Sons of the Forest - Update #7 (Patreon)

Good morning everybody. It's the end of week 9 on the latest project and here's summary on progress:

• Broadly I'm working on a follow up to The Forest video essay. This time on Sons of the Forest. It consists of 40 segments and is roughly 3 hours long.

• Segments 2-15 are my current goal. Getting them out to you in a work-in-progress render. It's about 45 minutes long.

• All audio is cut. Nearly all visuals are cut. There's probably about 5 minutes missing.

• It's currently going through "phase 2" editing and rework. Meaning test render are being made, segments are being readied for viewing, rework is being performed where things didn't work out or where the script needs to be changed.

• I'm hoping to have it ready for you next week.

So following the previous pattern set by the last Forest video essay, editing has been going well. I've been able to remain quite productive. The principle task right now has been filling out the visuals for the segments one by one. Making them all watchable individually before moving onto viewing them as a complete video.

As described in the last post, I work on each individual segment as its own "sequence" in Adobe Premiere and then chain them in a single "MainSequence" for lengthy overnight rendering. Say there's a point where I discuss internal logic of the game for about 6 minutes. The script is read into a single audio file, then cut to flow smoothly (in green).

Then the crucial stream moments are added (in blue), where it either hands off to my narration for emphasis. Or perhaps it's interrupted by a joke.

From there, the visuals are added on the layers above. Or additional audio to the layers below. Notable things like game ambience. With the microphone layer being discarded if the narration is already present.

The pink boxes are usually Premiere "text" boxes. Usually containing a reminder to include something before the final cut. Such as "TO DO - Animate this in After Effects". Probably best to save that until the end as After Effects gets complicated super fast.

I'm also adding red markers (the little red arrows) to indicate I've detected some sort of flaw. Something that needs addressing as priority. Perhaps a piece of the script didn't work well, maybe I've spotted a structural problem in the render. Or maybe I've had a better idea for a visual.

Basically anything that needs to be done as a priority and cannot be left until the end.

This is a picture of the "Main Sequence" - the 45 minute video as a whole - showing all 14 segments and the current number of things to do. Its going to be a busy few days:

Also note that rose coloured sequence in the middle. That's meant to be the first introduction to the reworked cave system in Sons of the Forest. And I felt that part of the script was weak. I'm going to rewrite that entirely.

Also also note the red, yellow and green line at the top of the picture. That's just Adobe Premiere telling me which parts of the timeline are rendered and ready for viewing, so it's not anything bad. But the gaps are illustrative. For they indicate where visuals are missing. Giving you, dear Patrons, an idea of just how complete complete is. Not far off. Not many gaps.

When it comes to the visuals for the video, they're sourced in two forms. Either from the 17 livestreams themselves, in the instances where I'm doing something story related. Or even just ambling around doing building.

But then also through console commands if I need to spawn something specific and get a clear shot of it. Especially helpful if I'm rattling off a list of features/locations.

Both The Forest and Sons of the Forest ship with a pretty extensive number of console commands, presumably as a way to recover if something goes wrong. But they make an excellent tool for anybody wishing to make footage from it. No mods required.

Let's say I have a sentence where I go "the turtles make little sand trails on the beach". Making a point about a surprising amount of attention to detail.

Whilst I could scrub through the livestreams to find that precise moment, it's often far more efficient to simply load the game and activate the "speedyrun on" console command.

Race to the location on the island where you know turtles are meant to be present:

Spawn them in if they're not there:

And voila, turtle sand trails. In an unobstructed shot, not blocked by the seawater, not interrupted by cannibals, that exists as a very short clip that Adobe Premiere can rapidly open.

This process sounds tedious, but is actually a lot more efficient than it would appear. Particularly if you chain these moments together and record them in batches. And you avoid things in the original stream footage that might give you faff - such as sub alerts, or my camera swinging, or just cannibals/Virginia/Kelvin blocking up the frame.

If you're recording small 10 second batches and you know what you're looking for, in less than 20 minutes you've just completed an entire minute of footage. Meaning you can get really far in a day. Even 10-15 minutes.

For context, a single minute of footage for a bullshittery would take me an entire day. So this sort of editing is a wonderful break.

Also I'd imagine the perspective of the cannibals would be insane. They're seeing some stranger zip through the trees like road-runner on crack, repeatedly staring at stuff for 10 seconds, before zipping off again.

So the focus right now is to get you these 45 minutes of footage to view. Reworking whatever needs rework, adding the last visuals, etc.

WIP segment 2 will likely consist of segments 15 to 22 ish and will likely follow 2-3 weeks later. Thank you for your patience all.