Video-essay fiddling - Update #2 (Patreon)

Good evening folks. Thank you for the responses to the previous questions about the video-essays. The feedback was almost unanimously thumbs up to spend time on said side-project on the hope of getting it on the channel. Or at least essays 1, 2 and 3.

Apologies if I've not gotten back to you yet. I try to work through correspondence in batches, but...my inbox is a bit yikes!

So I've had about 7 days of editing thus far and here's how progress is going. I was a bit scuppered in the midweek as an electrician had to bring down the power for my flat. But I'm hoping to make up for lost time over the weekend.

01 - Introduction & Early Access: (16 minutes 46 seconds)

I've managed to fix the prior mistakes I've made. And I think the video is more or less ready to go. Before the other two go live I'll render up some test versions to make sure the audio levels are correct. But this one is looking set.

 02 - History of Arma and DayZ: (11 minutes 12 seconds)

So for this one I had to re-voice the script in a slightly deeper pitch, correcting a few sloppy pronunciations. That audio file was then recut to the existing timeline, and then the visuals resynced. A process that took about 4 days in total. And there's a gap of about 50 seconds where some new visuals will need to be included. New sentence added here and there throughout. Need to finish that gap.

 03 - Evolution of the DayZ mod: (40 minutes 53 seconds)

So with this one it's simply a case of completing the visuals, with no voice work whatsoever.  I've reached about 8 minutes complete out of 40.

I've been having fun with this one. Cutting out pictures of birds and flinging them around in After Effects, whilst babbling about evolution. Leading onto comparisons about specific game genres also being environments with their own unique challenges that games need to "survive" in. Though with pressure from the top down, rather than bottom up. Relevant for later when the DayZ mod had the opposite.

Inspired by the Youtube videos of Oversimplified, I've taken to applying strokes (coloured outlines) onto masks (custom drawn shapes), to give some of the icons little arms and legs, anthropomorphising them somewhat. That way I can have them running around performing actions that are a bit more interesting to watch, rather than just squares sitting in some scenery.

I need to be a bit careful with this though. As it will be very tempting to go overboard and do everything in After Effects. Doing so will cause the editing time to jump dramatically. Especially the quality assurance. I need to include lots of scenes that are just video game footage with some dialogue. Not just to keep production times from spiking, but also to rest the viewers brain.

Also of note is that at 36 minutes there might be a "hero segment" in the sense that I'm considering cutting a 30 second segment to music to make a point punch harder.

Which could be a big commitment. Easily the better part of a week. With lots of recording, cutting and tweaking. Therefore I should be careful how much early work I pile onto the plate.

So in summary, the first two videos are mostly done. And the third video has its visuals done to about 8 minutes out of 40. Will just crack on and keep busy! Hoping to make something interesting for you. Thanks for letting me spend the time.

Hope you're all having a lovely week.