Jester's Bad Advice: An Update! (Patreon)

It's been a while since I talked about this, so I thought I'd give you an update on my new web series, Jester's Bad Advice! This is going to be an ongoing series in which Jester answers advice questions sent in by followers (plus there are going to be some small nods to the events of the show — each episode will correspond with a certain time in the canon plot.)

For a normal video, like one of my "talking head" scripted ones, the process would be pretty simple: Script, film, edit, release. For a video like this, the process is a lot more complex! Here's a little detail on what I've done so far and what's to come.

Script

The starting point is, of course, to script each episode! First I asked followers on Instagram and Twitter to send in some questions (tag your questions #JestersBadAdvice on Twitter if you want to submit, or email ginny@ginnydi.com with the subject line "Jester's Bad Advice"!), and then I picked some of my favorites and worked them into a script with a runtime of about four minutes. Normally I'd roll with my first draft, but for this series, I want to make sure I'm delivering my absolute best, so instead I dedicated some time to doing a few edits. I read the script out loud in Jester's voice to see if it flowed well and find the comedic beats, and I got some feedback from my fiancé Josh, who is a writer by trade. I didn't want to film anything until I was sure my script was up to snuff!

Set

The set is going to slightly change between episodes, since the Mighty Nein travel a lot throughout the show. The first two episodes take place in Trostenwald (where the show begins), so this set will be the same in episodes one and two:

I've been working with partial greenscreen sets a lot lately, because it's an easy way to create some visual variety in what would otherwise be some pretty homogenous sets (since I only own so many props and backdrops.) The greenscreen in this case is going to be a window.

Sets like these take a few hours to put together, because backdrops need to be ironed and steamed, furniture needs to be moved, and each stand and decoration takes time to place properly and arrange. 

Props

Outside of set decorations, each episode also calls for a few props that I need to handle during the episode. I usually go through my script beforehand and highlight every prop I'll need to collect or create:

I've decided to create actual letters for this show, so each episode will need handwritten paper letters to correspond with each question. I don't want these to be obviously repeated between episodes, so I'm going to make new ones for each of the first few episodes before I start recycling them back in.

Filming

Once everything was ready, I had a filming day! Setup and makeup take many, many hours, but thanks to my teleprompter and an assistant (in this case my mom!) the actual filming usually goes pretty quickly. (The joys of good prep!)

Intro

I wanted this show to have an intro that gets repeated each episode, like a TV show, so I commissioned a theme song from Blake (who does all my music!). The guidance I gave him was that I wanted the theme to be between 5 and 10 seconds, I wanted it to have three clear beats and a trill at the end, and I wanted it to sound "whimsical." Being the musical genius that he is, he was able to whip out something that sounded exactly like I wanted in record time: Listen here!

Then I had to film the footage for the intro. I started by drawing out a storyboard so I knew what I was doing (pictured at the top of this post!) Then I painted the show title into the sketchbook (see a little timelapse here), set up a flatlay based on my storyboard, put on one of my Jester gloves, and painted an underline!

A little masking, a little layering, and I had an intro!

Rough cut

Now that I have my intro and my footage, I'm currently working on a rough cut. This basically just means picking out all the best takes and cutting them together in the right order. It's the equivalent of laying out all the pieces of a quilt — it shows you what the final product will look like so you can make changes if necessary, but there's still a lot of tedious labor between you and the finish line!

Voiceover

I have a friend who does a great Fjord voice (he's working on a full cosplay!!) so I asked him while I was scripting if he'd be willing to do a little offscreen voiceover for this show. Once my rough cut is finished, I'll send him that rough plus his sections of the script so he can record himself speaking his offscreen lines, which I'll then layer in so it sounds like he's there. (I used that technique — and that actor! — in this little clip.)

Cleanup, music, and effects

Once my rough cut is done and I'm happy with the timing and such, it'll be time to move on to cleanup. This is where I'll do color correction, adjust the crop, remove noise from the audio, stuff like that. Cleanup can take a while, but I've been learning how to use Premiere's effect presets to speed up the process.

If I want to add background music (not sure yet!) I'll need to comb through YouTube's royalty-free music library and/or other royalty-free music sources to find the right track(s), and then use creative cutting and looping to match them to the length of my video.

Finally, it'll be time for effects! This will mostly be the greenscreen, although this video will also include some "paint drip" transition effects. The greenscreen in this footage wasn't very well lit, which makes it hard to key out, so I've been learning how to use AfterEffects to get a cleaner result. Here's a rough key that I did early on as a test to make sure the set would work:

Release

Once the video is fully edited and exported, release comes with its own set of tasks! I'll need to draft copy for the caption and tags, create a thumbnail, transcribe the episode and set timings for closed captions, add cards and thumbs at the end... oh god, I just realized I didn't shoot a subscribe message. Add that to the list.

These kind of videos are a lot of work, but I've been wanting to do a larger scale, recurring project for a while now, so I'm really excited to get this one out into the world!