Progress On The Next Video...

Here is what I've done so far for the next essay ("making selects" means cutting something way way down into clips I may want to use in my video, when I mention hours here I mean the source material length and not my selects)-

• Written a significant amount, maybe 6.5k words (for reference the script for fake friends 2 is 10.5k or so)

• Learned Obsidian, or I'm trying to learn it to see if it helps my process. I switched my notes from google drive to Obsidian midway through writing.

• Compiled a ton of text interviews with Lutsko, pieces on his stuff, and some writing on Roadside Picnic and have started going through that

• Made a rough thumbnail which you can see here lol. in my clickbait era

• Watched and made selects of 18-19 hours of Nick Lutsko's interviews (augh)

• Rewatched and made selects of Hypernormalisation and two Adam Curtis interviews (5-6 hours total)

• Watched and made selects of Stalker (2 hr 42 min long film)

• Read Roadside Picnic (200 pages). Started The Dead Mountaineer's Inn but it seems irrelevant to the essay after reading a bit of it

• Watched and made selects of maybe 5-6 hours worth of Lutsko's channel's content

• Downloaded most of Conner O'Malley's channel videos to make selects of (the marked as adult ones don't work on 4kvideodownloader so I would have to find a different downloader or screen record those) but I don't think I'll actually go through his whole channel to pull from, I have really specific segments in mind. Grabbed some of his video stuff from outside of his channel as well (there's one Chris Gethard ep he's on I've watched his segment from a dozen times at this point)

• Somewhere I have a bunch of interviews with or pieces on O'Malley collected together for an old essay idea and I need to go back through them

• Downloaded a couple dozen after effects and premiere templates for potential VFX off of envato, have experimented with them a little

• I've started editing the end of the video ahead of finishing writing it.

Here's what I still need to do-

• Play at least some of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (already bought/downloaded it), maybe pull clips from it

• Watch Annihilation, maybe pull clips from it

• Maybe read Zona. I bought a copy that hasn't arrived yet. Mark Kermode recommended it in his Stalker review. I downloaded some kind of panel the author did too to go through.

• Make selects of a bunch of other stuff from Lutsko's channel, actually listen to his first two pre-Swords albums in full and take notes, etc

• Try harder to find more writing on Stalker/Roadside Picnic? I am getting a bit fatigued of working on the research/writing phase at this point and want to move on to editing. I just don't know if I fully grasp either of them being that I know so little about Soviet Russian culture. I don't want to misrepresent them.

• Finish writing, record VO for, and edit the whole thing

• Maybe shoot some live action shots for it

• Probably other stuff I'm forgetting (**edit: I forgot I plan to rewatch and make selects of Can't Get You Out of My Head as well)

It may not sound like it but I do feel like I'm 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through this, being that the edit will be intense but not nearly as much work hours-wise as compiling and organizing all of the material. The script is still in the rough stage but probably mostly written as well.

Lutsko's newest show was very good. I would recommend checking it out.

Making video essays is a lot of work, especially when I'm working full-time and juggling other side projects. I could just do a film review or something, which I could probably write, record, and edit in a day, but I want to make something more meaningful and thorough. I also don't even think I'll charge for this one being that I had so many unfinished videos I charged for that never made it past rough stage. So I may be doing all this for free apart from ad rev which I may not even get. Thank you as always for supporting me!