Category: DungeonCrawl

I’m glad you asked.

So far there have been two Dungeon Crawl shows for 2014 and the third is not far away.

The sad news is that Ben and Richard have decided to call it a day on the regular monthly outing and it will come to an end mid-year. Though the team say there will be the occasional appearance from time to time.

In February Ben and Richard took Karen Pickering, Nick Caddaye, Andi Snelling and Xavier Michelidies on a trip through the world of Joss Wheadon, wherever that is.

Karen played a 1000 year old vengeance demon disguised as a high school student, Nick was the calm and knowledgeable mentor with a dark past, Andi was a doll who could be reprogrammed, and made appearances as a ninja librarian and a goose pilot, and Xavier was the nerdy one.

The highlight of the evening was the emotional return of a zombie Wash, who eventually got his own spin-off series.

I have no idea what any of that meant, though the audience seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. I just took the pictures.

The first Wednesday in December was the last of Shaolin Punk’s Dungeon Crawl shows for 2013. I had missed a couple while I was overseas (did I mention I went to Greenland?) so I was looking forward to the Christmas special, and it was a lot of fun to photograph. And there was singing.

Ben McKenzie and Richard McKenzie took Nadia Collins, Sean Fabri, Michelle Nussey and Andy McClelland on a singing adventure to find the thief Tiny Peddler. An innocent puppy was killed, a dragon sang, rather reluctantly, an adventurer was tragically killed and a long lost identical twin sister was found, just in time for the happy ending. Except for the adventurer who got killed.

Dungeon Crawl August 2012

Ben McKenzie, Richard McKenzie, Brenna Courtney Glazebrook, Louise Joy McRae, Michelle Nussey and Vic Healy.

It’s been ages since I posted about my visits to Dungeon Crawl at the Bella Union. (OK, so just pretend it’s been ages.) In the August edition four intrepid but retired women were forced out of retirement to save their house and battle once again with an evil enemy they thought they had defeated years ago. But he was still alive and still evil and out for revenge.

Vic Healy, Louise Joy McCrae, Michelle Nussey and Brenna Courtney Glazebrook starred as the Golden Girls. As usual Richard McKenzie provided all the evil and nasty creatures trying to kill the adventurers.

 

 

 

The last episode of Dungeon Crawl was a nostalgia trip, an old school D&D, back to the roots of the game.

Ben McKenzie led a rag tag bag of adventurers through an amazing hour of magic, treachery and bad puns.

He even gave me a mention in the blog.

The first Dungeon Crawl for 2012 kicked off with a duck-handled umbrella of evil, a bat and the Valkyrie Courier Service.

Twinkletoes the Elf Lord had been given Brian, the duck-handled umbrella of evil by mistake and he asked three adventurers to return it from whence it came – Mount Target.

Qualdo the obese Eunuch (Sean Fabri) and Gnome Chomsky, the intellectual anarchist gnome with less than no charisma (Nadia Collins) then got into a van driven by Weibke Llarssonssonsson, the Valkyrie courier (Geraldine Quinn) and set off on the quest.

There were magic puzzles that weren’t and a bat, the problem of returning or exchanging Brian without a receipt, an ogre who wanted a degree to hang on the wall and a very obtuse guardian of the Returns counter and…

Guys, I just take the photos, I don’t have a clue what is happening most of the time. All I know is that it had a happy ending when Weibke finally received a petrol voucher so she wasn’t out of pocket on the quest.

If you want to understand it, come along. You will laugh, you will cry but mostly you will laugh and have a great time. And there is a bar at the Bella Union too.

The Last Dungeon Crawl of the Year

I’ve just finished culling, collating and processing the 386 images I took at December’s Dungeon Crawl, The Knights Before Christmas.

As befitting for a December show, it had a lovely Christmas theme, with elves, Santa, good deeds, bravery, comradeship and a lot of seriously weird stuff.

It was Duddlepour eve, and the hard working dwarfs were about to be thrown out of their lodgings into the cold snow if our four brave adventurers couldn’t find and return their magic tools (which had been stolen by an apprentice laundry hand from the thieves guild) so the dwarfs could finish making the magic armour and sell it so they can pay their rent and not be evicted by their grasping landlord. And that was just the first five minutes.

Scott Edgar, Brenna Courtney Glazebrook, Casey Bennetto and Nadia Collins were the adventurers, along with the Dungeon Master and grasping landlord; Ben McKenzie. The multi-talented Richard McKenzie played everyone and everything else.

As regular readers will know, I have become a fan of Dungeon Crawl. Partly because it is a lot of fun, partly because I get to take some fun photographs. Recently Ben McKenzie asked me to do some new shots that could be used for publicity.

The brief was to take some straight headshots of Richard (who plays all the truly evil characters) and then some action shots of Richard and Ben that could be used for publicity. I say ‘action, but we were restricted in space and format, so the heads needed to be tight.

The set up was two umbrellas with flashes firing through them. For the Richard headshots I placed them in the traditional clamshell position (one above the other) with the bottom one on a lower power setting.

For the group shots (well, a small group), the umbrellas were moved out to the sides to provide an even light across the characters.

A third flash was fired at the white background.

I can’t stay away. I am addicted to Ben McKenzie’s Dungeon Crawl. The most recent episode was to celebrate the release of ‘that’ film. And it produced this image…

From left to right: Karen Pickering, Lawrence Leung, Brenna Courtney Glazebrook and Louise Joy McCrae.

It was a fun night and I can’t even begin to explain what was happening when I took that photo, it involved butter beer and breasts.

Details: Canon 5D, hand held with 70-200mm zoom, 1600 ISO.

I enjoyed my first time shooting at Dungeon Crawl so much that I have returned twice. Apart from the fun of the show, I am learning much more about controlling the camera under difficult conditions, following moving actors and getting some fun images that can be used for publicity.

From left to right: Jimmy James Eaton, Brenna Courtney Glazebrook, Casey Bennetto, Karin Muiznieks

This episode was on June 1st at the regular venue, Bella Union in Melbourne. And once again the adventure was conducted by Ben McKenzie and produced by Shaolin Punk.