Behind-The-Scenes: Anime Waifus

Here's my thoughts on my Waifus video!

The video is finally out! It felt like this would take forever to release, and I'm honestly so glad I got to finish it just before the end of the year. That makes 20 videos in 2022, and I can only hope to make more than that in 2023.

Writing

Coming up with the concept, I definitely wanted to make a sequel to the fanservice video, both because it was successful, and because there was so much more I could've talked about. So I decided to look at a different topic that was related, and ended up on waifus.

Like the fanservice video, I went into it with this pre-determined notion that I already had the answers. I thought that waifus were weird, and I wanted to cover why someone would possibly like them. And I leaned into researching the history of waifuism to explain the problems I thought waifu culture had. But after seeing the relation to moe and bishojo and reading the books that I quote in the final video, I got a different perspective and started to challenge my own ideas.

The biggest voice for the sort of pro-waifu message that I ultimately ended up with was definitely Patrick W. Galbraith's works. I highly recommend reading The Moe Manifesto or even his free anthropological paper on moe to get an idea of just how knowledgeable and passionate he is about this. Pretty much all of his writing very carefully explains the nature of moe and feelings for fictional characters in a way that doesn't just lean into the stigma around it, and without looking into that explanation this video probably would've turned out completely differently.

I personally never like when people make videos on topics where they already have a conclusion before they even present any evidence for it. I think my Starfield video is an example of that from myself, and its one of the videos I feel the most conflicted on. And so for the same reason I made my fanservice video trying to start a deeper discussion, I think it's important that I was able to talk about waifus with more nuance than just "they're weird" or "let people like anime characters".

That being said, the final script ended up at 14,000 words, and took me over two weeks to write, so I definitely don't want to make all of my videos that insanely in-depth.

Recording

The recording session for this video was 4 hours long before I realized that my audio interface was completely out of whack and all my audio was fucked. And then it was another 6 hours of recording until I got everything I wanted, including re-recording the intro twice more because I wanted to be more energetic (as you can see in my bloopers video).

All I know is pain.

Editing

Did y'all know that adjustment layers exist? I fucking didn't. Or, rather, I used them for Photoshop for the last little bit but didn't realize they extended to Premiere. So for all of my zoom edits in previous videos, in order to sync the zoom of the background and my green screen camera, I would nest the footage and then zoom that. Which is a horrible idea, as it locks the resolution (I record in 4k but I'd effectively be zooming on a 1080p nest, meaning all the extra resolution was wasted) and it takes forever to render. So I learned recently I could just slap adjustment layers on top of the footage and then zoom that, and it would zoom every element underneath it, whil keeping resolution. Which is awesome. I literally learned how to use them when editing the first half of the video, and used nests for the second half (I edited the problems section first because it was less intensive). So you can see all the adjustment layers as the dark grey elements on the very top video layer. Definitely using them more going forward.

Also, this video was just a pain to edit, as you can see from the absolute clusterfuck that is my timeline. With 6 hours of footage being cut down to over an hour, this is one of the first projects where I've actually needed markers and color-coordination to keep track of everything. You can see timeline updates on my Twitter if you want to see the progression of the project. I had to break it down into smaller and smaller pieces to even feel like I was making progress.

Mostly all the work comes from just cutting the recording and finding relevant images, footage, and text on screen. It took me about a week and a half to put everything together, and that was while rushing to get it done before the end of the year.

I did have fun making all of the title cards though. I've always enjoyed building chapters into my videos, but this is where I wanted them to all be visually interesting. So I brainstormed ideas and took the time to make cool graphics and stuff. This was my first real foray into After Effects, which is a whole beast I have yet to tame. But motion tracking and rotoscoping stuff is super cool and lets me make visuals I couldn't even dream of with Premiere, so I definitely want to lean that more.

Thoughts

Overall, this is the video I'm most proud of so far. I think everything came together perfectly, and it represents a new benchmark for my channel. It achieved every goal I set out for it, which was to inform people on the history and problems, and also be entertaining.

That being said, like I always add in these behind-the-scenes, I want to make shorter videos. Whether I actually do this time is another story, but with my 2022 recap video coming out soon I should explain more about my plan for the next year. Basically, I want to be able to make shorter videos inbetween my big projects so I don't go insane working on one thing for a month.

I'm so glad that the video is being received well though. I appreciate all the positive comments it's gotten. Thank you for letting me make weird videos on weirder topics. And here's to a great 2023!