May Update - *NEW VIDEO*

Hi all, sorry for the long quiet period. When I started this Patreon I knew I might not be able to do regular updates given how busy I am with my job and how much work my videos take. I think of my Patreon mainly as a tip jar – here for people who want to support my work even if I can’t provide much in return. But now that I’ve released another video I’ve released some Patreon exclusive content to go along with it.

In this post I’ll give an update on what I’ve been up to and working on the past few months.

Read the detailed behind the scenes article about my most recent video, Night Falls, here.

Just released - Night Falls「Mariya Takeuchi – Oh No, Oh Yes! 」[Fan MV/AMV] 

What I’ve been up to

September 2021

The last video I uploaded was the Richard Williams Editing Breakdown on September 20. It was an experiment to gauge interest in behind-the-scenes content in general. I kept making videos right after I finished it.

Where I live was in lockdown for a lot of last year, so I had tonnes of free time to edit. I spent about 4 months combined making the Kanada Light Flare, Richard Williams and Ambient Action videos. I was working 8 hours at my job during the day then usually working another 7-8 hours when I got home on YouTube videos. Creating the Richard Williams video in particular (which took 3 months by itself and over 700 hours to make) made me physically sick by the end of it. By the end of September I was burnt out.

But there was still a lot I wanted to do.

October/November 2021

I started work on getting my Patreon up and running right after my last upload. It took roughly 1-2 months to do all the planning, graphics work, writing, and designs for the new merch.

I had to wait for samples of the new designs to arrive before launching the Patreon which added to the time it took to plan

While I was setting up the Patreon I was also working on what was supposed to be the first Patreon reward - an Editing Walkthrough video about the Yoshitoshi Shinomiya MAD. The video was supposed to go through all the editing decisions I made in making the MAD. I took a week off from my job to do as much work as I could on it.

But I ran into issues. I was making the video in After Effects and my computer couldn’t handle it. It chugged to the point where I couldn’t watch the video in the program as I was making it. And explicating all the decisions I made while making the MAD turned out to be harder than I thought. A lot more decisions went into it than I at first realized. The writing took weeks, and I still wasn’t finished saying all I wanted to. It was looking like the video would be over 20 minutes long when I thought it would be 10 max. I was recently able to get a new PC that can do this kind of After Effects work more easily. But after trying to open this project on my new PC I discovered that it had become corrupted. The file won’t open. So unfortunately this video is on the backburner for now. I might salvage the work I’ve done on it and turn into an article instead of a video.

Click here to see what’s left of the Editing Walkthough video. This is the draft intro section I rendered out before the file became corrupted. I was still working on how I wanted these Editing Walkthroughs to look. But the idea would have been that you’d watch the video in that pane of glass you see at the end and the editing notes would appear underneath it. The song is an instrumental edit I made of  Mornin’ Dew (A COLORS SHOW) by Sunni Colon.

While I was doing all this I also started work on my next big project – a documentary about an animator (whose identity I’ll keep secret for now) similar to the Richard Williams one but on a much larger scale. I spent most of September and October planning and researching for this video. I watched almost all of this person’s work, read/watched all the articles and documentaries about this person I could find. I took many pages of notes and did a lot of the planning/road mapping for the project. I put in about 100 hours of work into this video from September-November. This was just the initial planning phases before any actual editing took place.

I launched my Patreon in November. The stress of the year and the fatigue I felt from working on YouTube videos near constantly made me decide to take December off. I spent the rest of the year taking it easy and seeing family and friends.

January/February 2022

I was more than ready to work on videos again come the new year. And I was extremely fortunate to get access to 2 things in January.

1- A new more powerful computer.

2- A mirrorless camera for photography and video.

The Nikon Z9 - the camera I shot the live action portions of Night Falls with.

I spent all of January and February getting myself familiar with the camera. I bought equipment, did location scouting, started to learn how to use the camera and get a sense for what I wanted to do with it. I’d been planning to integrate live action into my videos for a long time so I was happy to finally get a good camera to do it with.

I also got a lot more work done on the documentary. The documentary includes a lot of live action sections and I was able to go out and film some of them in Jan/Feb.

Some photos I took during January and February. Taken on a Nikon Z6 II (the camera I had before the Z9) with various lenses.

Like everyone else, I also played Elden Ring way too much.

March/April

By the time February was coming to a close I felt like I really needed to upload something. It had been too long since my last upload and this documentary I’m working on will take months, at least, to finish. I wanted to make something smaller in the meantime.

I went through my animation folders at the end of February. I spent a few days in June and July of last year (just before making the Ambient Action video) going through all the animation clips I’d downloaded and sifting through a few thousand Sakugabooru uploads. I then organized these clips into folders for potential future videos. I’ve made over 30 different folders covering different MAD ideas. This isn’t to say I’m making 30 MADs. But having 30 different themed folders helps a lot in organising clips and gives me a place to start from if I want to make a video about one of those topics.

An example of a folder I created last year. These are some of the clips I organised into a folder called "Ambient" last June. I used clips from this folder in the Night Falls video.

I chose 3 MADs to work on first. I started work on 2 of them in February before coming up with the idea for Night Falls in early March. The other 2 MADs were put on the back burner while I tried to complete Night Falls as fast as I could.

And that brings us to the present. Post production on Night Falls took about a week and included things like crediting the sources, writing these articles and rendering out clips for social media.

What my videos will be like going forward

My content creation process has changed a lot over the years. Videos used to just take a few days or a week to make. I would download clips from Sakugabooru about a subject I liked then edit them to a song over the course of a day or two. For the past few years my videos have usually taken months to make. Hundreds of hours of editing, planning and researching. I draw from many sources other than the booru and replace every booru clip I use with high quality Blu-Ray footage. And now that I’m incorporating live action and effects shots into my videos I’m spending hours or days on filming shots, doing things like colour grading or putting in hours watching/reading tutorials to do certain things.

I’m always trying to get better at what I do and expand the kinds of videos I create without losing the identity of the channel. Going forward I want to focus on what I see as the key features of Sakuga MADs:

1- Appealing editing

2- Learning about art & artists

3- Celebration of art & artists

My future videos won’t all be Sakuga MADs, but they’ll continue to focus on these ideas.

As for what the plan is going forward- I'll take a short break (a few weeks) for now then focus on completing my next AMV. Getting some more work done on the documentary as I go.

Again, thank all of you so much for supporting me on Patreon despite a lack of activity on here. It means the world to me to know there are people who want to support what I do. I like to keep projects under wraps until I finish them. But I'll make sure to keep doing what I've done this time and make articles to release alongside new videos.

Movies I’ve recently seen that I really like:

Autumn Leaves - Ingmar Bergman

Fanny & Alexander - Ingmar Bergman

The Piano Teacher - Michael Haneke

On the Beach at Night Alone- Hong Sang-soo

In Front of Your Face - Hong Sang-soo

Predator - John McTiernan

August in the Water - Gakuryū Ishii

Turning Red - Domee Shi

Don’t Look Now - Nicolas Roeg

The Vanishing - George Sluizer

Good Morning - Yasujirō Ozu

Polyester – John Waters

Project A – Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung

The Red Shoes – Powell & Pressburger

Songs I’ve been listening to recently that I really like:

YouTube Playlist of all these songs: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC94s-MJRuHGO-4I6LPyhF09dNo6m6fZ5

Sunset Road - Reiko Takahashi

Silent Screamer - Tatsuro Yamashita

You Got Me Doing Things - Frank Vandenkloot

I’m in Love - Aru Takamura (I’d been trying to find for this song for years. This is the song that Desired sampled in FM Towns Girl, the 2nd song in my Effects Sakuga MAD)

LUMBERJACK – Yuji Toriyama (Another song I’ve been trying to find for years. The song that another track in the Effects Sakuga MAD, Distorted Sillhouette, samples)

Seaside in the Twilight – Air Suspension Club Band

Paradigm Shift - Naoshi Mizuta

Shine – Puar

Corso / Hot Wind Blows – Tyler the Creator (obviously the whole album too, but I like these tracks best)

Groovejet - Spiller

rom com 2021 – Soccer Mommy, Kero Kero Bonito

Well Rested – Kero Kero Bonito (I was going to make a video to this song, but after my Wonder Egg Priority MAD was taken down due to the KKB music I’ve shelved this idea for now)

See more songs I’ve been listening to in my Spotify Playlist. Sort by date most recently added to see what I'm listening to currently.