Well, what do you know? I actually completed a video this month.

It was not without issue. My rush to complete the script resulted in a number of erroneous claims, and my efforts to correct them generated further false declarations. The Internet itself was inconsistent as to how some of the game’s systems worked, and ultimately I had footage that poorly matched anything I wrote, said, or researched. For a brief period I found myself distraught and tempted to give up on the whole thing. Instead, I pushed onward and largely left the audio untouched.

I’m proud to have completed another video so swiftly after the previous, but rushing the video to completion also meant an inferior product. While I was never expecting a video on Fire Emblem: Warriors to draw a crowd, I largely haven’t promoted the new critique due to a lack of confidence in its depth.

Iconoclasts has been a struggle in its own right. For whatever reason the drop in quality from Elgato’s MP4 format to Movie Maker’s WMV is dramatic for a two-dimensional game. The dropped frames of animation coupled with pixelated artifacts look absolutely horrendous when you know what the game should look like in motion. None of the other games I’ve recorded and converted have had a notable drop in quality until now.

An experiment with DaVinci Resolve confirmed that, eventually, it will be a most suitable program to replace Movie Maker with. For the time being my laptop lacks the power to make precise edits like I desire. There is considerable lag as I try and scrub through footage, and trims tend to start and stop in different parts than I thought I was selecting. The amount of time it takes to add a three second clip at a specific point is dramatically longer.

After much deliberation, I finally accepted that I’d continue using Movie Maker for now and Iconoclasts would look ugly.

It’s not a perfect comparison, but this video represents what I can capture at maximum settings off of Elgato. Note how the blue sky looks to be one solid, unbroken color.

In order to work with the video in Movie Maker, I need to use a converter that, no matter what I do, drops details. You can see in the blue sky there are now different shades of artifacts. It doesn’t seem so bad in a screenshot, but in motion those are popping in and out seemingly at random. I put up a comparison video file on Twitter to see what people thought, and most believed it was fine. As such, I decided to continue with Iconoclasts rather than post-pone it.

Since then I’ve finished recording the game’s footage and have been writing the first draft of the script. This promises to be a satisfyingly deep dive, though I still practice brevity where I can. There’s a lot I could say about this game, but going too deep would put the video at risk of becoming tedious.

There’s something I learned about a true love of writing. I used to think that I loved writing simply because I enjoyed spilling words onto a document. This would result in verbose posts lacking any sense of restraint. As I’ve grown older and have been forced to write for an audience, I’ve found that efficiency is a key element to the art and love of scribbling words. Watching other YouTubers, even ones that I enjoy, I’ve come to realize that a lot of time is unnecessarily spent detailing minutiae with minor pay-off. Often times during these long-running digressions, the game footage will either have already helped explain the point succinctly, or it will have long ceased matching the explanation being provided.

My challenge with Iconoclasts is less about what to say and more about how much I want to say. Instead, I’m going to give enough evidence to support my argument and progress forward. It would be over-indulgent to otherwise spend unnecessary time on every little detail in the level’s design or every line of dialogue. In some ways it feels insufficient, but that’s why I practice multiple drafts. I will see what can be trimmed and what needs to be padded out upon passing over once more, and with luck I’ll have audio recorded – perhaps even edited – before E3 begins. That, of course, is best case scenario.

It is possible to have Iconoclasts done in June. However, it is also very possible that I’ll suffer self-doubts during early phases that can cause delay. It is also possible that my day job will reduce my free time available for video editing. No matter how long it takes, I am fully committed to my YouTube channel being my top priority. My only other obligations are to this blog and Eh! Steve!, neither of which should hinder time devoted to editing Iconoclasts.

As the script is nearly finished, I’m also ready to begin recording footage and notes for the next video. I’m a bit torn as to which I want to do next, and must confess that I would prefer to choose a project that will take less time to play through. To this end I shall simultaneously be trying to record footage for I Am Setsuna and Rise of the Tomb Raider. The former should take less time than the latter. I’d abandon Rise altogether save for the fact that I wish to replay it before its sequel anyway. I’ve also wanted to do a video about it since I first played it. This should make for a perfect excuse, but I don’t want to abandon Setsuna while I’m feeling a fire to discuss it.

We’ll see in my June report how successful I was at dividing my recording time.