August 2025 - Rust pre-production work and further poll

So then, the week is over, time for my progress report. Things have gone very well.

TL;DR on the previous Patreon post: PEAK Bullshittery won the poll for the next edit. But the bank holiday Monday Rust game was so much fun that I wanted to do a write up of it, whilst it's all still fresh on the brain.

Potentially creating a sort of 'story time' video, editing all the footage together from lots of different perspectives and explaining all the behind the scenes intrigue and drama.

Something a little unusual for the channel.

Whether I do PEAK first and then this. Or this and then PEAK, will be a matter for you all to decide. I do not wish to take liberties.

But broadly speaking this week, I have:

• Penned out the structure of the script and where the jokes/plot points will go.

• Have scrubbed a large quantity of the Rust VODS for the parts I need.

• Have filled in large portions of the script and have been proof reading.

• I've reached the opening shots of the battle itself. And will continue after a full end-to-end review from all three VOD perspectives (myself, Lamram and Dinklebean, who have both been kind enough to offer their footage).

The scripts overall structure looks like this. Please note that the bits in green have been penned. The bits in white are still to do. Overall progress has felt good.

Insofar as "scrubbing", the act of going through the footage to find the parts I need (I'm sure it has a proper name). It had three distinct phases, greatly aided by how recent this was, therefore I could remember precisely what we were doing and why:

• The first 23 of the 43 streams had very brief scrubbing. Going through VLC media player and pressing the Ctrl + Right/Left arrow to cycle through whole minutes of footage. This is because we didn't do as many things directly related to the video topic.

• The second 17 streams were when we came up with the idea for Honeypot Hill. Meaning they had much more careful scrubbing by pressing Shift + Right/Left arrow keys to cycle through 10 second increments. Picking up on conversations relevant to the plan.

• The last 3 streams (and Lamram's and Dinkle's to follow) will get a full watch through, to pick out all the little interesting bits during the battle itself.

• Individual gags have been tagged as usual with the plugin INFOWRITER. So I don't need to look for those. Those would be used in a Rust bullshittery, but I may as well fold them in here because, why not?

I have several pieces of "homework" to complete now.

The first is, I need to go into the Rust server whilst it's still here. And take lots of screenshots and videos of anything unique that can function as B-Roll. For example, Honeypot Hill itself, Laserpig's "Rock Emporium" (the base that we used as a staging ground), the MLRS launch site on this particular map, etc. I might even ask the admins if they'll let me fire it? To record it actually shooting as it did on Monday.

Plus I need to grab all of the screenshots of the group chats we've been having. As references.

Next, I need to put in an online order for several blown up poster versions of this. The server map:

Similar to The Forest, I'm imagining a sequence of the video where I point a camera at the wall. Pointing a stick, doing a silly voice, having lots of labels on thumb-tacs, and a bunch of little doodles.

I'd better screen test a few different versions first. Figured out what looks good on camera. Ones with a matte finish, or gloss finish, different resolutions, etc. And get a bunch of spares in case I damage any with too thumb tacs.

I let Lamram IRL borrow the white studio lights for the sake of his greenscreen. I'll need to ask for one of those back.

So I have a plan, and I'm achieving the time sensitive bits. Getting everything recorded. The next question is - from next week, which of the two projects would you prefer first? I'm happy to do one and then the other.

We have typically flip flopped between Patreon poll and then my choice. So doing this second would make more sense.

But conversely, we are playing more Peak recently. So delaying it until after this could give me time for more highlights, since we've only had 4-5 games so far. I worry it might be a bit thin.

I will leave the decision to you all. Next week, what would you prefer I do first?