As you’d expect

Hi time traveler, I (Brettimaeus) made this blog so I could post things I’ve written. Since it’s a blatantly important skill, writing is worth improving at, and I know it despite the struggles I’ve had. High School was a hellscape of time pressure and rubrics, but I’ll leave old scars to heal as they will.

Moreover, I need to tell some god damn stories. I am not a world-building whiz-kid creative type, I’ve never made an OC… but I respect good storytelling. I don’t like writing, and the word on the street is, no one does. They just put up with it for the reward of getting a story told. Okay. I can get that. I have to accept that the chances of getting an artist to draw a comic, or an animation/film studio to make a make TV adaptation of an idea that hasn’t even been written from start to finish are “””slim”””. Therefore, if I have an idea, whether or not it would work better in a visual medium shouldn’t matter until it’s written down well enough to be a story on its own.

I hope nobody follows this blog, because I’m self-conscious. Video leaves just the right barrier between audience brain and creator brain. I don’t feel so naked behind a video. But, that’s the point right?! I GOTTA GET COMFORTABLE BEING NAKED!

Subtext: Don’t expect shit except shit.

Kidneyland 2: Electric Waterslide

Created 11 August 2017

Ooh, been a minute since I posted here eh? I put out an album, but who cares, Didneylan babyy!

Made over a weekend immediately following the trip its about, this video was a promise to my friends in return for going to another theme park. Infamously, Kidneyworld took me 3-4 months of on-and-off work, and I did not want that to be the case again. Ultimately most of the dirty editing work was concentrated into one day, with an extra day for stuff like working out how to do the motion tracked titles for the opening in After Effects, which were certainly a first.

Speaking of firsts! This was the first video project I’ve ever done entirely without Sony Vegas! It was all Premiere Pro, so evidently I’m moving up in the world.

There are also two instances of Adobe Audition audio manipulation in there, I used the mashup skills I got from that album to change the songs I was using. Me_and_Julio_Down_By_the_Schoolyard.mid has a wind-down effect to accompany the implication that Walibi is not necessarily a theme park for radical teens. And Lion_Sleeps_Tonight.mid slowly pitch-shifts down in an unsettling way to accompany the ousting of Matthew Whitehurst by the media.

Fun Facts:

  • Those motion tracked titles were a horrible mistake!
  • The dirty secret is that Kidneyland 1 was called Kidneyworld.
    • No one would ever check this unless they read it here.

Dark Souls 3 and the Dance of Swords

Created: 24 Nov 2016

Yup. I sat on this video for nearly 5 months! It was one of the videos I pumped out in the off-days when I wasn’t working on JojoBebop. I literally just sat down and played Dark Souls 3 for an hour, and stopped shortly after this video ends, and I haven’t played since.

Once in the editing bay, I experimented a bit, and decided to intentionally edit it in a rather chill way, as opposed to the in-your-face way a lot of heavily edited gameplay videos are. (Of course I still love my Dunkey’s and Slimecicle’s, I just like a little variety in the Youtube scene).

The last step was the prospect of some music. I tried putting some smooth jazz here and there, but in the end my answer was contained within the video itself. As I mentioned in my JojoBebop post, I was listening to this playlist a lot at the time. So I was singing some Steven Universe songs in the actual video, and I knew just the instrumental songs to add.

Anyway, I think it really elevates the video to something beautiful.

Confession: Not only am I bad at video games, I commit the mortal sin of being pretty insecure about it. That won’t stop me from posting videos like this, (because it’s a good video regardless) but know that I recognize the problem. If I could flip a switch and make it so I could beat the boss in one try, I would have flipped that switch like an ebay scalper years ago. Instead I can only ask for patience, and that folks might realize that there is greater enjoyment in laughing at the struggle than getting frustrated by it.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pv23nUqaPQ

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LsNmHNQSWY

Where I stand on Nihilism

kaijuno:

kaijuno:

I’m not like emo nihilist I’m more like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy nihilist like “life is meaningless and the universe does not care about you and it’s full of casual and callous destruction might as well have a party while I still can then”

Like the two forms of nihilism are “nothing matters so why?” and “nothing matters so why not?” and the latter is so much fun

Who Sabotaged The Gates Of Hell?

Created: 15 Mar 2017

My good buddy @vigilantefridge and I were playing pong with mashup ideas, and he ended up making this masterpiece: https://soundcloud.com/poppy-jr/who-sabotaged-the-gates-of-hell2

Then he made the brief suggestion that I do a video based on it.

image

I didn’t even let him know I’d taken him up on it until a rough edit was done, around 1 AM the next morning. Then we spent much of the next night working out the kinks, including the thumbnail, which he made.

Interesting note:

  • Just as I wanted to make Annoyed Grunt entirely 4:3, I wanted to do the same for this one. However, I ran into some difficulties with this trailer, which was the only widescreen asset in the entire project. Basically I had to crop each shot of the trailer slightly differently to make it work. It annoys me that I had to compromise, but I doubt anyone will notice.
  • A lot of people complained about Jontron appearing in the Annoyed Grunt video, because he’s been in hot water recently, so the brief clip of John Romero’s head is taken from Jon’s ‘

    Top 10 Necessary Video Game Sequels’. This decision serves no purpose, and no one will ever know unless they read this.

Love Determination – Evangelion AMV

Created: 17 Feb 2016

Originally titled ‘May Contain Love Determination’

A year and one month ago, I created this video as part of @triple-q​‘s Love Determination movement to get his channel reinstated after a copyright takedown. The mashup itself, Love Determination was taken off of his Youtube channel, so he encouraged other people to reupload it on their own channels in whatever form they wish.

Ironically, when I tried to upload mine, it was taken down for the visuals instead of the audio. For a long time I let it stay on Tumblr, but once Star Halations was released by Disney, I worked up the gumption to dispute this claim on Youtube. Twas a success, and thus the video lives once again. I’m glad. It’s a pretty sick video.

Annoyed Grunt (Music Video)

Created: 13 February 2017

I discovered there’s a handful of small Youtube channels working to give the Mouth Mashups their own music videos. Going through them, some videos were quite impressive, and inspired me to take a shot. Annoyed Grunt was my favorite mashup from Mouth Moods, and I’d been listening to it periodically, so I checked to see if a video already existed, and couldn’t find one. Thus I set to work…

…And didn’t stop working for about 10 hours. It came out great! This was probably the largest amount of disparate elements I’ve had to track down and edit together for a single project, but I’m satisfied with the way everything flows in spite of that. I hope Neil sees it to be honest.

Interest notes:

  • At 0:39 it looks like Tim is the one making the grunt noises, ha.
  • I noticed the majority of these music videos were horribly low-fi, and I decided to roll with that aesthetic.
  • I tried to make the entire thing 4:3 at first, which immediately started to look stupid once I introduced 16:9 clips. In the end I just had to accept that there would be wildly varying aspect ratios throughout, and that no one would probably care.

SOURCES (in order of appearance):

  • Larry King Live – Opening 2008:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKmz7bJ4AdA

  • Home Improvement – Season 3 Opening Credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnEa2cBEDS4

  • Disturbed – Down With The Sickness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LTT0xwdfw

  • Annie Lennox – No More I Love You’s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSkboTTTmpg

  • Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight (feat. Eric Clapton):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3KhFYAQoTA

  • Mungo Jerry – In The Summertime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvUQcnfwUUM

  • M.I.A – Paper Planes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRjZoRtu0Y

  • Simpsons – D’oh! (Compilation of Homer’s annoyed grunts):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hyOLydRFfU

  • Austin Powers – Yeah baby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBHKVAs85Ko

  • Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight HD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeDMnyQzS88

  • Home Improvement – Season 8 Opening Credits :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUZd50ggIOk

  • Home Improvement – Season 4 Opening Credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjRRmP4NYDQ

  • Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beINamVRGy4

  • Mario Paint Composer – 

    Mario Theme As Sung By Cats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_QBHiiE6k

  • Jontron – Home Improvement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDVo6CrgW0

  • Home Improvement – Season 1 Episode 24 “Stereo-Typical”:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x232hjf_home-improvement-1×24-stereo-typical_tv

  • Van Halen – Runnin’ With The Devil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5txwFv-zYM

  • Larry King Live – 

    Bobby Brown further details his “ghost sex” incident:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tSz5gVns6E

  • Neil Cicierega – Bustin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdyU_gW6WE

Bowling 2: The Phantom Pins

Created: 15 Jan 2017

Similar to the story of the first Bowling video, my friends and I had been separated for a long time. Evan and Zach, for instance, had been away in the U.S. for college. However, at the time of recording, everyone was back together again for Christmas break, so this set of games was our way of hanging out.

This time however, things were a bit crazier. The sitcom intro was requested at the time, on camera, but I left it out to maintain the comedic contrast between the horror angle. We really did have problems getting the pins to set in our lane. The slav squat protests went on for 5 or so minutes before we got the assistant to fix it for us, but it just kept happening. Unfortunately, there was a lot I couldn’t catch on camera because my phone had so little battery.

While I was recording, I genuinely thought that I wasn’t going to make anything out of it, because I expected it would just be a rehash of Ultimate Bowling. It was only when someone pointed out that I could take it in a horror direction that I felt the inspiration to follow through.

Interesting note: The intended release date was February 1st, but a copyright issue demanded I pull it down and do a re-edit. I think the video might be stronger for it in the end. It’s hard to say.