Sons of the Forest - Pre-production and script (for now)

Good afternoon everybody. I'm back from a week-or-so of rest after the last video. During that time I did a bunch of cleaning and cooking projects - the latter being a minor hobby of mine.

And sufficiently inspired by a recent playthrough of Sons of the Forest, I realised that I'd never tasted an Oyster before. You can harvest and eat oysters in that game, you see.

And so it became a minor goal. Something to at least experience once in real life right?

One trip to the fishmongers/supermarket later, and following a recipe I found online for "garlic oysters", I found myself in my kitchen, curious to try them out. Dicing up the garlic, melting the butter, and making a small pile of discarded metal tools in an increasingly frustrated attempt to open the buggers.

Unfortunately though, being British, I possess my nations culinary inability. And enjoying cooking doesn't mean being good at it - as I proceeded to burn the garlic, spill the butter, drink too much wine, and present this horror-show that wouldn't look out of place on the dinner table of Mordor orcs.

Whelp - goal achieved I suppose?

Next goal - the Fugu fish

Actually, err...best not.

Moving onto this week though, I have a direction for the next video project in the form of Sons of the Forest. A follow up video to my last major video essay, in which I had a deep dive into the profoundly weird game that is The Forest (2014)

I found myself intensely fascinated with an open-world survival game that had retroactively added a story long after its early-access launch. It was great fun, but was utterly bizarre at times. And I was keen to drop into the sequel to see if time, experience, and an expanded development team would present something different? Especially now since the story appeared to be a planned feature from the very beginning.

I'd like to give a stab at that follow up video. Now that I've played about 60 hours of it and have cleared the main story.

I do however want to put some restrictions upon myself. A restriction on the time commitment.

My plan is as follows over the next 4-5 weeks MAXIMUM:

• 1.) PRE-PRODUCTION: Perform scrubbing on the livesteam footage for Sons of the Forest, while it's still fresh in my mind. Making relevant notes, assembling funny segments, spotting good visuals to use in a video. And if that all goes well...

• 2.) SCRIPT: Type up a script, make whatever improvements are necessary. And then get an approximate word count to judge how long it will take to edit.

• 3.) STOP - And seek permission from the crowd-funders before doing anything else. 

Here's the pickle.

Whilst I feel comfortable dedicating the 4-5 weeks to do the initial parts of the video essay - that last Forest video did balloon, didn't it? Something like 8 months of editing.

And whilst I'm going to make an effort to avoid that this time, it will no doubt take many weeks. Let's tentatively say this video on Sons of the Forest would be at least an hour long?

I don't feel comfortable committing to THAT without first making polls to ensure you're all happy for me to do so. Plus, a finished script will let me provide some semi-accurate predictions on total editing time (using the prior project as a comparison).

Let me squirrel away on this, dedicating just the usual 4-5 weeks , and then provided the script seems solid enough, I'll come back with a poll to get your then thoughts:

• Option 1 - Proceed with the project and the X number of estimated weeks required to complete it in one sitting.

• Option 2 - Split that up a bit. Placing this project on the side to work on a bullshittery, your choice then, returning to this once it's back to my selection.

It is, at the very least, probably a good idea to work out the script structure whilst Sons of the Forest is fresh on mind and the plot points easy to remember.

For right now though, the initial pre-production phase. It's divided up into several tasks:

• Paint a broad structure of points and counter points in a high level script form. The main elements I'd like to talk about. Often as post it notes on my walls.

• "Scrub" the original livestream footage in Adobe Premiere. Making markers that can be easily picked out and added to a main time line. These could be amusing moments, good visuals, narration about plot points I'm noticing, etc. All the supporting material necessary to show what I'm talking about in an entertaining way.

• Review the original forest video to identify the elements I'd like to compare against. Listing useful points of contrast.

• Once happy with the overall structure, start filling in the script with the precise words. Repeatedly adjusting and revising segments until happy.

I have been a bit naughty on that front - I've already made a significant start during my week off.

I've scrubbed the first 4 of 17 livestreams. And have marked a hundreds or so useful moments and highlights using Premiere's marker system. I had them on in the background whilst cooking or cleaning, I had the audio on my headphones whilst cleaning my car.

I confess that I may not know how to properly relax during time off :D

And soon my wall is going to be absolutely covered with post it notes once more, analysing the things setup well, setup poorly, mechanics worth praising or critiquing, and a deep-dive/comparison against the original and how well a job I think the developers did.

I'll keep you updated on progress. An initial batch of work, without committing to the whole thing...just yet. And will then give you more information and determine what to do next. Thank you all :)