We're roughly 2 months removed from the release of the most recent review and audio commentary, so I figured it would be a good idea to provide a..."short" - lol - little update for all of you as to where things are with production on upcoming videos
At the end of my Indy 5 review, I said that I hoped to have one of my three massive projects (Lightyear, Owl House, or Halo Infinite) out by the end of July. I am currently laughing hysterically at myself for ever thinking such a thing was possible, but I suppose that's why I said I merely "hoped" to accomplish it as opposed to outright promising it. So, what's the status on one of those three projects?
First, to manage expectations, it's probably not the one you're hoping for; it's the Owl House praise/critique. You may ask why that's what I decided to dedicate the vast majority of my time to when the Enchanting Grom Fright commentary was one of my worst performing videos, and when Lightyear is what I'm most often asked about
Well, the answer is pretty straightforward and underwhelming; it's because I wanted to.
I am very fortunate to have found the audience that I did over the last year that's allowed me to prioritize YouTube content creation as a viable revenue stream, and I don't think I'll ever find the words to say how thankful I am to all of you for giving me that chance. In spite of that, however, views/statistics/etc. are not my primary motivator for the videos that I make. The "business-savvy" thing to do would undeniably be to focus 110% on editing the Lightyear video, and certainly never make any audio commentaries because those perform terribly compared to the main reviews and critiques
But I didn't find the following I did by doing what I thought would be popular. Judging by IMDB & Metacritic scores, spending 6 hours ripping apart every frame of Toy Story 4 certainly isn't something I'd have done if my goal was to appeal to the masses. I just spoke from the heart about a movie I genuinely and sincerely despised, and was fortunate that my passion seemed to resonate with people. That mindset always has been - and always will be - what drives the thought process behind my channel; the question of "what do *I* want to make? What do *I* want to talk about?" So I keep making audio commentaries because they're a blast to record with friends, I keep covering topics in reviews that I'm interested in, and I stand behind my own beliefs, even if I don't think they'll align with the popular consensus
I picked The Owl House because I haven't felt this passionately about something - especially in a positive way - in a very long time, and I want to share that passion with all of you. If you genuinely couldn't care less about the show and are still eagerly waiting for Lightyear then that's your prerogative and I respect that; I understand why anyone would be disappointed to hear that's what I'm covering next - though I would still encourage you to give the video a shot even if you have no familiarity with The Owl House. But at the end of the day, I make the videos that I want to make, and all I can do is hope they resonate with people
So with all that out of the way, we can move onto our second point of discussion, that being: how close is it to being ready? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, after working on it nearly every day for half a year, and spending all summer hammering out the editing from dusk til dawn - with a few all-nighters thrown in for good measure - the nearly six-and-a-half hour-long video is 100% done. Written, recorded, edited, the whole deal
The bad news is that, because it's so long, and YouTube's copyright sensors are extra aggressive when it comes to super long videos for reasons that I do not understand, trying to actually upload this thing without it getting immediately blocked has been the most frustratingly Sisyphean task I have ever undertaken on this channel. I've been thundering away at trying to re-render this Owl House video for over two weeks and am now at nearly 50 rendering attempts with seemingly no end in sight. And because of how YouTube's system works the claims won't show up on shorter uploads; they'll only get hit if I upload the full six-and-a-half hour behemoth. Which means I have to wait for my computer to re-render, and then wait for YouTube to upload/process all six-and-a-half hours again, and again, and again
Now, as some of you who have experience dealing with copyright on YouTube may know, there are a few things I could do to fix this that don't involve re-rendering a million times:
-Split up the video into multiple parts?
-Put a giant "fuck Disney" watermark over the blocked footage?
-Distort the footage so that YouTube won't be able to recognize it?
And you are correct; doing any one of these three things would almost certainly resolve the issue immediately. So why am I not doing them? Well:
1. Multiple parts?
When I wrote the script for this, it was written as a single four hour video. Obviously it ballooned to be much larger than that, but the point is that regardless of the final runtime, it was always intended to be ONE video. While there are clear "act breaks," if you will, during the video that could easily serve as conclusions for a different "part" which could be uploaded separately, I simply do not want to do this because it wasn't how I intended this to be released. Of course that doesn't mean I expect people to actually watch the full six hour video in one sitting; that's absurd. But I want the option to be there for the viewer; I'd rather have all the content available at once which you can watch at your own leisure, rather than being arbitrarily stopped at certain points. If you want to watch it an hour at a time over the span of a week, I want you to be able to. If you're crazy enough to actually watch it all at once, I also want you to be able to. And I don't want to flood people's subscription boxes with multiple uploads at once, nor do I want to stagger the releases such that anybody who binges the videos at lightning speed would be halted from continuing any further
Also, when I first released my TS4 series as five videos, I got a lot of comments asking "when's the next part?" even though all five had been released and I directly linked to the next part at the end of the previous part. I don't blame the viewers for this; the problem I want to highlight here is that sometimes YouTube just doesn't make viewers aware of the next part in a series even if there's a playlist with all of them together, and releasing one massive video helps eliminate that possibility
2. Watermark?
I put a watermark on the screen for commentaries becuase I literally couldn't release the video without them. It is a necessary evil to get through copyright because for a commentary, we are watching the full movie from start to finish. Whereas, in a critique, I am showing clips from episodes across the entire movie/show out of order to best match up with what I'm saying. So if a section gets dinged for copyright, I can rearrange the footage or lengthen/shorten clips until it gets through the copyright sensors, whereas such a thing is not possible for a commentary. Also, for commentaries, the watermark fades in and out from the very beginning of the movie so your brain - or at least, my brain - sorta tunes it out after a while. But if I had a six hour video where the entire thing was watermark free, only for there to be one little section where the logo suddenly pops up, that might confuse people or otherwise take them out of the experience, which is something I absolutely want to avoid
3. Distortion?
I ended up having to resort to this for the Lightyear commentary last year and to this day that's still my least favorite one because it's so damn ugly to look at. That's when I was still figuring out how to handle copyright for those videos, and it was the best solution I could come up with at the time. But I don't want to have to resort to that for my Owl House video. And of course, similar to the problem with the watermark, it would be quite distracting for only *some* portions of the video to be distorted while the rest looks totally normal, and I'm not willing to distort the entire video just for a handful of problematic sections the copyright bots don't like
So then, what do I do? Well, since I'm unwilling to compromise on any of these, the only thing I *can* do is keep trying. Keep knocking down every claim YouTube throws my way like a game of Whack-A-Mole until it eventually appeases the copyright gods. This could take another week, or two, or three, but I assure you that the instant it's ready to be made public, I won't hesitate to do so. At the risk of overselling it, I sincerely mean it when I say that of everything I've made over the years, I have never been as excited to share something with you all as I am with this video
In the meantime, I have something else coming your way very shortly. A lot of you have asked what I think of this year's Mario movie, and all I've said in response is "stay tuned for a future video." Well, that future is right around the corner; Gugonic has been hard at work all summer editing a double feature commentary reacting to both the 1993 AND the 2023 Mario movies back to back. And it is set to premiere THIS SATURDAY at 11:00 AM EST! If you enjoyed his work on the Turning Red commentary, I guarantee you'll love this one too
Well, I guess that's it for this update. Congratulations on making it all the way to the end of this massive post; I salute you for reading it all. Thank you for continuing to support the channel after all this time, and thank you for your patience during these long gaps between uploads. I know it's been awhile since my last big project, but I really believe this Owl House video will be worth the wait
GamingMagic13
Been awhile since my last community post, eh?
We're roughly 2 months removed from the release of the most recent review and audio commentary, so I figured it would be a good idea to provide a..."short" - lol - little update for all of you as to where things are with production on upcoming videos
At the end of my Indy 5 review, I said that I hoped to have one of my three massive projects (Lightyear, Owl House, or Halo Infinite) out by the end of July. I am currently laughing hysterically at myself for ever thinking such a thing was possible, but I suppose that's why I said I merely "hoped" to accomplish it as opposed to outright promising it. So, what's the status on one of those three projects?
First, to manage expectations, it's probably not the one you're hoping for; it's the Owl House praise/critique. You may ask why that's what I decided to dedicate the vast majority of my time to when the Enchanting Grom Fright commentary was one of my worst performing videos, and when Lightyear is what I'm most often asked about
Well, the answer is pretty straightforward and underwhelming; it's because I wanted to.
I am very fortunate to have found the audience that I did over the last year that's allowed me to prioritize YouTube content creation as a viable revenue stream, and I don't think I'll ever find the words to say how thankful I am to all of you for giving me that chance. In spite of that, however, views/statistics/etc. are not my primary motivator for the videos that I make. The "business-savvy" thing to do would undeniably be to focus 110% on editing the Lightyear video, and certainly never make any audio commentaries because those perform terribly compared to the main reviews and critiques
But I didn't find the following I did by doing what I thought would be popular. Judging by IMDB & Metacritic scores, spending 6 hours ripping apart every frame of Toy Story 4 certainly isn't something I'd have done if my goal was to appeal to the masses. I just spoke from the heart about a movie I genuinely and sincerely despised, and was fortunate that my passion seemed to resonate with people. That mindset always has been - and always will be - what drives the thought process behind my channel; the question of "what do *I* want to make? What do *I* want to talk about?" So I keep making audio commentaries because they're a blast to record with friends, I keep covering topics in reviews that I'm interested in, and I stand behind my own beliefs, even if I don't think they'll align with the popular consensus
I picked The Owl House because I haven't felt this passionately about something - especially in a positive way - in a very long time, and I want to share that passion with all of you. If you genuinely couldn't care less about the show and are still eagerly waiting for Lightyear then that's your prerogative and I respect that; I understand why anyone would be disappointed to hear that's what I'm covering next - though I would still encourage you to give the video a shot even if you have no familiarity with The Owl House. But at the end of the day, I make the videos that I want to make, and all I can do is hope they resonate with people
So with all that out of the way, we can move onto our second point of discussion, that being: how close is it to being ready? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, after working on it nearly every day for half a year, and spending all summer hammering out the editing from dusk til dawn - with a few all-nighters thrown in for good measure - the nearly six-and-a-half hour-long video is 100% done. Written, recorded, edited, the whole deal
The bad news is that, because it's so long, and YouTube's copyright sensors are extra aggressive when it comes to super long videos for reasons that I do not understand, trying to actually upload this thing without it getting immediately blocked has been the most frustratingly Sisyphean task I have ever undertaken on this channel. I've been thundering away at trying to re-render this Owl House video for over two weeks and am now at nearly 50 rendering attempts with seemingly no end in sight. And because of how YouTube's system works the claims won't show up on shorter uploads; they'll only get hit if I upload the full six-and-a-half hour behemoth. Which means I have to wait for my computer to re-render, and then wait for YouTube to upload/process all six-and-a-half hours again, and again, and again
Now, as some of you who have experience dealing with copyright on YouTube may know, there are a few things I could do to fix this that don't involve re-rendering a million times:
-Split up the video into multiple parts?
-Put a giant "fuck Disney" watermark over the blocked footage?
-Distort the footage so that YouTube won't be able to recognize it?
And you are correct; doing any one of these three things would almost certainly resolve the issue immediately. So why am I not doing them? Well:
1. Multiple parts?
When I wrote the script for this, it was written as a single four hour video. Obviously it ballooned to be much larger than that, but the point is that regardless of the final runtime, it was always intended to be ONE video. While there are clear "act breaks," if you will, during the video that could easily serve as conclusions for a different "part" which could be uploaded separately, I simply do not want to do this because it wasn't how I intended this to be released. Of course that doesn't mean I expect people to actually watch the full six hour video in one sitting; that's absurd. But I want the option to be there for the viewer; I'd rather have all the content available at once which you can watch at your own leisure, rather than being arbitrarily stopped at certain points. If you want to watch it an hour at a time over the span of a week, I want you to be able to. If you're crazy enough to actually watch it all at once, I also want you to be able to. And I don't want to flood people's subscription boxes with multiple uploads at once, nor do I want to stagger the releases such that anybody who binges the videos at lightning speed would be halted from continuing any further
Also, when I first released my TS4 series as five videos, I got a lot of comments asking "when's the next part?" even though all five had been released and I directly linked to the next part at the end of the previous part. I don't blame the viewers for this; the problem I want to highlight here is that sometimes YouTube just doesn't make viewers aware of the next part in a series even if there's a playlist with all of them together, and releasing one massive video helps eliminate that possibility
2. Watermark?
I put a watermark on the screen for commentaries becuase I literally couldn't release the video without them. It is a necessary evil to get through copyright because for a commentary, we are watching the full movie from start to finish. Whereas, in a critique, I am showing clips from episodes across the entire movie/show out of order to best match up with what I'm saying. So if a section gets dinged for copyright, I can rearrange the footage or lengthen/shorten clips until it gets through the copyright sensors, whereas such a thing is not possible for a commentary. Also, for commentaries, the watermark fades in and out from the very beginning of the movie so your brain - or at least, my brain - sorta tunes it out after a while. But if I had a six hour video where the entire thing was watermark free, only for there to be one little section where the logo suddenly pops up, that might confuse people or otherwise take them out of the experience, which is something I absolutely want to avoid
3. Distortion?
I ended up having to resort to this for the Lightyear commentary last year and to this day that's still my least favorite one because it's so damn ugly to look at. That's when I was still figuring out how to handle copyright for those videos, and it was the best solution I could come up with at the time. But I don't want to have to resort to that for my Owl House video. And of course, similar to the problem with the watermark, it would be quite distracting for only *some* portions of the video to be distorted while the rest looks totally normal, and I'm not willing to distort the entire video just for a handful of problematic sections the copyright bots don't like
So then, what do I do? Well, since I'm unwilling to compromise on any of these, the only thing I *can* do is keep trying. Keep knocking down every claim YouTube throws my way like a game of Whack-A-Mole until it eventually appeases the copyright gods. This could take another week, or two, or three, but I assure you that the instant it's ready to be made public, I won't hesitate to do so. At the risk of overselling it, I sincerely mean it when I say that of everything I've made over the years, I have never been as excited to share something with you all as I am with this video
In the meantime, I have something else coming your way very shortly. A lot of you have asked what I think of this year's Mario movie, and all I've said in response is "stay tuned for a future video." Well, that future is right around the corner; Gugonic has been hard at work all summer editing a double feature commentary reacting to both the 1993 AND the 2023 Mario movies back to back. And it is set to premiere THIS SATURDAY at 11:00 AM EST! If you enjoyed his work on the Turning Red commentary, I guarantee you'll love this one too
Well, I guess that's it for this update. Congratulations on making it all the way to the end of this massive post; I salute you for reading it all. Thank you for continuing to support the channel after all this time, and thank you for your patience during these long gaps between uploads. I know it's been awhile since my last big project, but I really believe this Owl House video will be worth the wait
See ya soon <3
2 years ago | [YT] | 340