B-Mask
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Final update on the new video
🕑 Added 2020-01-30 16:33:22 +0000 UTCOne last update before this bad boy finally drops.
Sadly I’ve once again gone over my deadline, the frustration being that I’ve literally just been editing the credits of the video before typing this up. There’s still a couple tweaks I want to make and the upload/double checking will take an incredibly long time due to the video runtime so I know I just won’t beat my 31st deadline, but I do have another, very soonish date in mind that I want to hit once everything’s been put in place. I have to apologise again as I really didn’t want to string you guys out for this long, but the project I’m working on has really become something a lot bigger than I initially intended, and i’m making sure that it’s the absolute best I can make it.
As a consolation, I thought I’d offer some information on my process for this new video that, while still a secret, will make sense both before and after the video is released.
I wanted to do a retrospective of a comic book, one i’ve loved for a very long time, and one that has been perhaps the most important to shaping comics in the west and making them so incredibly successful, and has become deeply, deeply undervalued as time has gone on. I started toying with the idea around five or so years ago, thinking up a simple script, series of points and structure that I thought might work. The more I thought about it though, the more I realised this was a bit of a logistical challenge. There are a lot of videos and documentaries that show comics on screen but just kind of show them without much context, like they’ll make a broad point about a series and show a couple of iconic pages in-between a bunch of random images. I really wanted to get the scenes from the comics on the screen as they appeared in my head, and make people connect with them the way I always had, and doing that meant I needed to go way, way deeper with my process.
I went back and read every single iteration of the comic, every permutation I could find or remember and every crossover or cameo I could think of, as well as a bunch of leads I’d never come across before while keeping up with where the series was currently. I wrote a script and kept re-working it until it got across all the points I wanted to make as succinctly as possible, even if it was still very long when the runtime was finally strung together. My biggest personal innovation was the decision to hire voice actors. I experimented with this in the Sly retrospectives purely to test the waters and maybe try it out full time on this larger project. It turned out to be a good decision, not only something I really enjoyed doing in those videos, but helping me with knowing where to look for talent, how to manage conversations about their expenses/time, and how to direct them and plan for their input.
Actually editing the video was also a huge challenge because of almost everything being images. When it’s video clips, they’re easier to cut to and mess with, you can show a lot on screen very quickly, but with still images you have to really think about what to move and what not to move, animating thousands of clips to get points across, and even more exhaustingly, choosing the right images for the right moments. Sometimes I’m very specific about the image I want to show, but sometimes an image in a comic that seems to make my point is less clear than in my head, or there’s another image hidden in 600 plus issues that makes the point better. A lot of the stress and time was often, outside of rewrites and narration, trawling through decades of history in comics and online to find one image that I felt suited my needs. Of course because there’s so much content there was a lot of indecision in what I should use and where I should use it, swapping images around until I felt like everything was in the right place.
It’s not a video i’d say I’m 100 percent happy with- I think the product in my head is still very different to what you’re going to end up with and I’m definitely not a master of audio in spite of trying out a lot of tutorials, so that’s gonna bug me- but I do think this is probably my most personal work yet. It’s very intense and nerdy and vulnerable and I’m really putting my jaw out in a way I’m not sure I’ve done before. If ever there was a time to make fun of me, this would be it, even Jem wasn’t this level of earnestness. Mostly, I’m grateful for all the intensely talented people, friends and even artists who helped me put this together, and of course, for you guys.
It’s the first video I’m going to put all patrons names in- you all contributed to the video’s existence and the existence of the channel, and I want this one to immortalise that contribution. I probably won’t make any money off the video either because I’m using a fair bit of copyrighted music that I kind of personally need to use, there’s no other choices to put my thoughts across, so this and your support of my other videos has really been a solid support base. Everything goes back to normal with future videos, many of which will be ready to get started on after a small break once this video launches, but this one’s special. It’s the one I wanted to make the most.
Alright, I'll give you another clue before I get back to work.
It’s about superheroes.
More than one.
-B
Comments
Todd Christiansen
I don't read comics but I'm really looking forward to this video, based on what you've said!
The Peters
This glimpse into your process of researching and planning and nitpicking about all of the minute details was a fantastic read. I immediately pick up on the nerdy love you have for this mysterious topic, and I can't wait to see the video. While it may not be your perfect video, I can guarantee that I'll enjoy it, as will tons of others.
Majin Brandon
It's a comic about superheroes. More than one. You may want to give a bit more hints to that man.
