Tag: behind the scenes

L.A. Noire: Cold Cases and Car Races

Created: 8 Jan 2018

WHAT’S THAT? YOU GAMERS COULDN’T GO ANOTHER DAY WITHOUT THIS EXACT VIDEO IN YOUR LIFE? Only so happy to be of service.

Yeah, so my friend @vigilantefridge (AKA PoppyJR, the ARMS EVO world champion himself) and I had been planning to do a playthrough of L.A. Noire for years. I believe the original reason was “because John Noble is in it.”

So when we finally got a chance this past January, I set up a Blue Snowball mic and recorded it. However, I deleted that footage when trying to migrate hard drives. Then, the mic wasn’t recording. Then yeah everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

We waited a week, then continued the playthrough, with no choice but to accept that we were going to be missing the footage for the entire first 1/5th of the game. But we persevered!!!

We managed to beat the game at 6AM the night before I had to work an 8-hour shift of lifeguarding, and he had to pack to leave for EVO Japan. We both survived without sleep, don’t worry.

The very next night I stayed up compiling the footage and scanning for moments that were highlight-worthy, and slapped this video together in one sitting, while everything was still fresh in my mind.

Then PoppyJR suggested we commission someone to make a little intro for it (in the style of Two Best Friends Play) and I thought “Who better than my artist girlfriend?” Her art is at @CupidDissolvi on twitter, please check her out and give her some love. She was the perfect pick for the job, and I insisted she not give me a bf discount because her prices are just that fair.

Interesting notes:

  • We actually recorded ourselves playing the RE7 DLCs before we ever touched L.A. Noire
  • The loss of that footage is a greater tragedy than any other in the troubled production history of this video

Little Diddy

Created 15 Sep. 2017

This was easily one of the best self-contained jokes on my first mashup album, and I figured it deserved it’s own brief video. There isn’t much about it’s production to describe.

I took old character art of Diddy Kong from the 90s, and colorized them in Photoshop to look like the even older photographs. I think the combination of the crappy early CG work and the coloration is a real nice effect:

The glorious full pic.

Then I just masked them into the Jack and Diane music video frame by frame, recalling many of the techniques I learned in making JoJo’s Bebop Adventure. Simple, a little time-consuming, and always worth it.

I realized I’d be wise to sit on it until my second album was prep’d (which it finally is). Please look forward!

Poe Rey Mi Fa Solo Ren Poe

Created: Jan 2016

Say what you will of The Force Awakens, its premiere was one of the most memorable experiences I’ll ever have. I saw it with all my friends, opening night, in a PACKED theatre. And it was fun!

The next month, I was still thinking about it somehow, so I scribbled this down in a notebook (a physical one, so I have no idea where it is). Felt like a god damn genius until I realized I had no way to make an actual song out of it, since I didn’t know anything about music.

Fast forward two years. I’ve now put out… two… albums. And made a handful of original songs.

And Episode VIII is finally here! Now seemed like the perfect time to resurrect the idea. It turned out great! Well, the song at least. IDK about the visuals I just kinda threw them together.

Lyrics:

Po, can steer, a rebel ship
Rey, a budding padawan
Maz, the wise, and ancient one
Finn, a soldier on the run
So, an old retired rogue
Lo, a name to follow So
Ren, his somewhat evil son

And that brings us back to
Po
Rey
Maz
Finn
So
Lo
Ren
Po

Let’s go again, shall we?
But this time, lets incorporate some corporate market research!

Po, who’s queer, for Finn in fics
Rey, the super Mary Sue
Maz, who must, be Yoda’s clone
Finn, who’s only in for goofs
So, Harrison Ford is back?
Lo, and behold a short contract
Ren… whose real name… is Ben

And that brings us back to
Star
Wars
Will
Make
Lots
Of
Money

Interesting notes:

  • I, no joke, recorded the vocals in a studio.
  • I made the instrumental from completely free VSTs I got online, and I am rather proud of it.

Overwatch and the Curse of the Pro Lucio

Created: 26 Nov 2016

On nearly the one-year anniversary of this video’s creation, I’m finally posting it. This video was made feverishly in a single night, as an experiment with highly edited gameplay content. It was preceded by my Battlefield 4 LP… succeeded by my Dark Souls 3 video… and concurrent with this video on my second channel, which came from the same Pro Lucio gaming sessions.

 But I never posted it, because I wanted to keep it as a backup video if I ever had a slow month. I did have plenty of slow months over the past 12… but it never felt like the right time. So here it is after a year!

Interesting note:

  • I used Ask DNA because I was playing that song on loop the entire night we recorded that Overwatch footage.

Evil Within 2 Trailer | With Original 1992 Version of Ordinary World

Originally created: 28 June 2017

Alright Imma be honest, I just wanted to flex my audio editing muscles for once. I mixed all the audio in Adobe Audition (I was also using it at the time to mix my mashup album, The Book of Genre). I downloaded hundreds of sfx from www.freesound.org …THEN I LOST THEM.

Hit a serious snag in development, in which I lost a lot of my progress, saved versions of the file, and downloaded sfx. That damn Halloween-video curse struck again, as last seen on the Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared Movie. Anyway, I let it rest for a long time before deciding to resurrect it from the dead (heheh, geddit).

Everything past 1:13 was done more recently, and more quickly; so if it seems rougher that’s why. I was rusty, and I really didn’t want to drag out the production of the video any longer than I had to, especially after that unpleasant snag. Still pretty okay with how it came out, and definitely proud of a lot of the audio mixing in the first half! Had fun with it too, and that’s the important. aprta oh sh looks elike my tpying is cuscred tooo

Interesting notes:

  • I did not plan on this being a follow-up to my FFXV Stand By Me video but the fact that it worked out like that makes me very happy.
  • I tried to make the sfx keep in line with the rhythm of the song, and it mostly works!

Animal Memes History Lesson

Created February 18 2017

I had an idea stuck in my head that I couldn’t get out. A matter of perspective I wanted to bring to the world on an everyday subject matter:

I wanted to make people see animal memes as a natural extension of our history with them. Being the only intelligent creatures on the planet is lonely, so animals are best served as our doofy supportive friends we can make fun of in good jest. Animals really have always been a core part of the lens through which we view the world; in the olden days that manifested as legend; these days it manifests as Pixar movies. And memes.

In the interest of expressing that idea clearly, I cut out a lot of extraneous fat. I originally wanted to show the evolution of animal memes in a more detailed timeline.

But I favored a triumphant conclusion over drawing it out.

I was somewhat intimidated by the idea of actually writing a script with some semblance of structure, so I sat on the idea for a good six months before I sat down and wrote the script in a single hour, back in August. Then I waited another month before sitting down and editing the video in a single evening. Moral of the story is, if I just sat down and put my mind to stuff more often, I could probably crank it out. But taking long breaks to let ideas turn over in my head is the Brettimaeus standard! :/

Turned out fantastic, and I’m proud to have edited the whole thing in Premiere!

Script here: https://brettimaeus-writes.tumblr.com/post/165199064094/animal-meme-history-lesson

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

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.