Halo bullshittery - Update #1

An update on pre-production work last week:

• There are roughly 50 Halo livestreams. And I've managed to get through about 60% of them.

• This produced about 130 sequences within a Master project file. With the overwhelming majority being what I call category 1 clips - meaning very short moments of comedy.

• There were also 5-6 sequences dedicated to specific mini games which are far more involved (hide and seek, obstacle courses, etc).

• My gut tells me there's 2-3 Halo bullshitteries in total. And everything looks good to continue. Pre-production scrubbing is now being halted. I can easily pick it up again before a part 2 or 3 if needed.

• A rough cut of a Halo part 1 is being worked on this week.

There are a few emerging structural decisions to talk about.

The first is that I'm going to abandon the '32111' cutting pattern for this one - the clip distribution that I try to lean into where I alternate between clip categories in that order. The jokes I have available are far too frantic - far too fast - and I have too few of the necessary supporting 2 and 3 clips involving longer conversations.

This editing job is going to require something customised. More on that shortly.

The second decision is that I'm going to try to leave the various Halo mini games until at least part 2. Trying to pick the more vanilla game modes such as Capture the Flag or Deathmatch. Stuff that's simpler to look at.

I worry that if I try to include a minigame it's going to be Space Engineers all over again. And a whole segment is going to be the length of a full bullshittery. Doubling the editing time, as I'd really like to include some base gameplay.

Also the more vanilla gameplay footage will help ground expectations and have viewers get familiar with the participants. As in my opinion, a lot of the custom game modes are a little too...high concept. I mean look at this game mode:

That's not entirely what you imagine when you think Halo.

Third editing decision. During scrubbing I decided to stack many of the custom game modes within their own timelines for future refinement. For example I've shunted ALL the times we played 'Vehicle Jenga' into one unedited sequence.

When the time is right, I can scrub through all of it to pick the best bits. Perhaps making a compilation to look like one really energetic session. I've decided not cut them all right now. That'll take a while. I've save that work for when I think they're needed in part 2 or 3.

On the cut for part 1 though. Here's a shot of the timeline as it currently exists on day 2.

Currently it's a game of mixing and matching. Noting is really final. But I'd like to try and maintain a bit of eyeline continuity by chaining related clips together. Therefore I've tagged each of my sequences with the name of the level they took place on and I'm trying to place them together where possible.

The yellow clips there consist of highlights from the original Halo 1 multiplayer sessions. We played a few of those between sessions of Halo: Reach. The visual downgrade to original Halo is very jarring. So I figured it would be best to limit the number of times that happens by keeping those together.

And the whole tail end of the video consists of just clips from the map Blood Gulch (also known as Coagulation or Hemorrhage). I've even gone so far as to colour each clip depending on whether I was on the red or blue team.

This leads onto my final idea. For there was a particularly energetic capture the flag round in which the red team scrambled the steal the winning flag. And if I chain all the red clips together at the end, I'm hoping to present a segment of the video that feels like one continuous game of Blood Gulch.

For that purpose, I've selected the Halo 2 Scarab song and I'm trying to see if I can sync the crescendo of it to the final game winning flag cap. As if the comedy is suddenly giving way to something more serious. Or at least, a part with really high energy.

It's currently just an idea. Let me tinker with the cut for this week. Come Friday I'll likely have something much more final and will likely be on the edge of the keyframing and animation work.

But thus far everything is going smoothly after a successful week of pre-production. Please give me this week for the cutting. The following two weeks for the keyframing. Then one week for QA.

Delivery estimated at some point early Feb? I'll let you know if any difficulties start appearing. I've never attempted keyframing Halo before, so we'll see how it goes.