Space Engineers bullshittery - Update #2

Good evening all. Hope you're having a smooth Monday. Last week (and this weekend) I've been working on pulling together Space Engineers bullshittery. And here's how things are going.

I've managed to create a rough cut. Scrubbing through available scenes from streams and sifting through the notes made. Here's a shot of what the rough cut looks like on my Premiere timeline:

This main sequence consists of lots of little sequences, within which I'm heavily trimming in order to focus on the bits that matter.

Here's that last big sequence expanded to show what it looks like on the inside.

The job however isn't done. The video is far too long in it's current form. I'm continuing to trim away pieces in order to produce something manageable to edit, hopefully without overtightening it.

The most prominent creative decision to talk about is the presence of two major sequences I'd like to try to keep in this edit:

• Major scene A - Birdy's lobster ship.

• Major scene B - Tom's ice planet missile silo.

Both sequences have lots of other gags hidden in them. The first is a shorter amalgamation of moments from a grassy-plains playthrough in 2021. Here Birdy was constructing a space lobster. And the other guys were bantering around it. Meaning those jokes can be easily folded in with the lobster as a backdrop.

The second is an expansive exploration of Tom's missile silo base on the ice moon of Triton in 2023. Featuring lots of excellent banter between 4-5 guys as we take the piss out of each other's builds, teasing clang with too many pistons, and generally marvel at what Space Engineers can do in the right hands.

Between those two prominent pink segments I am threading other unrelated Space Engineers jokes as usual. The hallmark of these major segments though is that they stay narratively focused around one specific thing in the edit.

The challenge with this creative decision is that both sequences are quite lengthy. With the lobster part being around 4 minutes (out of the usual 10). And the triton base being something closer to 15 minutes. A video on its own, essentially. All of this will make for a big bullshittery potentially.

I want to play with it more before I make the final call on what I think works best here. I'm currently working through trimming sweep number 3. Rendering it, then playing it back repeatedly. Trying to figure out what to keep and what to drop.

Give me a few more days before I make the final call and launch straight into keyframing and animation stuff. But thus far no real problems to report. A bit of a short update as a result. The trimming work continues and I'll give another update shortly on what I finalise.

Have a lovely week all :)

TL;DR - Trimming down the rough cut. Soon to start keyframing once I'm certain I know what I'm keeping.