My Editing Process

Ahoy-hoy! As some of you will know, the bulk of the time spent creating videos isn't in the writing, recording or pre-production - it's 90% editing. While that's universally true for pretty much all content creators, some of us spend even more time on this as we use editing as an extension of the script; rather than simply being a process that holds together the fundamental elements of our videos, the edit acts as a vessel of entertainment in its own right. That is to say - those of us that lack a real personality can really make up for it in post.

Considering this, I thought you guys might be interested in how I edit my videos and what the process is behind my more complicated stuff. Rather than working from A to Z in the edit, getting everything done chronologically, I work in iterative stages.

Stage 1: Audio

This is the least entertaining and least noticable kind of editing that I always get done at the start. Most of this is spent removing harsh 's' noises from my voice, popping sounds, breathing and miscellaneous audio pollution. 

Christ it's boring, and there's absolutely no pleasure in doing it. However, if I didn't do it, it would be unbearable to listen to. At least it doesn't take super long, about 1.5x the length of the original audio. 

Once this is done, I export the audio and put it straight into Vegas Pro.

Stage 2: Markers

These orange bastards.

I use the edited voice audio to set cues for text, images or effects to appear. As you can tell in the above image, I USE A LOT OF TEXT, IMAGES AND EFFECTS.

This takes quite a while as this is where most of the post-recording jokes are made, and I could honestly skip it. However, if I did skip it, I may forget a joke or two and I can't be having that.

Overall this is almost as tedious as the voice editing but at least I get to have some fun doing it.

Think of this step as the pre-post-production which... probably makes it more confusing. It's basically just a planning stage.

Stage 3: Footage

This is where all of my precious (see: mindless) recording time pays off. I now sift through hours of what is basically B-Roll while trying to find visuals that kind of relate to what I'm saying. On some games it's actually pretty fun because I only record the highlights of the gameplay, but on others (usually heavily narrative games) I record the whole gosh-darn thing.

Once I find fitting footage, I throw that on to the editing timeline and cut it down to sections that only last a few seconds. Got to have those speedy cuts to mask my inability to retain an audience!

This takes a long time - maybe the longest of all stages, but it's one of the more fulfilling tasks as it shows the project coming together.

Stage 4: Images

I reference a lot of weird, obscure or otherwise heavily unrelated topics in my videos and most of the time I find it necessary to add some visual aid to the video for those that aren't as strange as I am. This doesn't take too long - I just look up whatever I reference and try to find the best fitting non-copyrighted image.

Alternatively I add in images that I made myself such as my thumbnails or strangely edited pictures of seagulls. You know the ones.

This is the section where the markers begin to pay off as I'll be sure to never leave an obscure reference fully obscured.

Stage 5: Text

Fuck.

This one takes forever.

But it's probably the most entertaining aspect of editing - it's where I add a lot of emphasis to my jokes, reiterate something that I said or explain some small detail that I left out of the audio recording. I don't think my videos would be the same without the text!

The markers help greatly here too as they guide me on the timings and content of the text so I don't have to make it all up on the spot.

Here you can also see what font I typically use - Sitka Text! Previously I used Yu Gothic but we had some creative differences and went our own ways.

Stage 6: Music

Oh my, this is a strange step.

Once all of the visual aspects of the video are done, I like to add background music. Not only does it add some much needed ambience to the whole video, but it also covers up background noise, small audio errors and a lack of personality.

This is either the easiest or absolute hardest aspect of editing.

Occasionally a game will have strong enough music with enough emotional variety to make the whole process simple - see The Norwood Suite and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example.

The rest of the time however, the games' music will be weak, inaccessible or tonally unfit. This is when our royalty-free heroes Kevin MacLeod, Lucas King, Myuuji and many more come in. Check the descriptions of my videos to see how many times they've propped up the aural aspects of my work.

I'll also add music from other games most of the time - for example I've used a lot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s music on my horror themed videos because the ambience they provide is top tier.

I'll typically avoid copyrighted (or at least HEAVILY copyrighted stuff - video game music is far more lax on the topic than most) content because that can compromise the video or even the channel as a whole and I'd rather that didn't happen.

Closing Notes

That might not sound like much - and sometimes it's not - but on videos such as my Call of Cthulhu review this whole process can take dozens of hours. I still love doing it, however frustrated or inconvenienced it can make me feel.

This probably explains why I hate my own videos though - by the time you guys see them I have watched/listened to them at least 6 times in various forms (though that number is usually closer to 15-20, if not more).

Thanks for reading this, guys! Let me know if you enjoy this kind of post.