Coming Up Next

So I wrote a little bit about this on Youtube, but I figure I should give you guys a bit more detail in what's going on with the next video.

To bring you all up to speed (since what I've said about it in the past has been scattered), the next video is The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure 2. This is a video I've been thinking about for a year or two now, and I decided to do it at this time for a few reasons.

First and foremost, because I signed a brand deal for the video. Depending on how you view things, it's the first one I've ever done (or the second, if you count the months I gave shoutouts to Psycutlery, but that was a Patreon reward so it feels different to me). And basically, I want a video that is guaranteed maximum eyeballs. This was a video people requested from me for a long time, and every single other video in this series has done numbers, so it's a safe bet.

This does mean I'll be doing an ad read for the video. I dunno how all of you feel about that, but we'll try it out this one time and see where it goes. My channel is in a range where I'm clearly making some money but not enough money to fully support myself. Ad reads like this may eventually help me make enough money to move out of my brother's spare room and in to a place of my own some day.

The second reason I chose it is because these "Definitive Way to Play" videos generally had a nice turnaround time. I signed the brand contract in September, I figured I could have the video done before Halloween, or at the very least, well before Thanksgiving. Definitive SA1 took me two or three weeks to put together, Sonic R took me roughly the same, and though Definitive Sonic 3 took me multiple months, that's because it had a long setup to describe what happened to that game and why it wasn't available at the time.

And, well, we're about three weeks out from Christmas, and Sonic Adventure 2 still isn't done yet.

I keep berating myself because it feels like I'm falling behind. I'm nervous and stressed because I want this brand deal to work out. Someone else is counting on me to be successful. And I picked the road to success, but I will always second guess myself, especially since this is the first time I've had something so major. And the clock is ticking.

But at the same time, sometimes I stop and take stock of how unexpectedly complicated this video is turning out to be, and I'd like to offer you some perspective, too.

So let's start with page length. This is now the longest script I've ever produced.

• "Gut Check: Sonic Frontiers" script: 7 pages
• "Why Sonic Origins Matters" script: 7 pages
• "The Secret Best Jurassic Park Game" script: 8 pages
• "The Definitive Way to Play Sonic 3" script: 10 pages
• "Video Review: Sonic Mania Part 1" script: 11 pages
• "How Do We Fix Sonic?" script: 13 pages
• "Sonic Origins: Definitive or Disaster?" script: 13 pages

...

• "The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure 2" script: 17 pages

Even compared to scripts I've been historically afraid to produce because of how complex they would be, this SA2 video is bigger.

• "The NiGHTS Documentary" script: 15 pages

...With one exception:

• "The Sonic Forces But It's Not About Sonic Forces Anymore" script: Currently 17 pages, will probably be closer to 19 or 20 when it's fully finished

In short, this Sonic Adventure 2 video will probably rub up or exceed an hour. This was confirmed when I recorded my voice over, and it had to span two sessions totaling more than three hours.

So the fact that it feels like such a drag? Yeah, that's because it's actually a lot of work. I just deeply miscalculated on how long this would take, and I'm burning primo Youtube earnings as a result.

I've fumbled other parts, too. Like how over the last few days I've been building a shotlist for the video. Usually this is done by having the script open in one window and Notepad in the other, and paragraph by paragraph I go through and note down what I want to happen visually. This helps me figure out what I need to capture, images to source, artwork to create, and so on.

This time, I figured it might help speed things up if I did things a little more professionally, and construct the whole thing almost like a storyboard, where I have the script side by side with the descriptions of what's happening on screen.

...which is just making things take longer. Because I'm being more verbose. This would be great if I could afford to hire an editor, because somebody else could build the entire video out of this level of direction. But instead of, say, a 10 page script turning in to 6 pages of shots (and a 2 page capture list), this new style of storyboarding is 50 pages and counting. And I've been working on it for three days.

All of this is to say: sit tight, folks. It's coming. Production is picking up speed every day. Hopefully before the end of 2022.