Arma Bullshittery - Update #5

Good morning folks. Another progress update for you all. This project is quite far through and is entering the final stages of the keyframing.

Random Arma bullshittery (part 10) has about 37 sequences. And 36 are now complete. The final sequence remains. The runtime is about 18:39 and 16:46 has been keyframed and is awaiting QA.

Two tasks remain:

• 1.) Complete the closing sequence.
• 2.) Run the whole thing through quality-assurance editing.

Here's a shot of the main timeline:

So editing wise, things have been going just fine. Alas it's the same keyframing challenges as reported before.

Sometimes keyframing (assigning the positions of the text and compensating for motion) goes swimmingly and can even be automated. And other times the motion in Arma 3 is so janky due to low frame-rate (with too much action in the mission) that it's better to manually compensate by putting down a handful of keyframes, giving the suggestion of the text being attached, without importing the same skittish motion.

Whichever option looks smoother on the eyes.

The middle section of the video involves the larger WW2 operations. With lots of little skits within the context of those specific missions. Editing went well. Although they are a little dark. I might boost up the contrast and brightness quite a bit before the final render.

As a side note, part of the process for editing involves going through videos I call "UNLISTED AND UNSCRUBBED". Meaning there exists no notes to help guide me towards funny highlights. They're just unedited 2 hour streams that get uploaded to the archive site with everything else.

Ideally these streams are in the minority because I should be doing proper note keeping during the livestreams.

Frustratingly I've discovered that the initial batch of Prairie Fire (Vietnam) streams are all unlisted-and-unscrubbed. The ones involving the campaign missions, before we switched to Mike Force (similar to Antistasi). There was some sort of malfunction with the OBS plugin that I was using to keep notes. It simply did not.

That however...is future Soviet's problem. And that guy is a knobhead.

Now, the final sequence of this bullshittery needs to be worked on this week. I'm dreading it a little bit. It's cut to music, exactly like the Rising Storm: Vietnam rifle grenade sequence. Which drastically increases the complexity.

It's existed in my brain for a few months now. But I've yet to actually try to edit it.

A bigger problem is that the footage itself is a bit...lacklustre. It involves causing some vehicular mischief whilst locked into the driving seat of one of Arma 3's vehicles. A very tall vehicle. Meaning you can barely see what's going on. And the other guys always insist on playing Arma without the third-person camera. Much to my disappointment. As it's been a standard element of the series since Operation Flashpoint.

So I need to make some structural decisions before I even cut it tightly to the music. Do I keep it all locked first person inside the vehicle? Is it good enough, or too boring? If the later, do I ditch the scene and find an alternative? Do I use the mission editor to pose NPC's in the same positions for external shots around this vehicle?

My goal as the editor is to make it entertaining first, not necessarily a shot-for-shot showing of how it went down. This is just one of those scenes that'll ask me where is the line and I might stumble over it if I'm not careful.

But then again maybe I should stumble over it on purpose for the sake of comedy? Youtubers do that all the time, with crazy action sequences. Digby and Digi are doing full on voiced motion-captured briefing sequences in their ops. And they look amazing!

These are the sort of structural questions that I need to figure out. It'll make much more sense when you see it. I'll do some rough cuts and have a think.

Editing continues. Nearly there :)