Rust - The Battle for Honeypot Hill - Update #3

Good afternoon folks. Another update on the Rust video. Here is the TLDR:

• The video is roughly 1 hour and 15 minutes in duration.

• 1 hour has been completed in draft form. With quite a few gaps.

• I'm trying to put off refinement/quality assurance. I fear it might be a bit of a trap.

• The battle sequence editing is starting.

So the timeline looks a little something like this:

I've voiced my fear that "I might have gone too far in places". This was mostly referring to the opening 10 minutes, which was initially pegged as an extremely brief introduction. But has become something of a Rust critique.

I've decided to leave it in, as it functions as a much more traditional video-essay compared to the rest of the video. Which I'm hoping will be familiar to returning viewers.

May I draw your attention to the yellow bar at the top of the timeline. That represents Adobe Premiere trying to cache something for playback. Indicating that there's some sort of visual clip there. Which serves as a good little progress indicator.

As you can see, there are plenty of gaps to fill. But also that a lot of the video has been completed.

A lot of those completed segments cover something specific that happened over the course of the Rust playthrough. The gaps are where I'm bantering more generally, and need to find something appropriate to fill that segment.

Here's a brief example of what I mean. From segment G4, the smaller one that's just after the purple bit. Showing the introduction of the "Horse Girls". Giving you an idea of how the Rust story as a whole is going to be told: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/92afw12ug7qvoeg5dzobx/G4-190825-01.mp4?rlkey=uiw2i1shndi41t7910gz357km&st=jqnxaqkd&dl=0

Now, I'm feeling the urge to avoid quality assurance and rework at all costs.

As tempting as it would be to focus on filling those individual gaps, I worry it's going to be a trap, best avoided. For the attention it would require would stop me from 'seeing the woods through the trees'. And have me start devoting time to keyframing animations, rather than making sure the video as a whole plays well.

As a result, I've started the actual battle editing. This bit here. Let me talk about that:

This is where the structure of the video flips on its head. For typically I do something like this:

• Plan out the video essay points I want to make at a high level - the backbone.

• Provide supporting examples from stream footage - the ribcage.

As in normally I enter a video essay with a strong idea of the points I'd like to make. And work the footage from there.

But this video is recounting an actual event that happened. An event with multiple participants. An event with a fixed order of battle that looks a little something like this:

Meaning that the nature of this video segment changes entirely. It's now the moment-to moment-fighting that defines what I'll need to write. The footage edited in place, to show precisely what happened and in what order. And then my voice is added around it.

Premiere has a rather handy little recording option directly onto the timeline. That will help.

In preparation, following the above order or battle, I've made a series of 1 minute long template sequences. One by one they'll be populated with footage. And then stitched together with my voice.

Some segments will be short. Perhaps even as short as one sentence. For example, showing chaos reigning inside the base with an instance of friendly fire from Messy Essay. Illustrating how communication was breaking down in the panic.

Some might be longer. Introducing MrBatty and Shifty, two apparent "third party" combatants who had brought their own attack helicopters to the feast. And who unexpectedly shattered the speartip of one of my brother's attacks with a rocket salvo.

But in order to figure out what's available, I needed to review the whole battle.

And I figured the most efficient method to do this, would be to play it back like this. Mag, Dinkle, Lamram and Digi have all been kind enough to give me their footage from that night.

It's a bit crude (I didn't properly align it in the frame) but I've actually made a link if you wanted to look for curiosities sake - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o6fsnb040igy93a0trfhf/Battle-Quad-view.mp4?rlkey=uzkqrzdiwfqf4r4nvdiecmn1j&st=0b5lqt6k&dl=0

In particular I direct your attention to timestamps:

• 01:25:30 for an MLRS strike on our base, caught from multiple view points.

• 01:17:40 for an attempt to airdrop. Again from multiple view points.

I was especially interested in any moments that would show the same projectiles from different perspectives. A rocket being fired from Lamram and striking the wall next to Dinkle, for example. Letting me snap between them for a montage set to music.

I synced it all together by timing the appearance of the server wide death notifications in all four streams.

But yes, my goal now is to begin building the battle sequence. Almost reverse editing a video. Letting the moments of battle dictate what narration is spoken.

The work continues. Hopefully I can deliver something solid. Thank you for your patience all.