The Post-aMSa Vid Post

Hello.

After the monumental undertaking that was the aMSa video and the insane response to it (including many patreon dot com slash asumsaus patronages), I figured it'd be interesting and possibly helpful for some to talk a bit about the process of making the video itself.

The Unseen

Funnily enough, the idea that started the entire video ended up... not in the video.

I wondered about a month ago if there was any easy way to better view Melee's post-game victory and loss animations to perhaps use them in a video, and with some research it turned out that, yes, there is! I found an old Smashboards post detailing how to swap these animations with existing animations for moves in-game and through some hex editing, managed to tediously, one-by-one, swap in about a dozen different animations. Of course, seeing all of these clapping animations displayed independently from the post-game screen gave me the idea to do yet another Evangelion reference: a Melee parody of the congratulations scene at the end of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series. After recording an original cover/mashup of Melee's theme and the song that plays during that scene, the project began. About halfway through I decided I needed a suitably Eva-referential video to accompany it, and after some brainstorming settled on my most ambitious idea ever: an entire documentary on one of my favorite players. Production on the congratulations scene paused while I worked on the video proper, until near the end of the documentary's completion where I decided it... didn't really fit. What's a couple days of cut work in a video that took a few hundred hours anyway?

So now it sits on my hard drive, separated from the video it inspired and unshared. I'd share the entire thing with you guys, but you'll have to settle on a screenshot and a description for now. I plan on repurposing it for a future video!

The Tunes

Some of you might've noticed I've been incorporating original music into my videos, and a few comments have flatteringly timestamped and asked for the sources for some of my songs in particular. One that's been asked for a few times was the song that plays during aMSa's first encounter with Mew2King at Evo 2013, so I've decided to share the .mp3 of that (I don't think Patreon supports .mp3 embedding in the middle of posts like this unfortunately, so it's attached at the bottom). Many of you will notice it's not even really a song with any sort of structure, which is a deliberate decision I make with many of my songs intended for videos, since it allows me to easily splice and adjust the structure on-the-fly to suit the needs of the video it's placed in.

The Thumbnail (and The Title)

Something I struggle with when creating videos is creating rapport in how much I want to appeal to new eyes with my titles and thumbnails, how much I want to stay true to what I want to title and thumbnail my work, and finding a compromise between the two. As I've learned, swaying too much in either direction can backfire.

For example, 'Shine Breaks Melee' was titled specifically to target new eyes ("broken" has historically been a strong word for me for this purpose), though ironically, view-wise, that video turned out to be a bit of a dud, ending up pretty solidly in my worst performing recent videos... maybe that title was just a bit too formulaic to stand out amongst the myriad of haha melee so GLITCHY videos. Which sucks to see for a video I worked very hard on, of course! But on the internet, that's just the fickle nature of the beast.

On the flipside, sometimes you can find a comfortable middle-ground by creating a conversation between the title and thumbnail. The title, 'aMSa: The Only Yoshi (who could do it)' was 100% what I wanted to title the video. In fact, the entire video itself is built around that title! I wanted viewers to question,

...what the fuck is "it"?

And have what "it" is revealed naturally throughout the video. Unfortunately, I think the title by itself isn't very gripping. But what could make it super appealing is an accompanying thumbnail teasing what "it" is; something that everyone likes seeing: an underdog beating the... biggest dog. Of course, as viewers of the complete video will see, simply being able to beat the biggest dog(s) isn't entirely what the "it" of the video is, but it's a strong taste I think! Strong enough for new eyes to be interested and click, and strong enough for them to stick around to see the "it" is actually even cooler than just simply being able to beat the top dog(s).

This is the earliest version of the thumbnail I exported before I refined the composition and added the plates showing the tier placements of the characters. Already though, the conversation between title and thumbnail is there:

What's "it"?

        Beating high tier characters*

Who's aMSa?

        Obviously the Only Yoshi on the thumbnail doing the beating.

BOOM! Conversation.

The Hook

Something that deeply dissatisfies me with some documentaries/video essays/whatevers is when they start off by spoiling what should be the most exciting part of the story they aim to tell! In aMSa's case, several of the docs I skimmed through began by starting with his Big House 10 win.

What the hell, guys?!

In my opinion, it's much more intriguing and satisfying for the viewer to... not start with that. For instance, the intro of my video instantly shows who aMSa is: endearingly dorky, yet incredibly determined. He's got big goals, but his goal seems almost impossible given the way he wants to achieve it. It's effective without taking away from the climax of aMSa's journey for those not already informed of how he succeeds in winning a major; it's more fun creatively to build up to and more fun for the audience to see if and how he can achieve his goal!

The End

You guys have no idea how much it means that the climax of the video was received as well as it was. If the entire video was based around the title, the title was created to serve that little segment at the end. After all, this was the first thing I worked on for the video (other than the cut Eva reference).

Everything was in service to this moment. I wanted viewers to internalize that little sound effect that plays when aMSa hits a parry, to make it hit that much harder when aMSa's tournament-winning combo came off of one. I wanted viewers to see the moves aMSa was hitting on Mango to win the Big House 10, color-coded to remind them many techniques were Yoshi-specific. I wanted to hearken back to all the seemingly impossible barriers aMSa had to break through to reach this point. And I wanted to show exactly, in slow-motion, how aMSa did it.

...at the most stacked tournament ever... aMSa did it.

AMSA DID IT! AMSA DID IIIITTTT!!!!!!

Thank you guys so much for continuing to watch my stuff. You guys allow me to create things I never in a million years thought I could.