And now the news you've all been waiting for... Done The Impossible has gone Gold Master! Help spread the word... Digg this!

Actually we went gold on Monday night, but we've all been trying to get some sleep and some "normal" work done since then. Surprise, surprise, we massively underestimated the amount of effort it would take to get through the final push, but it's done. Actually, in truth, it was a combination of underestimating the work and constantly trying to improve and perfect the final product. The DTI crew along with a bunch of our friends and family and the crew of Rivetal worked nearly 24 hours a day for the last two weeks. I myself had maybe 20 hours of sleep total in a period of 10 days. I'm still feeling the after effects.

We truly believe that you will enjoy the final product, we weren't kidding when we said that the DVD would have more special features than the Firefly and Serenity DVDs combined. This DVD is PACKED with content. On the DVD-ROM* alone, there are over 6,000 synced events including searchable script, commentary and all 5 hours of bonus video; synced factoids, 'Verse Dictionary terms hyper-linked from the live transcript, and biographies of dozens of fans and cast and crew of Firefly / Serenity. I can say with a fair amount of confidence, that the DVD-ROM of Done The Impossible, is arguably one of the most media rich highly interactive DVD-ROMs ever created.*

And on the main DVD part of the disc, we have the 80 minute documentary (of course), the interactive timeline (which took 4 months to create and program), Trivia Quiz, 'Verse Dictionary, Commentary, Tribute to Lux, What is Firefly? - Read by Jewel Staite and much more including five unbelievable Easter eggs.

So for the record, we will be getting discs back just in time for Comic Con (probably to the hour). We will be taking a few hundred copies with us to the con, and back at home, at the same time, we will begin shipping the DVD pre-orders in the order in which they were placed.

Here are some screenshots:
Main Menu, Bonus Menu, Interactive Timeline, Music Menu, and IVEX DVD-ROM.

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Brian and Jeremy will show the final version of Done the Impossible at San Diego Comic Con Saturday night at 8p in room 6B. We will also be showing off the DVD special features, and having a short Q&A. Done the Impossible T-Shirts, Posters, Soundtrack CDs will also be available at the Browncoat table.

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We are formally announcing the immediate availability of the official Done the Impossible soundtrack. With music from Rob Kuhlman, Emerald Rose, Broddingnagian Bards, The Bedlam Bards, Dan Sehane, Michelle Dockrey and Tony Fabris. Full details coming soon, as was mentioned above, the soundtrack will be available for purchase at the Comic Con Browncoat table, and on our website as soon as we return.

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* For those not clear about the difference between DVD and DVD-ROM: DVD is the experience you get when you put a DVD disc in your set-top DVD player. However, DVD players aren't very technologically sophisticated compared to a modern computer, so in addition to the DVD, we also put a bunch of files (2.5 Gigs worth to be exact) that only a computer (Mac or PC) can work with on same disc. Thus, if you put the DVD into your computer and launch the program "Start IVEX DVD-ROM", you get a completely new, and far more sophisticated experience.

• The Documentary is done, DONE, DONE, including closing credits, color correction and final music selection.
• Jewel Staite's voiceover has been integrated into the DVD features. Here's a sample.
• The six (yes 6+) hours of bonus video for the DVD-ROM is edited and transcribed and is ready for final event syncing.
• The tribute to Lux video is finished including a special new song from the Bedlam Bards.
• All the trivia questions have been written, and now we have to create all the question screens.
• Commentary track is fully edited and ready for import into the DVD project.
• "What is Firefly?" and its associated feature "A Tribute to Firefly" written by Tracy Hickman & Brian Wiser, has been recorded by Jewel Staite.
• The Equality Now video is complete.
• We aren't all that happy with our first attempt at the DVD menu design, so we are going to work some more on it.
• Production on Music, Sponsors, 'Verse Dictionary and the DVD credits sections have yet to be started.
• The DVD-ROM programming will start in the next week or two.
• Final DVD authoring and programming has begun.
• That leaves the Interactive Timeline, which is still in heavy media production. This feature alone contains over 1800 different media elements.

And now for the news you probably been waiting for. A release date!...sort of. Barring any unforeseen tragedies, we will be shipping DVDs *BEFORE* San Diego Comic-Con on July 20th (yes this year... sheesh), probably sooner.

That means it took almost exactly one year from beginning of filming to final release on DVD. Certainly longer than we had planned, but considering the complexity and quite frankly, the quality, its certainly not an unreasonable timeframe. (Less time than Serenity took to produce and at 1/2000th the budget. Heh...)

Also, we have been accepting credit card orders for some time now. The credit card transaction is through PayPal, but no PayPal account needed. When you get to the PayPal order screen just press the button that says you don't have a PayPal account. Even though it might seem otherwise, you will NOT be required to create an account with PayPal.

• The Documentary (almost 90 minutes long),
• Interactive Timeline (screenshot 1, 2)
• Trivia
• 'Verse Dictionary
• Commentary
• 'What is Firefly?'
• Music Videos
• Interactive Viewing Experience DVD-ROM with:
  • Over six hours of extended VIP and fan interviews
  • Printable Fan artwork, recipes and songs.
  • Printable Posters and Guerilla Marketing materials
  • Fan and VIP Biographies
  • Conversion stories
  • Live Transcript with links glossary terms
  • A Running Fan Count
  • All searchable, cross-indexed and obsessively interactive.

All this and a few surprises as well.

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Done the Impossible producers - Jeremy and Brian will be in Denver next weekend to show the documentary at Starfest '06. We were hoping to have copies on-hand to sell, but alas, that will not to be the case. The doc will be showing Saturday Night at 9pm, and we will have a panel immediately after. Hope to see many of you there.

"...I was given a copy of Done the Impossible, a documentary of the Firefly/Serenity journey that was produced by browncoats, featuring browncoats, and it really blew me away.

I think the actors and the crew from the show have always viewed the experience as something else, something that was special to us because of the people we met, the trips we've all taken together, the highs and lows we've experienced as a team, and our faith in the project is so strong because we really do love each other and want this to be able to live on. Without the fans, we wouldn't have been able to keep going, in more ways than one, and that's why you're all so important to us. But to hear what you all had to say, and to hear the way YOU viewed the experience, was really eye-opening for me. You fell in love with something that inspired you to do whatever it was you had to do to keep it in the air, and in doing that, you met new friends and had your own experiences because of the show. It's hard to word all of this and actually make sense, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, in a lot of ways, I realized that in the big picture, in the big scope of things, we've all gotten so much out of this. I can't describe it to people who don't understand, and I can't even describe it to people who DO understand, but I just wanted you to know that I get it. It's not something that I'll ever take for granted, because this kind of thing hardly ever happens twice."