Reformatting the planet, and going overboard with links.

The first season of Penny Arcade: The Series is over, and they haven't started the new season yet, so they've been putting up other programs on PATV.

2 Player Productions (actually comprised of four people. Weird, I know.), the production company that produced the first season of Penny Arcade, produced a documentary about chip music called Reformat The Planet. I originally saw it on Pitchfork TV a while back, but now it's on PATV.

I talked about Tristan Perich in my last entry. He has a few scenes in Reformat The Planet.

Jesse Novak is also in Reformat The Planet. I know of him from the comedy group Olde English. His brother is BJ Novak, the writer of, producer of, and actor that plays Ryan Howard on the U.S. version of The Office. I believe Jesse has written music for The Office at least once. One of the Dunder Mifflin jingles in that episode where the office makes a commercial for the company.

I love the concept of chip music, but I rarely hear any I like. Reformat The Planet is an interesting movie, but I didn't really hear any music that interested me in it. There's a very gimmicky aspect to chip music where regardless of how well composed a piece of music is, as long as someone uses that medium to make music, it's automatically considered as valid as any other chip music. I rarely hear what I consider to be interesting compositions and textures in the medium of chip music. I'm not saying any music is invalid, but I wish people would be more daring. I think that the reason old video game music is so memorable and moving has more to do with the interesting compositions rather than the 8-bit sound.