Since video embeds still aren't in user reviews, here's my Mario Kart 8 review in blog form! In my completely objective, unbiased opinion, it is the best Mario Kart 8 video review you'll find on the internet!
As always, it's surprising how long these take me I ran a poll on Twitter and Tumblr under the guise this would only take me a week to put together, and it ended up taking over a month! And I kind of can't figure out why!
I mean, with the DKC video, it made sense. I was having trouble editing the footage and that took me weeks to figure out. This, though, this went about as smoothly as you could hope for. I had to draw fewer art assets, I got a bunch of new music, editing went painlessly, and yet…
The only way it makes sense is to walk through the process step by step:
- It took around three days to record all the footage I needed. This could be bumped up to four, because I had to go back and record more stuff (you always do).
- It took six (almost seven!) days to convert the busted-ass Roxio M2TS files in to something Sony Vegas could actually read.
- It took two days to record all of my narration. I always do two takes, but I wasn’t happy, so a few days after assembling my first attempt, I went back and re-recorded the whole thing again and nailed it perfectly on basically my first try.
- It took another 2 days to go back over the audio: I use Goldwave to manually cut out all the breaths and edit out all the mistakes, cut it all up by segment and run it through Levelator, then run that through Izotope Ozone to clean it up and make it sound nice.
- I spent three days going through the Free Music Archive looking for new, royalty-free music to supplement my library of Kevin MacLeod stuff.
- Two days for pencil sketches on the art pieces, another four days to ink and color them.
- Another day to make the bar graph animation; instead of figure out how to do it in Sony Vegas, I just created a Multimedia Fusion application and exported that to an AVI file (treating it basically like Flash).
- And then we’ll say another week just in Sony Vegas, sifting through everything and putting it together in to what you see above.
GRAND TOTAL WORK: 30 days (give or take)
ACTUAL LENGTH OF TIME BETWEEN STARTING AND ENDING THE PROJECT: 45 days
Hm. I feel like I could’ve worked harder, though at the same time, I feel like I ran myself absolutely ragged on this one. By about week three a sort of desperation sets in where you’re like “AUGH THIS HAS TO GET DONE” but you’re in danger of burning out.
Still, though, that’s probably acceptable, right? I mean, I don’t actually know; I think professionals like GiantBomb could turn a video review around in about a week, and there was a time when I first started doing these that it feels like I could churn one out in about 48 hours (that’s how long it took me to do the first one, for Sonic Unleashed).
But they’re also getting longer, and getting more complex. That Sonic Unleashed video was 6 minutes long. This is double that, with unique art assets, custom animations, etc.
Man, I dunno. I feel like somebody’s gonna tell me it’s fine but it’s seriously hanging over my head that I could’ve worked harder (or at least faster).
Whatever!
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