Wanted to change pace to a completely different medium today. I absolutely love video editing, it’s so much fun, and it’s one of the only creative mediums I engage with where I can picture a vision and have resembling done like, quickly. I did this when the flights for Halo Infinite came out mid 2021. Not gonna get into the game itself because it’s pretty much all my twitter consists of and I’ll just be bitching for 10,000 words.
I love games, I love youtube, youtube gaming content is like, all I watch mostly and this style of stream of consciousness editing just cracks me up. It’s also something that really is enhanced by my endless knowledge of internet garbage and memes so it’s just super satisfying to me and makes me feel like I’m firing on all cylinders creatively. I have made something like this before consisting of clips from Overwatch back when me and my pal Tom used to play it regularly. That I’ll post in the future because I’m also really proud of that video.
I remember being ultra sick when making this and it turning into a bit of a fever dream at points, hence the hellish intro. I have this abhorrently bad webcam from like, 2002 or something and it’s my favourite thing ever. It has it’s own jank software called AMcap or something (Which I just now realised I have to reinstall actually) but my god does it produce the most unbelievable katsu crunch deep fried beer battered horrors known to man. So I took one of my favourite pictures of myself in a Shodan like vibe and put one of the weirdest and least risky songs I know together copyright-wise. The song is by a guy called AJ Freaks or something and it just made the perfect combo. AJ is wild though, check out his song this world is crazy and you’ll know immediately what you’re dealing with.
A lot of the clips aren’t exactly great plays or anything because I had limited footage and we had only bots to fight against at the time so I really focused on each clip being a skit relating to the game, ie, that one where I fuckin falcon punch a bot down a hall, all thanks to a weird physics glitch.
Something I love looking back on this is you can see a lot of the biggest things to inspire me at this point very clearly, like how I was watching cowboy bebop for the first time, or all the Nier Replicant music I used. The “Fuck off dudes” Bart Simpson actually is an allegory for my hatred for Crach Bandicoot too since the N. Sane trilogy was really putting me through it at the time.
The first clip is actually a great example of me getting around making these kinds of things hard for myself. I’m pretty much always watching or listening to something else when playing multiplayer games which ruins the audio in the clip obviously so I just have to settle with some music and SFX over top to make it feel natural and it’s a lot harder than I’d thought, but it puts a new flavour on clips I feel like. Something about that LISA music I feel just clicks with the gorpy nature of the situation and I dunno, I love it.
You know, I thought I would have had an lot more to say about this since video editing is one of my favourite activities and I love this video but honestly I think so much of it speaks for itself and I mean that in the shallowest way possible. It’s just fun, funny shit! I get to have a blast while gathering clips, I get to put my extensive knowledge of nothing to a good use, I get to blend my interests in pop culture into my work and the purpose and intent is mega clear, to have a giggle. I don’t get bogged down in trying to be clever or invoking hidden meanings in things. Also nice to inject a bit of myself into these since my mic is always on so I get candid reactions to things happening, which works a lot like a laugh track I think.
I really really want to do more big videos like this, but my biggest barrier is flat out laziness and lack of attention span for creative endeavours, something like this I need to strike while the iron is hot and get it all done in 2 hours, if that’s not feasible then it isn’t getting made and this is the case in every medium I work in. Updating this regularly and engaging mentally with old work is making me have a better work ethic and is switching my brain on to creativity again which is great, it’s the reason I started this page back up. Looking after myself better health wise helps a bunch too, not being exhausted after using my brain for 45 minutes again is fantastic!
Editing audio or video is kind of my ideal job, I’d love to be able to at least try it as a career just once but man is that just not an option in Ireland and I am nowhere near a social enough person to try make connections online to do that. Maybe someday I’ll improve or the opportunity will come along like that, thankfully I’m not a person to worry over much and am very “whatever happens happens”