as a regular.
Links
Insufficient Light And Madness [Kane's Mind Blog]
Images
