Hollywood Halo was a fan-made Machinima group created on January 29, 2005, by imSuck and friends from the HaloGrid.com community. As of May 23, 2011, TheDigitalSet.com website closed, and the group has disbanded.
History by imSuck[]
HollywoodHalo's humble beginnings Clan HollywoodHalo was created on 1/29/05 by myself and several other members, most of which are no longer around. For around four years, it served the purpose of housing a group of Machinima enthusiasts to easily come together on Bungie's Halo game series to make movies (Machinima), play Halo and just have fun.
How did we get started?
It started with my love for making movies. I used to make cinematic short movies using Warcraft 3 rather than making playable customer games like so many others in that community. In that community I was known as "Sinema", contrary to my current alias "imSuck". I began playing Halo 1 at LAN tournaments with friends and got hooked on the game. Not long after, I stumbled upon the most popular Machinima series "Red vs. Blue". Of course I was instantly hooked and like many other Machinima-enthusiasts... I wanted to make movies like they did.
My best friend and former roommate gave me a, now quite dated; Panasonic TV-Tuner card which I came to find could record video and audio input on my PC. I started making short movies of fooling around in Halo doing stunts in Warthogs, among other things. Once I realized my great interest in filming, directing and editing; I decided to continue making these short films while recruiting friends along the way. With the help of my roommate, we set up a personal server to host my first site, Lazyspoon.com (don't ask).
Not having any money to spare for server expenses, we put the home-made server on a friend's home internet connection. From the site, I shared short Halo movies I made with friends; much to the dismay of that internet connection which was buckling under the increasing download speed from site visitors.
After my movies started to gain popularity on sites like Halo.Bungie.org and Highimpacthalo.org we formed a Machinima clan devoted to making Halo movies, called HollywoodHalo. The clan name itself was thought up by an old friend by the name OutspokenChimp who was one of the first members. We've lost and gained many amazing members and friends along the way, as well as traversed through some very tough times both in and outside of our online-lives.
Around this time, I joined forced with a new found friend Arabian Camel who owned the domain HaloGrid.com which was hardly being put to use. I ditched the Lazyspoon site endeavor and began a partnership with Camel, HaloGrid would become the home of Clan HollywoodHalo. I created movies branded with both the HH and HG name and Camel managed the domain, server and forum software, and so began the community of HaloGrid.com revolving around fans of Halo Machinima and HollywoodHalo. Some years later (closer to present date), Camel became increasingly absent due to college and work; so I took over managing the server with the help of friends (now site admins) made along the way. We moved the site from host to host trying to balance our high demand in users for server speed and the cost of hosting such a community.
Present day, HollywoodHalo has been on an extended hiatus from production for quite some time now... with the exception of creating a few films here and there to show appreciation for our friends and fans. The delay in production is primarily contributed by my job which is now the majority of my day to day life.
Plans are being made to produce new movies in the upcoming prequel release to the Halo series Halo: Reach. We've even created a film teasing our friends and fans of our could-be "comeback" entitled Halo: Reach Tips & Tricks, complete with Bloopers.
Source: TheDigitalSet.com
Composed by: imSuck from TheDigitalSet.com